And mining costs have gone down before. It's when bitcoin's price falls making mining unprofitable, so some miners stop, which lowers the difficulty, which makes mining profitable again at lower level - mining costs decreased to match the price.
That true, mining cost can go down and it did but in the long run it can (must) only go up.
If we assume after block reward is gone or very low, fees pay miners less so most miners stop and difficulty is adjusted then we have a imminent 51% attack risk. Low difficultly, bankrupt miners, mark flooded with cheap mining hardware and suddenly drooping energy prices are the perfect conditions for such an attack. Once attacked the price drops pushes more miners out of business and attacks are even cheaper. A crash is inevitable.
And no, it's not word juggling, the value of money comes from the people who exchange things for money. Here they exchange either electricity, or USD for it. Miners are paying their bills by selling virtual tokens, if those tokens didn't have any value for anybody, they wouldn't be able to sell them. Whether the token comes from block reward or transaction fees doesn't change anything on the fact that somebody gave up USD to get the token.
> Bitcoin pays itself by "printing itself"
Kinda ironic now after FED printed more money in one week than the whole Bitcoin economy is worth. I'd rather have the printing controlled by math, than any person.
You don't seem to understand where the value from new minted BTCs comes from. How they are exchanged is completely irrelevant. Mined BTCs change the supply and that changes the price of all other BTCs. Any additional BTC makes all other BTCs a little bit cheaper/less worth. And that is where the value form the new BTCs come from.
Printing controlled by math avoids hyperinflation like I said above. Printing isn't the problem, that the printing stops is the problem. Or that the whole system was self fueling in the first place.
Only suckers take positions in a rigged game, short or long.
> Kinda ironic now after FED printed more money in one week than the whole Bitcoin economy is worth. I'd rather have the printing controlled by math, than any person.
Obviously that math is defined by people, so you're just pointing at it and pretending otherwise. The Bitcoin Core team can just change the printing rate any time; their lack of action is defacto action. Rather than an elected group of economists you've got a bunch of un-accountable, un-elected people with zero experience in the economics space shooting from the hip.
I haven't checked the math, but this article says the block reward is ~$45 per transaction, vs ~$0.70 in fees:
https://cryptoslate.com/each-transaction-costs-the-bitcoin-n...
If that is the case, it seems likely there will be a devastating crash next time the reward halves.
Price is measured in USD and USD is inflationary so its purchasing power drops and BTC needs double the purchasing power not double the USD "value number"
The reward being constant would in the long run reduce the margins used as profit but also stop the re-investing of said profit to creating new hardware (ASICs) etc. That would stop or slow down the growth of hash/energy ratio which would make 51% attacks cheaper over time if we assume all other hardware on this planet keeps getting better and more.
Also keep in mind that BTC "only" doubling ever 4 year would significantly under perform most peoples expectation so if it's even lower, interest probably goes down rapidly as well which could trigger the collapse.
If we assume max 7Tx/s 1 block can hold 4200 Tx One block gets the miner 12.5 BTCs that's a 0.003 BTC "subvention" per Tx that would otherwise have to be pais as fee.
In other words the cost is paid by inflation which hurts most who holds and not who uses it. People don't care about a little inflation because the price gains where way way over that. But in the long run this system can not work. Every halving requires the BTC price to at least double (assuming the same mining cost). Problem is mining cost goes only up the halving is finite it goes to zero blockreward. Since the price can't go to infinite it's obvious that this system has to crash at some point we just don't know when.