Justin Bons, co-founder of Cyber Capital, has issued a stark warning that Bitcoin's fundamental security model could lead to a network collapse within seven to eleven years. The analysis centers on the programmed reduction of miner rewards through halving events and the inability of transaction fees to compensate, potentially making devastating 51% attacks economically viable.
The core of the argument lies in Bitcoin's security budget, which is the total value of rewards (block subsidy + transaction fees) paid to miners. Bons emphasizes that security is not measured by hash rate alone, but by the economic cost an attacker must bear. Each halving, which occurs approximately every four years, cuts the block subsidy in half. The next halving in April 2024 will reduce rewards from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per block. Bons calculates that to maintain current security spending, Bitcoin's price must double every four years, or the network must sustain extremely high transaction fees—both scenarios he views as highly challenging.
Bons projects that after the 2032 halving, when block rewards drop to around 0.78125 BTC, transaction fees would need to constitute 85-90% of miner revenue. If fee revenue is insufficient, miner revenue declines, leading to a lower hash rate. This makes the network vulnerable, as the cost of a 51% attack could plummet. He estimates the daily attack cost could fall to as low as $2.88 million, a trivial sum compared to a multi-trillion dollar network, making it profitable for nation-states or corporate actors to execute double-spend attacks on exchanges for potential billions in profit.
Compounding this is a predicted capacity crisis. With Bitcoin processing only about seven transactions per second, Bons warns that mass adoption could create transaction backlogs lasting years, potentially triggering a "bank-run" scenario. Falling prices would force miners offline, slowing block production and worsening congestion in a negative feedback loop.
The analyst traces these issues to Bitcoin's block size limitations and governance, arguing that necessary protocol changes are politically constrained. While Bitcoin has historically proven resilient, Bons contends this threat is structural and mathematically predetermined by its code, unlike past external challenges. The cryptocurrency community remains divided, with some proposing solutions like increased block sizes, while others trust market forces will resolve the security budget transition.
