This article initially appeared in Bitcoin Magazine’s “Moon Issue.” To get a replica, go to our retailer.
BLOCK HEIGHT: 4,830,001
(c. Year 2100 in previous terminology)
Greetings from the deep future! It is block peak 4,830,001, and now we have simply had an interplanetary twenty third halving social gathering. It is the 12 months 2100, or as we now understand it, the 12 months 91 AB (After Bitcoin). Luckily for all of you, time journey has been found, and I can share the excellent news with all of you! The first half of the twenty first century was beset by monetary crises, battle, poverty, inequality, environmental destruction and a COVID-19 pandemic, which brought about worldwide rolling lockdowns for over a decade, till the collapse of the worldwide fiat financial system necessitated a transfer away from “lockdownism,” profligate spending and inflation, and a return to financial and financial, and therefore, environmental, sustainability. To begin, I’ll provide you with a decade-by-decade have a look at how we arrived at our halving social gathering.
While the world’s main economies have been busy destroying themselves within the 2020s, sensible cash began migrating to Bitcoin, which created large alternatives for Bitcoin miners, main to extra miners getting into the market, rising competitors, and importantly, dramatically rising innovation. By the tip of 2029, each semi-industrial Bitcoin miner on the earth was utilizing low-energy cooling applied sciences, with only one 40-foot container filled with immersed and overclocked mining rigs in a position to present 5 megawatts (roughly one-third of an exahash) of moveable, profit-generating electrical load, wherever on the planet. By the tip of the 2030s, all the world’s flared fuel was piped into Bitcoin containers, and prospects have been discovered for all the world’s curtailed vitality. Inflation was going at round 20% a 12 months for the reason that time you’re studying this, so the $5.65 Big Mac you ate in 2021 would set you again about $300 in 2039. Luckily for you, bitcoin was price $5,000,000, and fiat dying was solely a couple of decade away at this level. Unfortunately for billions of individuals on Earth, nonetheless, wage inflation was solely 2%, and lots of a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of individuals died due to famine and scarcityinduced battle and social collapse in impoverished places ready for the fiat system to collapse underneath its personal weight in 2050. Anyone who saved some sats through the 2020s and 2030s have been themselves saved when financial judgment day arrived.
Further, the 2030s and 2040s noticed the Bitcoin mining business being the go-to purchaser of first resort to show distant nuclear fusion, photo voltaic, wind, hydroelectric and geothermal initiatives. While fusion had famously been “30 years away” for a century at that time, thanks to Bitcoin, fusion was lastly confirmed by 2049. Thanks to Bitcoin, a sustainable vitality revolution came about, and humanity lastly succeeded the place worldwide governments and companies just like the United Nations (UN) and World Economic Forum (WEF) failed constantly on their targets for a number of generations. The finish of the 2040s was marked by mega-mergers between the world’s largest publicly listed vitality firms, semiconductor design and manufacturing firms, and Bitcoin mining, client product and repair firms.
In 2050, these quadrillion-dollar mega entities might design and construct their personal ASICs, mass-manufacture them, mine at massive scale with vitality they produced, and likewise provide prospects the complete suite of Bitcoin {hardware}, software program and monetary providers. There have been round 10 of those worldwide megacorps that served about 80% of the market, with a booming open-source ecosystem of 1000’s of personal, free, decentralized choices serving the opposite 20% of the market. Competition within the Bitcoin mining house at this level was summed up as completely cut-throat with revenue margins approaching zero, the place the one manner to stay alive was by competing on both value or innovation.
With the value of bitcoin in 2050 being round $10,000,000, and now solely rising at round 3% every year due to its maturity and market saturation, foolish novelties like bodily metals have been utterly demonetized. That $300 Big Mac you ate in 2039 was a cool $1,000 now, too. While gold was performing strongly at $10,000 per ounce in 2040, about 10 Big Macs, sensible buyers have been rising impatient nonetheless holding gold over bitcoin after lacking 1,000,000% upside over the previous 30 years. People began changing into offended at being provided jewellery as an alternative of satoshis.
As a outcome, by 2050, gold, and all different “precious” metals have been promoting by the tonne moderately than the gram or ounce, which allowed humanity to make the most of the miracle of gold, silver, platinum and others as constructing and industrial supplies. Previously prohibitively pricey applied sciences and improvements have been unlocked due to plummeting materials prices. Due to gold’s particular sturdiness and anti-radiation properties, we might lastly look to house. While most individuals have been accustomed to a ten Gbit/s web connection in 2050, 1 Mbit/s satellite tv for pc web was free and ubiquitous all over the world by then.
While the Bitcoin blockchain was now about 3 terabytes in measurement, the largely Bitcoin-driven revolution in semiconductor manufacturing meant that you would be up and operating with your personal synced up Bitcoin full node for the price of a Big Mac. The Bitcoin-driven vitality revolution additionally meant that “at-home” fusion reactors have been now solely 30 years away from proving out presently. The EU, U.S. and China have collapsed, alongside the UN, and there are now 2,000 impartial states, that compete for the world’s greatest expertise by way of accountable coverage. War is not attainable underneath a finite financial system, and world peace has been achieved.
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” 100 years on from JFK’s well-known speech and several other of the world’s free impartial states have established bases on the moon. Due to the sheer quantity of satellites and relays in house, moon miners weren’t at a big drawback, and all vitality not devoted to terraforming the moon is going towards Bitcoin mining. On Earth, 25% of the world’s vitality is devoted to mining bitcoin, and due to the largely Bitcoin-driven intense competitors within the vitality markets, common individuals successfully had entry to very low-cost, if not free, vitality. By the tip of the 2070s, nobody on planet Earth was with out vitality or electrical energy, and it’s all low cost and clear, thanks primarily to Bitcoin. The vitality revolution enabled unprecedented alternatives for particular person sovereignty and self-sufficiency, and main developments in 3D printing and supplies over the previous half a century has made the “Star Trek replicator” dream one step nearer to actuality. Who ended up “building the roads”? Thanks to the Bitcoin financial stack, micro and nano funds enabled a highway community the place customers will pay competing personal highway operators for highway use, even in “per meter traveled” increments, and even permit funds between automobiles themselves. This could sound unusual however paying a couple of further sats for all your providers nonetheless finally ends up being far, far cheaper than struggling by way of inflation and paying revenue, gross sales and land taxes.
The 2080s and 2090s noticed a fairer world wealth distribution than that offered by Credit Suisse in its “2021 Global Wealth Report.” Back then, the top 1.1% of the population held 45.8% of global wealth, with the next 11.1% holding another 39.1%, and the bottom 55% only owning 1.3%. Now, the top 1% only hold 20% of the wealth, with the bottom 80% holding a far healthier 20%. Although this isn’t necessarily “equal,” this is far more in line with natural power laws (i.e., “the 80-20 rule”). Indeed, with the ending of the fiat delusion of “finite resources, infinite money” and the market- and society-distorting practice of mass money printing, humanity was able to return to a more natural path. In the old fiat days, the top 1% could gamble, get bailouts from the government if the bet went sour, and off to the casino they went again. Now, the people who sell or spend their bitcoin know just how difficult they are to earn back. Once it’s spent, it’s spent forever. No reprints. Importantly, with terraforming of the moon well underway, and Mars also becoming a tourist destination, the world’s people were culturally ready to usher in a new century of reaching for the stars.
And finally we arrive to now, the year 2100. There are still 10 megacorps that provide 80% of the mining hash rate, products and services, but none of the 10 megacorps that were around in 2050 are still in business. Competition is so fierce that it is unlikely that the current crop of Bitcoin megacorps will survive this century. The world’s wealthy are now mining at home on their own fusion mini-reactors, and at-home mining is generally responsible for 20% of the hash rate. A third of the world’s energy is dedicated to mining, and the world’s grid is emissions free. Of note is that humanity now uses a full 50 times more energy than we did a century ago — all clean. Although people generally know what Bitcoin is, there are now so many layers and abstractions, bitcoin is just “money” to Earth- and moon-bound people. Almost no individuals use baselayer Bitcoin to transact, and very few even use Layer 2 either, with most people using Layer 3 or above for day-to-day activities. Unfortunately though, the speed of light is too slow, and Bitcoin’s 10-minute block time is too fast, for bitcoin to be an effective money across the entire universe. The Martians have bootstrapped their own local proof-of-work-based monetary system, and a healthy UnEx (universal exchange) Market is forming. Although we still have another 40 years or so before the mining reward ends, the “not enough fee revenue” risk failed to materialize. Base-layer blocks are full, 24/7, just under a million transactions per day, with each of these million transactions themselves settling hundreds of thousands of other transactions per day on higher layers. While a base-layer transaction costs the equivalent of $1,000 in 2021 money, the total value settled per transaction is closer to $10 million, making the effective fee rate 0.01%.
Some parting advice from deep into the future: Take good care of your keys and hold onto them for dear life. Now it’s time for me to head back to the future. I have a lunch date with my grandfather, The Friar himself, at a fighting-fit 114 years old, who’s fresh out of hospital with a new set of 3D-printed stem-cell lungs. He’s on his second 3D-printed heart, and third 3D-printed liver — indeed, HODLing was not easy.
