I find it interesting that people can simultaneously argue that Monero’s tail emission is absolutely necessary to maintain long-term mining security, while also arguing that it trends toward effectively zero so it doesn't matter. If it truly trends toward zero and becomes barely noticeable, then it doesn’t materially change mining incentives or network security. But if it does materially impact mining incentives, then the inflation is significant. You can't have both. The same goes to Bitcoin discussions around future transaction fees. People constantly attach a $ price to future block fees, as if the economy of 2140 will still be dollar denominated. By the time the last Bitcoin block reward is mined, economic activity will be denominated in sats, not dollars. Transactions won’t “cost thousands of dollars” in the way people frame it today. People also project today’s mining environment infinitely into the future, without considering how incentives evolve over time. Early Bitcoin mining rewards were massive, which naturally incentivized large scale industrial mining operations to emerge and aggressively secure the network during its infancy. But as halvings continue, large industrial miners increasingly struggle with operational overhead, energy costs, debt structures, and margin compression. That opens the door for smallerscale miners and home miners to become more competitive. Bitcoin’s design seems to front-load security through big issuance incentives, then gradually transition toward a more decentralized mining space over time.

Replies (4)

I find it interesting that people can simultaneously argue that Monero’s tail emission is absolutely necessary to maintain long-term mining security, while also arguing that it trends toward effectively zero so it doesn't matter. If it truly trends toward zero and becomes barely noticeable, then it doesn’t materially change mining incentives or network security. But if it does materially impact mining incentives, then the inflation is significant. You can't have both. You're confusing absolute numbers with percentages. Miners are paid in absolute terms (0.6 XMR per block), which provides a permanent baseline incentive to keep rigs running. Holders care about relative inflation (percentages). Because the emission is fixed but the supply grows, the dilution rate trends toward zero. A fixed block reward can easily fund security while the inflation rate simultaneously flatlines. It’s basic math. All Bitcoiner false claims come from not understanding basic finance and basic math. People assume you can develop theories over cryptocurrencies because it's a popular topic, but no, you can't w/o knowing some about math and monetary theory, which most people don't. We have LLMs now, people can easily share these "opinions" and hear precisely how they're wrong, but they prefer to just throw it out there anyways. That's the real "interesting" part.
I never really thought about mining like that. It's interesting to think that huge mining operations today may actually become permanently unprofitable. I'd imagine that as the economy and usage of Bitcoin expands, not just home miners, but businesses will mine just to secure the network and create pool alliances to ensure their transactions don't get censored.
R's avatar
R 2 months ago
This is my view as well. A chicken in every pot, an inexpensive miner in every home. There won’t even be a supply of large scale ASIC machines to assemble a 51% attack. Small scale mining operations for large holders/institutions to have decent reliability of getting their transaction on the base layer. Everyone else happily transacting on top of the world best monetary network using bitcoin L2s
Changing the denomination doesn't change the fact that only states & global corps will be able to afford transacting mainchain... wtf was that broken counter point bro. 😂😂😂