Early developer Gavin Andresen describes "The Future of Bitcoin": Main network closes in 2100, operates across chains.
Gavin Andresen, an early Bitcoin developer who had close contact and collaboration with Satoshi Nakamoto, described a possible future of Bitcoin in his latest article. However, contrary to the commonly known year 2140, in the "story" he described, the Bitcoin mainnet will be shut down in the year 2100.
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"A Possible BTC Future"
Consider this a short science fiction story; the likelihood of a future similar to the following story is low, but among all potential futures, I think this is quite likely to happen:
Imagine: It is now the year 2061.
Due to currency inflation, the price of Bitcoin is $6 million, equivalent to $1 million in 2021.
The reward for miners in each block is 0.006103515625 BTC, plus around 4,000 transactions with a transaction fee of approximately $7,500 each, around 5 BTC.
However, most Bitcoin transactions do not happen on the main network; most Bitcoins are locked in multi-signature outputs calculated through multi-party computations and run on another chain through "Wrapped" mapping.
People run Bitcoin across chains for faster transactions, lower fees, more privacy, or to invest Bitcoin in things like DeFi, or perhaps all of the above.
Transactions on the Bitcoin main network involve very high single transaction amounts, mostly between super whale centralized exchanges, central banks, and decentralized multi-signature addresses.
These whales are always maintaining the Bitcoin network; they are both miners and transaction initiators. They do not care how high the transaction fees are because the fees they pay will go directly into their own pockets.
By the year 2100, these whales notice that mining rewards are approaching zero, and transactions on the slow, expensive, and privacy-lacking Bitcoin main network are decreasing. Therefore, they decide to shut down the main network directly to save costs.
They start closing cross-chain bridges that interact with the Bitcoin main network one by one and send all locked Bitcoins on the main network to the address 0x000... for destruction to ensure that no one can transact on the main network.
Ultimately, no more Bitcoins are issued on the Bitcoin main network, no Bitcoins are in circulation, and no Bitcoins need to be locked. The Bitcoin main chain ceases to operate.
However, approximately 20 million Bitcoins still circulate on other blockchains. They hold value because of their limited supply and the fact that Bitcoin is the world's first scarce digital asset.