Bitcoin is the father of all cryptocurrencies out there – that much is obvious – but what does the future hold for this cryptocurrency of epic proportions? The team working on keeping Bitcoin alive by patching bugs in the code have a few choices ahead, with some options giving Bitcoin a long and healthy life, while other routes could spell the end of BTC once and for all.
Let’s dive into a number of scenarios that we could see in the future as Bitcoin steams on.
Bitcoin Worth More Than $100,000,000
If nothing changes from here on in, this is the price Bitcoin could very well be forced to reach in the coming future. You see, miners are given Bitcoin as a reward for their hard work – and to cover their expenses. But as the mining reward continues to half every 4 years or so, around the year 2140 we will see the rewards fall to as low as 1 satoshi. Now, at current prices 1 satoshi is worth around $0.0001 – hardly enough to pay for mining rigs, staff, rent, and power. So, in order for mining to remain profitable – of nothing changes whatsoever to the Bitcoin network – then Bitcoin would need to be worth an awful lot of money in order for it to be profitable for miners. If it’s not, miners will head over to other networks where mining is profitable.
A Bitcoin Ghost Town
The development team currently working on Bitcoin has some rather big decisions to make, such as should the block size be increased, should the total supply be increased, or should block time be reduced. Making any one of these calls will alienate a large portion of the Bitcoin community and it will slink off elsewhere during the hard fork that adds the feature – like we saw with Bitcoin Cash’s creation. Eventually, in a bid to make Bitcoin scalable and profitable for everyone the development team could end up losing the majority of Bitcoin users, leaving nothing but a barren blockchain wasteland.
A More Centralized Ecosystem
Let’s face it, a lot of Bitcoiners are here because they like the decentralization. How about if we told you the block sizes were 5GB – that’s a blockchain you wouldn’t want to download at home. This simple solution would help Bitcoin become infinitely scalable, as well as remaining profitable for all those involved. However, very few people would be able to run full nodes on a blockchain where blocks are 5GB each – on current internet infrastructure at least. This Bitcoin future would mean that there are fewer groups of miners, but the network runs faster and is profitable for the foreseeable future – bigger blocks means more transactions per block, which means miners still make profits from mining to cover costs.
For now, none of these scenarios are set in stone, and there is still time to change the future. None of these are exactly idea solutions, but some are better than others – if you’re a Bitcoin maximalist, of course.
We’re excited for the future of Bitcoin, what do you think it will look like? Let us know in the comments below!
