I am listening to this guy debate Kim Dotcom and his main argument is that if we allow the blockchain to grow to big in size then eventually no users will be able to use Bitcoin directly.But this person does not realize that the design never intended to s

1. Reclaiming Disk Space Once the latest transaction in a coin is buried under enough blocks, the spent transactions before it can be discarded to save disk space. To facilitate this without breaking the block's hash, transactions are hashed in a Merkle Tree [7][2][5], with only the root included in the block's hash. Old blocks can then be compacted by stubbing off branches of the tree. The interior hashes do not need to be stored. A block header with no transactions would be about 80 bytes. If we suppose blocks are generated every 10 minutes, 80 bytes * 6 * 24 * 365 = 4.2MB per year. With computer systems typically selling with 2GB of RAM as of 2008, and Moore's Law predicting current growth of 1.2GB per year, storage should not be a problem even if the block headers must be kept in memory

So this means that just storing block headers and by maintaining the UTXO's set, we could have a system where every transaction that becomes a year old will get deleted.

When it comes to the UTXO set I guess you could make the argument that high fees will force most users to keep consolidating but in reality most users just end up with stuck satoshis that are considered dust now which helps drive the price up because it limits the supply but works against usage of a payment network.

Right now this is the Bitcoin devision

Addresses richer than 1/100/1,000/10,000 USD

33,031,626 / 15,976,390 / 6,917,446 / 2,366,204

There are 33 million addresses richer then 1 dollar but only 16 million addresses richter then 100 dollars.

This means that in the next couple of years there will be 17 Bitcoin address with stuck Bitcoin.

If anybody has good access to a system that can query the entire utxo set you can do a calculation with the min sat/byte you need to move your sats.

It's been a while since 1 sat/byte could move your satoshis. Since 0.14.1 the minimum for outputs is 0.00005460 BTC which is currently 3.21 USD

Now with BCH that has schnorr signatures a tx with one input and two outputs (second output is for change) could be made with 172 bytes.

With BTC I am assuming it's still 192 bytes.

192 bytes time 5 sat/byte = 960 sats or 0.57 USD

So now are talking about 3.21 + 0.57 USD fees = 3.78 USD.

Now let's do 50 sat/byte = 3.21 + 5.7 USD fees = 8.91 USD.

500 sat/byte = 3.21 + 57 USD fees = 60.21 USD.

5000 sat/byte = 3.21 + 570 USD fees = 573.21 USD.

Now let's do 400 000 tx per 5000 sats per byte times 192 (cause schnorr needs a hardfork, it will never happen) = 3840 BTC per day in fees.

So now what happens when you have 100 000 BTC?

Well you can make it impossible for anybody to make a BTC transaction unless they are paying more than 500 dollars per tx for 26 day straight after which you will have lost a 100 000 BTC, the miners will have it.

What happens when you have 1 000 000 BTC? Well 260 days straight.

How about 10 000 000 BTC. 2600 days or 7 years.

But wait, you don't actually have to waste all your own BTC in controlling how rich you need to be to use Bitcoin right?

After all you can replace by fee all your tx depending on the fees other people are putting in the mempool after you.

So to make half of the people pay 5000 sat/byte it might be enough if you only make 200 000 tx a day at 2500 sat/byte, and then let the fee estimators fail at predicting the future.

So 200 000 tx a day at 2500 sat/byte = 960 BTC per day.

5 years = 1,752,000 BTC = 10% of the current supply.

Wait, how much Tether has been printed so far? 40 billion dollars rigth? And BTC has been between 20 000 and 3 000 dollars and now 60 000 dollars since 2017.

40 000 000 000/3000 = 13,333,333 BTC

40 000 000 000/20 000 = 2,000,000 BTC

40 000 000 000/60 000 = 666,666.666 BTC

So it's possible the people behind Tether already control between 13 million and 2 million BTC.

Let's say that the elite 1% right now collectively owns 33% of the entire 18.9 million BTC.

So they would have 6.3 million BTC.

Then at 960 BTC a day to make sure no single tx with a fee lower then 500 dollars makes it in to the blockchain it would take almost 18 years before they run out of BTC.

But wait, what if we just use Tether to make the price of Bitcoin go up another 10x?

Now they can do exactly the same but not allow any Bitcoin tx under 5000 dollars to make it on the chain. For almost 18 years straight.

And so if you buy Bitcoin or think that Bitcoin will help us get a world where the 99% have a bit more power then they have right now.

Think again.

The 1% is now all buying Bitcoin, and in the next 5 years this moment will come where you discover that you have already lost half of your own Bitcoin even though you control all your own keys. Cause moving your utxo will cost your half of your BTC.

Now let's say you control 1% of the BTC supply. You have 189,000 BTC or about 11 billion dollars.

So how long can you make BTC tx at 5000 sats per byte? You have 18,900,000,000,000 sats divided by 960,000 sats per tx = 20 million tx. Good for a life time!

What about 18900 BTC? (about 1 billion dollars right now). 2 million tx. Still good for a lifetime.

What about 1890 BTC (100 million dollars) 200 000 tx. At 10 tx a day you are good for 50 years!

But wait how many addresses right now have more than 1000 BTC? Only 2149 addresses!

What about 100 BTC? almost 6 million dollars. Good for 10 000 tx in a life time or about 5 years at 5 tx a day.

How many addresses are there with 100 BTC on it?

14014 addresses!

What about 10 BTC? Good for 600 000 dollars! 1000 tx for the rest of your life. Or at 2 tx a day about a year of using BTC.

But wait there's more. To prevent ending up with utxo's under 0.017 BTC (these would cost you 50% in fees to spend)

constant consolidation is needed. There are 75 million utxo's aready. If we divide 18.9 million by 75 million utxo we get 0.252 BTC

So if control 2 million BTC and want to drive the price up to 600 000 dollars per Bitcoin and the sats per byte minimum up to 5000 sats/byte.

Instead of doing this over 20 years, what happens when we do it over 10 years by consolidating our utxo's to force all the other users to also do this which will create even more tx!

And so a race can start between the people that owe 20% of the BTC and the people that collectively owe 80%.

I am 100% convinced those people that owe 20% of the supply and this could just be the 5 guys behind Tether could get fees high enough that 40% out of that 80% gets completely stuck in a utxo.

This limits the supply, driving up the price of BTC even higher, making the problem even worse of anybody new that wans to join.

But wait, what happens when block reward is diminished enough so just by making tx you or not you can play around with controlling diffuculty?

In that case the 2016 diffuculty adjustment becomes something you can play with.

Instead of making 400 000 tx between 500 and 1000 dollars per tx in fees, you can start with making 400 000 tx between 5000 and 10 000 dollars per tx on the first day before diffuculty is going to adjust.

After diffuculty has adjusted you could only make 200 000 tx a day at between 100 and 200 dollars for just one day. This will instantly lower hashrate and limit the amount of tx per day Bitcoin can process.

And so within 20 years a future for Bitcoin will arrive where somebody that controls maybe 10 or 20% of the supply makes the remaining 80% their little bitch.

You will only make Bitcoin tx or do LN channel management on the days they want you to.

But don't worry, they will offer a service to use the BTC blockchain through them.

It will be called Banking.