While marveling at the simplicity and brilliance of the concept Satoshi Nakamoto came up with a brief 13 years ago, a nagging fear persisted that Bitcoin might crumble once it hit preset supply limitations n 2139 – and probably well before that.
The concern: what gives Bitcoin its robust security is the mining system at its root, and the decentralized nature of that mining system. What happens when the rewards paid to miners drops exponentially at each preset halving? Wouldn’t that cause hordes of miners to stop mining? Wouldn’t that lead to a concentration of mining rigs into fewer and fewer hands and expose Bitcoin to the possibility of fraud through a 51% attack?
The solution that Nakamoto had conceived was rewards through transaction fees. Bitcoin followers have debated long and hard about the sufficiency of those fees to incentivize miners. Here’s a great Twitter feed that goes far to allay concerns about such incentives:
Bitcoin blocks are like container ships
Read it and let us know what you think.