Gavin Andresen prediction for Bitcoin in 2061

[dkbit98]

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.

It is grim when his prediction is saying that main chain will stop, and other shit chains will continue.
More likely predictions is that all those centralized chains with fake bitcoin tokens will die long before Bitcoin chain stops, and something new and better will show up by year 2100 that is totally unrelated with Bitcoin or shitcoins.
Andresen have zero imagination.

[Sarah Azhari]

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.

I have to start saving, 1000 satoshi for each address.

[countryfree]

I believe Gavin Andresen is a smart guy, but let's get real. I don't know anyone who can make a valid prediction about BTC in 2022. So making predictions about what's going to happen in 40 years is just crazy. It would be more useful trying to make predictions about the risks BTC is going to face in the next few years.

[bryant.coleman]

I believe Gavin Andresen is a smart guy, but let's get real. I don't know anyone who can make a valid prediction about BTC in 2022. So making predictions about what's going to happen in 40 years is just crazy. It would be more useful trying to make predictions about the risks BTC is going to face in the next few years.

He's not smart. He just think that others are stupid and he is smarter than him. Personally I don't know why we should take BS predictions like these seriously. Anyone can pull out a number from their hat. But where is the justification? The arguments put forward by him is not 100% convincing. Although his arguments sounded much better than that loser McAfee, who predicted $1 million in 2020 without any supporting statement at all. When someone makes statements like these, it is only for publicity. In real life, who cares about 2061? Are you going to hold your coins until 2061?

[slaman29]

Almost interesting but for such a supposedly smart guy he does not seem to be able to make it much more complex, which I am sure will happen even in 10 years not 40 years. Imagine in the past 11 years how things massively changed. Of course it will be very different in 2031, not even to talk about 2061.

"Zero-privacy" Bitcoin hmm?

[ChiBitCTy]

Gavin is certainly a bit of a puzzling man.  I like to read some of the old posts here on the forum and of course I've come across many from Gavin Andresen and there are so many great things/ideas that Gavin brought to the table back then. He seemed like a genuinely nice guy as well which makes it all the more difficult to dislike him but you are right he has certainly turned to the "dark side" as time has gone on.  Sad to see.

[kayiboyu]

A prediction for 2061, really? It sounds really weird when people make predictions for a year that is too far away from now. Because we have no data that can support our prediction for a that far year. We can't even know that what is going to happen in the next year. But let's say this prediction really happened, then it would be really great to see Bitcoin price at a very high level like this. It has no upper limit in the end.

[Chrystora123]

hard to say Gavin is an idiot when he talks about his predictions on bitcoin future, anyway I respect his opinion.  some of the predictions that Gavin used to say might be wrong but at least it will get there.  I hope bitcoin will be $6 million dollars in 2061 because I plan to pass my bitcoins to my children for their retirement funds..

[Natalim]

hard to say Gavin is an idiot when he talks about his predictions on bitcoin future, anyway I respect his opinion.  some of the predictions that Gavin used to say might be wrong but at least it will get there.  I hope bitcoin will be $6 million dollars in 2061 because I plan to pass my bitcoins to my children for their retirement funds..

Well, we'll only get to know it once we're there. But honestly, i think Gavin Andresen has his own way of thinking that is quite unique from us. Who would have thought that in the end, all of these coins and tokens we have seen right now will only end up in the hands of whales, exchanges and banks. I know we are free to create our own predictions and speculations but i just can't believe that in the end, based on Gavin Andresen, we are left with nothing. Well, i respect his post, its just that its not giving me a positive vibes.

[izsara]

hard to say Gavin is an idiot when he talks about his predictions on bitcoin future, anyway I respect his opinion.  some of the predictions that Gavin used to say might be wrong but at least it will get there.  I hope bitcoin will be $6 million dollars in 2061 because I plan to pass my bitcoins to my children for their retirement funds..

Of course, in this case we can't regulate and direct other people's opinions because we know that everyone is free to express their own opinions.
regardless of whether or not the opinion is of course only time can prove it.
and what Gavin did can't be said to be wrong either, because he was only speculating about what would happen in the future. even though we don't really know what it's for. he could have made it so that bitcoin fud continues so that there are whales who buy at lower prices or maybe it's pure that he doesn't like bitcoin. we don't know about it.
but for sure when it happens I will follow your way by buying as many bitcoins as possible if it really happens and if I am still alive.

[Shenzou]

It is easy for anyone to come up with predictions and speculations about the movement of prices so far in the future, because by the time that date comes if they are wrong nobody will even remember that they said so, but if they are right they will 100% tell that they did, i think that some of these people that give these kind of statements are just crazy and they are doing it just for social justification and not to add anything of value.

[philipma1957]

Seems possible to me.  But frankly I am 64 and will be 104 in 2061 so I won't give a fuck.

BTC has long term issues lets see

3.125           btc in 2024
1.5625         btc in 2028
0.78125       btc in 2032
0.390625     btc in 2036
0.1953125   btc in 2040
0.09765625 btc in 2044


0.048828125 btc in 2048 and we are not equipped to do this since we stop at 8 digits

so do we fight and fork to cut the last number off .

what do we do?  and that is 27 years from now I will be 91 and most likely not care about btc.

[cafucafucafu]

Interesting...

His take mostly revolves around privacy and fees which is understandable.

I do wonder if BTC is going to support completely private transactions similar to monero in the future. I do remember theymos saying something about monero being one of the only altcoins that BTC can learn from a few years back.

[Wind_FURY]

Seems possible to me.  But frankly I am 64 and will be 104 in 2061 so I won't give a fuck.

BTC has long term issues lets see

3.125           btc in 2024
1.5625         btc in 2028
0.78125       btc in 2032
0.390625     btc in 2036
0.1953125   btc in 2040
0.09765625 btc in 2044


0.048828125 btc in 2048 and we are not equipped to do this since we stop at 8 digits

so do we fight and fork to cut the last number off .

what do we do?  and that is 27 years from now I will be 91 and most likely not care about btc.

You are 64? You probably discovered Bitcoin 10 years ago when you were 54? Bitcoin must be a very good retirement hobby for you, and as a financial retirement insurance/back up plan. Satoshi picked a perfect year to develop, and build Bitcoin.

Plus of course you never give a fuck. Discovering and HODLing Bitcoin since under a dollar?

[slaman29]

Seems possible to me.  But frankly I am 64 and will be 104 in 2061 so I won't give a fuck.

what do we do?  and that is 27 years from now I will be 91 and most likely not care about btc.

I thought I was quite old but it seems we have a true veteran and a real boomer in our midst

I always say my decision about Bitcoin is based purely on 2 factors, and whichever factor is hit first, is when I end my association. The first is price which is not likely (1 million dollars?) Since I estimate I maybe can save up 0.5 BTC and retire on half a million dollars which makes sure I can live well and contribute happily to my society until my death at 80 (if even that long). This is over 40 years away.

The other is if I become 55 which is almost 20 years away. Because I want to go back to my farming and live with my animals and my family. Probably no time for internet or even to check BTC price

[TheNineClub]

From my short time in economics, all that I can tell is that predicting what the economy of a specific ecosystem will look like is the same a predicting a weather forecast, the only accurate one is when you look out of your window, everything else is pure speculation. So thinking that anyone can have anything close to a ''prediction'' is laughable at best. The closest we can have is an educated guess, but in the lines that I estimate Bitcoin will not turn into a big rubber duck and sit on top of the Burj khalifa. Anything more than that is highly debatlabe.

[izsara]

and that is 27 years from now I will be 91 and most likely not care about btc.

I think you will be one of my inspirations in adopting btc
With your age, which is no longer young, I appreciate you because you are still in this realm.
and this should be a reference for young people so that they do not lose in their role in adopting btc.
what btc will be in the future is what it will be like later because we can't be sure whether what gavin said is true or false because again it's just speculation.
despite all that before btc lost its glory why don't we maximize it for profit.

I really respect you

[el kaka22]

I doubt that the blockchain would stop because the fee's would reach to a level where we can't pay, the technological development doesn't stop and there are too many projects that managed to make blockchains that are both safe and secure while making it a lot cheaper as well. Which means that it all depends on bitcoin managing to develop something that would be similar. Look at SOL, they have like 65k transactions per block and they do not get anything close to that, while still keeping it safe for something so quick and so much.

I would assume that one day bitcoin would have some improvement. If you doubt that it would ever happen, look at what segwit is, it wasn't like this and right now it is "cheap" compared to what it could be because we moved to segwit, we could move to something like Lightning Network or something similar that is better in the future and make it cheaper again.

[d5000]

I gave my opinion on Gavin's text already in another thread about that topic, having not seen this one here.

Short version: If the whales/miners really shut down the main BTC chain, then we will have a network of one-way-pegged "stablecoins" without a reference. It's only a matter of time when speculation against the peg will begin, as these tokens aren't really fungible with each other. The whole system is likely to collapse, i.e. the pegs will break, confidence will be lost, and likely another coin or monetary system could take the lead.

Some additional thoughts:

In theory, there could be another chain - or better: a token on that chain - being used as a reference. Let's say RSK-BTC or Elements-BTC (one of the oldest sidechains, even if they're currently centralized) convert into the new "reference". One could imagine a sophisticated network of 2-way pegs between all these tokens on different chains (although technically this is far from being solved at the moment!). But even in this case a lot can go wrong, e.g. the base chains could be attacked because they've lower security than the old main Bitcoin chain.

I guess there would also be a lot of speculation from the altcoin sector in such an event; imagine one altcoin offering a "reboot" of Bitcoin via an airdrop for BTC holders who burn their coins, in the style of Counterparty (XCP). But there would be likely many copycats, which will create confusion and maybe dilution if the Proof-of-burn thing isn't done right (i.e. if you could use one "burn" for several reboot chains).

[OgNasty]

Gavin is certainly a bit of a puzzling man.  I like to read some of the old posts here on the forum and of course I've come across many from Gavin Andresen and there are so many great things/ideas that Gavin brought to the table back then. He seemed like a genuinely nice guy as well which makes it all the more difficult to dislike him but you are right he has certainly turned to the "dark side" as time has gone on.  Sad to see.

I don’t think he’s gone to the dark side. I think that many of us early Bitcoiners had a vision for Bitcoin that was suddenly railroaded by unnecessary man-implemented limits that turned Bitcoin from something that could free the world from financial oppression, into a get rich quick scheme to assimilate into the existing system. If satoshi were still alive, I think he would be more aligned with Gavin’s desire for Bitcoin’s future than Blockstream’s.