Part of the community considers the decrease in subsidies after each halving.
For Rochard, transaction rates can overcome subsidy and sustain mining.
Pierre Rochard, CEO of the Financial Company The Bitcoin Bond Company, said in an X of August 14 that the so -called Bitcoin’s “security budget problem” is an unfounded concern.
Rochard challenge That narrative of some critics, who foresee an inevitable deficit as Block subsidies decrease Every four years due to halving, which would leave miners without enough income to protect the network.
The manager argued that the “Security Budget” It does not depend on a fixed paymentbut of the market price that fits according to the network conditions:
“The Bitcoin rules (the limit of 21 million, the validity of the transactions, the weight limits of the blocks) are assured by complete nodes and private keys. The miners do not establish or change those rules; they only propose blocks that fit them. What mining buys is the purpose of the settlement: how expensive it is to censor or reorganize recent blocks.”
Pierre Rochard, CEO of The Bitcoin Bond Company.
The distinction that Rochard makes places the nodes as guardians of the immutable rules of the protocol and the miners as responsible for protecting the stability and order of the block chain.
This means that the work of the miners is not to “define” bitcoin, but reinforce the difficulty of altering already confirmed transactions.
Rochard argues that Bitcoin maintains its solidity even after each halving. As he explains, when miners with lower gain margins cannot cover their costs after a reduction in the reward, they disconnect from the network.
This disconnection causes that the creation of new blocks slowly slow downuntil the protocol applies a difficulty adjustment, a process that is executed every 2,016 blocks (approximately two weeks) to return the average validation time about ten minutes.
In practice, this mechanism acts as an automatic ecosystem stabilizer.
The reduction in mining participation does not imply a permanent fall in security, but an adaptation of the protocol that redistributes the workload among those who remain active.
Thus, the network can sustain its rhythm and resistance to attacks without the need to modify its fundamental rules, in accordance with the rules programmed in the protocol.
The rates market plays a key role in Bitcoin’s security
At the same time, for Rochard, the transaction rates market comes into play: if confirmations become scarce due to congestion or attacks, feas (Sats per Vbyte) They go up while users compete for block space.
Rochard illustrates this point with an example: at a rate of 1,000 sats/vb in a block of 1,000,000 VB, the commissions can reach 10 bitcoin, exceeding the subsidy. This, according to the Executive, was observed in activity peaks in 2017, 2021 and May 2023.
This means that the cost rises in times of pressure, with an automatic balance that protects the network.
At current prices, the scenario raised by Rochard equals approximately 1 dollar per VB, which means that an average transaction of 140 VB could cost about 140 dollars.
Such a scenario Transactions would increase remarkably Small in the main chain, encouraging the use of second -layer solutions such as Lightning Network (LN) to move reduced amounts more economically.
Tools and dynamics that support Bitcoin security
Additionally, Rochard proposes the use of two mechanisms as replaced by rate (RBF) and son pay for father (CPFP), techniques that serve to Direct rates towards the miners who confirm legitimate transactions.
These mechanisms allow a user Increase the rate of a transaction already sent or attached a new one with a higher commission to “push” the original within the next block.
In Rochard’s words, this “converts any transaction omitted into a reward for the miner that includes it, collapsing any attempt of censorship or cartelization.”
The manager also stressed that competition between Mining Pools acts as a natural brake against censorship. “When the rates are high and visible, each pool has a dominant incentive to desert first and claim them,” he said, which disarms any agreement to exclude transactions.
In addition, in case of sustained attacks, payments receptors may demand more confirmations to validate operations, which makes the attack more expensive, while urgent senders raise their rates to accelerate the start of that confirmation counter.
“These logical controls on the user’s side ensure that any sustained attack must spend increasing resources against growing rewards for the honest chain,” he said.
The logic behind this approach, analyzed in practical terms, is that Bitcoin has a set of incentives and automatic adjustments that They respond only when security is threatened.
In normal times, commissions can be kept low; but if the risk of censorship or reorganizations increases, user pressure and competition between miners They make the rates rise, raising the cost of an attack and increasing the reward of following the legitimate chain.
Finally, Rochard summarizes his vision categorically:
“The solution is clear: the nodes block the rules; the difficulty settings rebalance the participation; the rate market values the block space on demand; RBF/CPFP and the competition between Pools direct income to the chain that confirms; and the confirmation policy adjusts the safety as necessary.”
Pierre Rochard, CEO of The Bitcoin Bond Company.
The researcher concluded that the combination of competition between Pools, the adjustment of difficulty and the rate market “is a market process that scale the cost of attacks exactly when matters.”
In his words: “The problem of the security budget is not a hole that must be filled with permanent inflation, but a dynamic mechanism that responds effectively to threats.”
