Gavin Andresen prediction for Bitcoin in 2061

[dkbit98]

Arguably one of the biggest mistakes Satoshi Nakamoto made was transferring things over to Gavin Andresen, the guy who worked with agencies, than with Craig Wright, and now he writes some grim sci-fi future for Bitcoin on his blog.

This guy become so irrelevant in Bitcoin crypto space that maybe his only fun in life now is writing stuff like this, claiming Bitcoin will be worth 6 Million USD in 2061, but most transaction won't happen on BTC network but on multisignature and other network tokens.

Andresen claims that only whales, big holders, exchanges and banks will hold this tokens, and in year 2100 network will shutdown after closing down bridges for this tokens and fees becoming unsustainable.

Now lets remember big mistakes Gavin Andresen made in past, like the time when he claimed that Craig Wright is Satoshi, or how he ''visited'' three letter government agency back in 2011, shortly after Satoshi left the Bitcoin project.

Gavin Andresen: Um... I haven't had email from satoshi in a couple months actually. The last email I sent him I actually told him I was going to talk at the CIA. So it's possible , that.... that may have um had something to with his deciding

Gavin Andresen: It Was a Mistake to Blog Claiming Craig Wright Is Satoshi

Andresen's full fantasy story:

Take this as a little piece of science fiction; the chances the future looks like this are small, but of all the possible futures I think this has as good a chance of any of happening:

Imagine: it is the year 2061.

The BTC price is six million US dollars– equal to about a million 2021 dollars because of inflation.

Miners are being rewarded 0.006103515625 BTC per block, plus transaction fees of about 5 BTC for 4,000 or so transactions ($7,500 per transaction).

But most BTC transactions don’t happen on the BTC network. Most BTC is locked up in multisignature outputs secured using multiparty computation and mirrored on another chain as “wrapped” tokens. People moved their BTC either because they want faster transactions, lower fees, more privacy, or want to invest their BTC in decentralized financial stuff. Or maybe all of the above.

The transactions that do occur on the main BTC network are high-value, mostly between super-whale-size holders (centralized exchanges, central banks, and the decentralized multiparty computation addresses that hold all the wrapped coins).

These whales maintain the BTC network forever. They are the miners and the transaction creators; they don’t care how high transaction fees go, because they receive as many fees as they pay.

In the year 2100 the whales notice that the mining reward is basically zero, and there are fewer and fewer transactions happening on the slow, expensive, zero-privacy BTC network. So they decide to simplify and save money by shutting it down.

One by one, they shutdown the “bridges” that move BTC between chains. Then they burn any BTC locked on the BTC chain by sending it to the 0x000… address, to make sure nobody can ever spend it on the BTC network.

Eventually, there are zero new BTC being produced on the BTC network, and zero BTC circulating on the BTC network. There is nothing left to secure, and the chain stops.

But 20-or-so million BTC live on, circulating on other blockchains, valuable because there are a limited number of them and because BTC was the first scarce digital asset.

http://gavinandresen.ninja/a-possible-btc-future
Archive: https://archive.ph/ca3An

[Smartvirus]

If there are two things I can pick out of this whole rubbish or soi choose to believe that Gavin Anderson stated or predicted is that, he specifically called his prediction 'a piece of science fiction and beckoned on is to 'Imagine in the year 2061'.
Apparently, any one can come up with any prediction, predictions that could even suggest the crashing of the world, how its to happen and even propose a solution to it but, does that mean, that's what  is to happen or the solutionn is the way to go about it, certainly a yes or a no.

It would be  a good thing to take advice form one who has made several mistakes but not one who even continues to wallow in mistakes still and claims that aren't verifiable like Gavin Anderson. Let him have his say and lets have even more fun still!

[paxmao]

It is an interesting post in the sense that it gives some stuff to think about. I am not too interested in knowing who is Satoshi nor in the ego quarrels of the people that supposedly worked in proximity to him, however the predictions about having bitcoin falling into a few hands is kind of a warning for us hoddlers and aligns with something that people do not seem to understand clearly and is very simple: once you sell something, you no longer own it. You have something that most times is far less valuable and goes away easily with no trace: money.

[izsara]

again this is a prediction and anyone can say the same because here it is in a speculative direction.
regardless of true or not we will see it at least 40 years from now
I can only imagine one thing at the moment, basically when someone says something like this now they will probably say the opposite in months or years to come.
such as China's policy of going back and forth for and prohibiting bitcoin and Elon and Tesla who are fickle about bitcoin adoption.
actually it's the same here.
and maybe for the next 40 years he will forget that he said that in 2021

[watergold]

maybe it is a good reminder because indeed it is a very certain thing when there is an increase there will be a decrease and that is a natural thing because bitcoin will not last forever and its era will surely end, although for now it will not be like that but slowly bitcoin will surely lose its glory because nothing lasts forever here.
As for the price in 2061, there are only two possibilities if it's not true, it's false, but whatever it is, even if you say research or whatever, I think it's still very far from happening because 40 years is a long time and I'm very sure at least for myself personally. , I wouldn't invest that long
and it is just speculation and things like this have often happened where a lot of people speculate about it but until now there is no proof.
so why bother with what will happen decades after today.

[STT]

I do hope we arent relying on one person for the future of BTC or constrained in any way resembling that, I presume not as it should be decided in a more organic way.  Something like market supply and demand vs efficient processes determining the best route is best.  I doubt he meant to imply it would be solely resting on his singular vision just an imagining of what might be one possible scenario which is fair enough if people dont take it too seriously.

[Slow death]

I just hope he doesn't show up sometime on the day he made that prediction because he had contact with some machine from the future or with someone who came from the future and talked to him. I don't know why anyone cares about 2061, it's not even 2022 is it already in 2061?

and maybe for the next 40 years he will forget that he said that in 2021

 

I doubt it

[hatshepsut93]

He's still a big blocker, I think he's even one of the first big blockers, so he will always be salty that the community rejected his naive vision in favor of more technically sound solution. And he makes such unrealistic assumptions like thinking that the block size won't change in 40 years or that no new solutions will be presented. When Satoshi created Bitcoin, he didn't imagine that someone would come up with Lightning Network, similarly in the future someone can come up with a new breakthrough that would dramatically increase Bitcoin's capacity. Gavin is like those people that said that machines heavier than air can not fly.

[Sithara007]

I can see that this loser (Gavin Andresen) has learnt a thing or two from what happened to John McAfee. Back in 2017 or 2018, McAfee made a prediction that Bitcoin will be worth $1 million per coin by 2021. And not surprisingly, that target was not achieved and McAfee was left with an egg in his face. Now coming to Andresen, he has given a target date of 2061. See how intelligent he is. Because even if the target is not achieved, no one is going to badmouth him. Because no one will remember Andresen and his stupid prediction by then.

[amishmanish]

It is an interesting post in the sense that it gives some stuff to think about. I am not too interested in knowing who is Satoshi nor in the ego quarrels of the people that supposedly worked in proximity to him, however the predictions about having bitcoin falling into a few hands is kind of a warning for us hoddlers and aligns with something that people do not seem to understand clearly and is very simple: once you sell something, you no longer own it. You have something that most times is far less valuable and goes away easily with no trace: money.

True. Maybe he did consider the true hodler when he says "Most BTC (not all) is locked in multisig".

This may well be the future because people are willing to use Wrapped BTC to access DeFi and other kind of interest-yielding products on smart-contract enables blockchains.

There are two scenarios when this cannot happen:
1. If smart-contracts become native to BTC making all of this "token-bridging" a redundant service.
2. If people continue to hold majority of their BTC with their own keys in their personal wallets. (the way its meant to be).

Gavin's hypothesis is more a reflection of his bitterness about losing the blocksize debate than anything else. The biggest organizations running miner can be a scenario but that doesn't mean that that they'll send everything to 0x000...(which is just an asinine jump of imagination, btw); the rest of the ACTUAL users can always fork away their own blockchain separate from the so-called corporate blockchain which doesn't even have any bitcoins now.

As soon as miners go offline, the bitcoin network can run with even just 2 computers running the chain which users (Full nodes) agree is the Bitcoin chain. All they'll need is a coordinated update to their full nodes. Now in Gavin's dystopian future, if the corporations even end up owning Open Source Software to the extent that only THEIR chain can run, then well, there is no point arguing this extreme case.

TLDR; This is a pretty amateur argument and I would seriously expect better from an OG. He never really fails to show his lack of conviction and understanding when it comes to Bitcoin.

[Kong Hey Pakboy]

I do hope we arent relying on one person for the future of BTC or constrained in any way resembling that, I presume not as it should be decided in a more organic way.  Something like market supply and demand vs efficient processes determining the best route is best.  I doubt he meant to imply it would be solely resting on his singular vision just an imagining of what might be one possible scenario which is fair enough if people dont take it too seriously.

That's okay, we don't. Not everyone believes what this guy's saying so we don't have to worry that the bitcoin community would rally under one banner, I think the Elon incident is a good reminder as to why we don't have to believe what this people are saying.

[Poker Player]

Predictions so far ahead are usually wrong. Andersen knows well the Bitcoin, its environment and its evolution, so he can make a prediction like this that may seem plausible, but from here to there to know if instead of multisig wallets something else has been invented that we cannot conceive now, or if the Bitcoin has disappeared and we live under a world dictatorship with a centralized monetary system, etc.

[Wexnident]

I don't even get the sense of predicting the price that far ahead really. Maybe after a decade is reasonable, but that's probably the max. A lot of things could change in 40 years, if he pretty much takes into account those and presented them in his prediction, well I'll be damned why hasn't he ascended yet. Pretty sure saying it's a piece of science fiction still isn't enough of an excuse to do so. Pretty sure the community would have multiple breakthroughs to resolve problems that would inevitably let it develop to a more suitable form of currency for all.

[Kittygalore]

Hard to believe what this guy says, I think it's a good idea to just ignore although that grim future is just scary, hopefully it's going to stay in fiction because I can see what's going to happen if the government controls everything, people are definitely going to suffer the most there. That's a really big number to be honest, and I don't see how it's going to go up to that point not to mention that even a 100k is still a pipe dream.

[cheezcarls]

Predicting Bitcoin in 2061? This guy is more delusional than I thought. This is another prediction statement without any guarantees that it would be true or not. There are so many so-called experts and analysts out there who are making their own predictions. Although a handful of them got it right, but for most of the time it won't happen. Cryptocurrency is unpredictable and they can't control that, not even Gavin Andersen.

[dkbit98]

He's still a big blocker, I think he's even one of the first big blockers, so he will always be salty that the community rejected his naive vision in favor of more technically sound solution.

Yes it looks like he is a big blocker, I think he is also against the idea of people running their own full Bitcoin nodes, and this two come hand in hand together.
Interesting thing that he made this post but disabled any comments on his blog or on his twitter post, and then he claimed he was censored on reddit, so I had to post his entire post in bitcointalk for open discussion.

And he makes such unrealistic assumptions like thinking that the block size won't change in 40 years or that no new solutions will be presented. When Satoshi created Bitcoin, he didn't imagine that someone would come up with Lightning Network, similarly in the future someone can come up with a new breakthrough that would dramatically increase Bitcoin's capacity. Gavin is like those people that said that machines heavier than air can not fly.

If you look his other posts you can see that he is also against coin mixing saying it is bad, and he is talking more and more about ethereum, so no wonder he is pushing for ''tokens'' instead of Bitcoin.
Looks like even his old buddy Craig Wright rejected him so he is left only with Vitalik now  

[NeuroticFish]

Looks like even his old buddy Craig Wright rejected him so he is left only with Vitalik now  

And this may be the main reason for these... fantasies.
He may want to get people follow his moves again. He may be trying to earn some more awareness for his person.
And for this he has to get something "news worthy", no matter how far from reality it is. And science fiction about Bitcoin's future is easy: it can be anything, as long as it's shocking/impressive and it doesn't matter if it won't ever turn to be true.

[Kakmakr]

I remember the days when Gavin Andresen was treated like a God of Bitcoin, but his poor decisions have pushed him to the curb in the Crypto currency world. The guy could not handle the heat in the kitchen and then decided to bail.... after that he joined Mike Hearn to compete against Bitcoin...and that exploded in his face...

FakeToshi (CW) was his ultimate demise... fooling him to believe that he was the real Satoshi Nakamoto.. and making him look like an idiot.    I actually feel sorry for the guy... his Bitcoin faucet helped a lot of people in the beginning.  

[RealMalatesta]

claiming Bitcoin will be worth 6 Million USD in 2061, but most transaction won't happen on BTC network but on multisignature and other network tokens.

Andresen claims that only whales, big holders, exchanges and banks will hold this tokens, and in year 2100 network will shutdown after closing down bridges for this tokens and fees becoming unsustainable.

I never cared about anyone saying anything regarding bitcoin before. That is the beauty of bitcoin, anyone can say anything they want and it will not have any impact in the future of it. You could try to drop the price or increase the price by saying stuff, I mean Biden could come up and say "bitcoin is a great product and I own some" and price would be 50k+ in a single minute, be 70k+ in a day.

However he could also say something bad and drop the price as well. None of this is a long term deal, it will not be good or bad forever just because someone said something. Fiat is not like that, politicians keep ruining fiat all over the world constantly. This is decentralization, stop caring what someone says, we will always be fine in the long run.

[Timelord2067]

But 20-or-so million BTC live on, circulating on other blockchains,

That's hardly grim news that 20 out of a possible 21 million bitcoin are still in use some eighty years hence along with off-chain systems such as the Lightning Network taking over the day-to-day transactions.

With the price of bitcoin ever on the increase, it's already apparent that "Mom and Dad investors" will be forced out of the market and only those with increasingly deep pockets will remain.  Already stock markets see shares in the hundreds of dollars PER-SHARE and no one bats an eyelid.