The "security budget problem" for Bitcoin is fabricated nonsense pushed to promote the next altcoin.
Claims that low fees and declining rewards are a crisis usually come from people promoting a random shitcoin. They misunderstand energy abundance and often ignore basic economics.
All miners will leave the network because fees and rewards will be too low
That's one of the dumbest takes around.
It ignores supply and demand: when rewards fall, unprofitable miners shut off their ASICs, which lowers difficulty and shifts all block subsidies and fees to the remaining miners, making them more profitable.
More profit means less selling pressure on mined Bitcoin, so less supply hits the market and price rises.
When Core Scientific went bankrupt in 2022, the next block was mined without issue. New miners replace those who leave because mining remains profitable.
That’s the advantage of a purely capitalist system — nobody is too big to fail, and exits benefit remaining participants.
Critics assume Bitcoin’s price can’t keep rising, but against fiat it can, because fiat supply is unlimited.
If dollars continue to be valued, the Federal Reserve won’t stop printing; in fact, money supply will likely expand as debt and interest obligations grow.
Fiat will tend to lose value over time, and some country will always be willing to print to preserve its ability to mine Bitcoin.
If fiat is abandoned and Bitcoin becomes the reserve standard, 1 Bitcoin = 1 Bitcoin. On that standard, accumulation happens only by:
Energy costs and mining hardware prices tend to fall over time, lowering barriers to entry—especially as some miners exit. Bitcoin incentivizes innovation in energy production and efficiency.
Consider what happens if oil producers stop exporting and instead "sell" their energy to the Bitcoin network via mining. Renewable energy tech will improve and get cheaper and more accessible.
Bitcoin’s economics anticipate most foreseeable problems. No altcoin competes with Bitcoin as a store of value; many altcoins try to skip that stage and aim straight for medium-of-exchange and unit-of-account roles.
Those worried about a shrinking security budget forget the environment will change over decades. Speculative scenarios about how the world will look in 20–30 years ignore dynamic responses.
Would a country like China stop mining and risk letting others control the network? China holds nearly 1% of supply and the leadership is unlikely to cede control or permit censorship. Worst-case, it continues mining at a loss.