So let’s suppose Bitcoin is a runaway success. What would the world look like?. In the year 2030, 20 Million bitcoins are in circulation, all but 1 million of 21 Million maximum have been mined. Though there are many events that could trigger it’s demise. However, we can predict what the value of bitcoin would be if Bitcoin achieved mainstream adoption.
Let’s imagine the would in which 1 billion people use bitcoins regularly. That number doesn’t include everyone, because traditional fiat currencies will still be used as well. So how many bitcoins might a typical Bitcoin user own in this future world?
Given that 20 million bitcoins would be in use in 2030, on average, each person would own 0.02 bitcoins. Of course, wealth is never evenly distributed, and in all likelihood the top 1 percent would own approximately 0.01 bitcoins, most likely referred to at this time as 10,000 micro bitcoins.
The role that Bitcoin could fulfill the would produce the highest possible value per coin is as a store of value, in which case typical Joey might store $1,250 of his savings in Bitcoin. If this extreme scenario were true, calculating the value of a single bitcoin would be $1,250 divided by 0.01 or a ludicrous $125,0000 per coin.
Bitcoin Mining in 2030
Using bitcoins to buy morning coffee, lunch, car, fuel, and some online products, an average user might make 10 transactions a day. A Billion people making transaction per each day is a substantial number of transactions! In fact, the number would be just over 100,000 transactions per second, which is 25-50 times more than the number VISA processes today. If transaction fees remained low (a must if many people adopt the currency). Let’s say a penny each the result would be $100 million dollars a day in transaction fees!
Although mining rewards in 2030 will be less than two bitcoins per block (based on the current schedule) if the bitcoins has appreciated significantly in the interim, the mining rewards might still be considerable. Mining would be very competitive, and the profit margins would be extremely slim.
Only those with the most energy efficient miners and cheap electric power could stay in business. Assuming that the most efficient mining technology requires 0.1 J/GH, that electricity cost $0.10 per kWh, and that $100,000,000 a day transaction fee is generated, is break even hash rate would total more than 500 exahashes/s (500,000 PH/s)! assuming that the technology is 100 times more computationally compact than it is currently.
A day in the Life of a Bitcoiner in 2030
Because Joey likes to take long, hot showers in the morning, he used to run out of hot water. But recently, a resident Chandler in his apartment building installed an industrial grade hot water heater and is now selling hot water to the tenants to help with the cost. A chip in Joey’s hot water faucet automatically dispenses Bitcoins directly to a chip in the hot water heater. As Joey turns the shower clockwise, more bitcoins are dispensed and more hot water streams from the shower head.
As Joey leaves his house, he beams a few satoshies from his wrist watch to one of the robotic lawn mowers mowing his lawn. A lawnmower repair shop down the street builds these mowers and provides them for free. Each lawnmower collects its own earnings and uses the bitcoins to pay programmers on the Internet to improve it’s AI algorithms so it can earn more. In addition, the mowers visit the lawnmower repair shop to get upgrades and pay there with their bitcoin earnings as well.
Today Joey misses his bus on his way to work. Apparently, the winning alarm clock bidder failed to detect Joye’s hangover this morning and cut the time too close. Usually his bracelet would now dispense 20 satoshis to the winner bidder as a reward, however, because the bracelet calculates that, Joye’s has missed his bus, it draws upon a 100 satoshis insurance pool from an escrow account that the winning alarm clock bidder had to set up as part of the bidding process. As a result the winner loses money on today’s bid (the programmer has some algorithm debugging to do).
With the satoshis from the escrow account, the bracelet starts a Bitcoin auction with all nearby parked, self driving cars to determine if any are willing to rent to Joey. After entering the winning car, Joey is off to work.
Today, Joey’s real estate client is buying a house. Ever since the 2025 Digital real estate reform ACt, all houses are managed by simply tracking ownership of a single, specific satoshi assigned to each property. This satoshi acts as a colored coin, much like a title search in 2014, In effect, if the satoshi handed to another person, the new person is assigned legal ownership of the property.
In 2030, Joey asks his Bitcoin wallet to do a title search by tracking the ownership of the satoshi linked to the house throughout the blockchain. Not only is this equivalent to an exhaustive title search and guaranteed to be 100% accurate, but his wallet software does this search instantaneously and for free.
To complete the sale of the house, the buyer and seller simply enter a multi signature transaction, In a single transaction, the buyer sends 150 micro bits of bitcoins (the cost of the house) to the seller’s address, and the seller sends the single colored satoshi to the buyer. By using a single transaction, no sale can happen, until both parties have signed the transaction with their private key. The transaction also contains a 1% commission that is sent to Joey’s address as a real estate agent. Because the blockchain was used to track property ownership, the entire title insurance and closing costs for the house is just the transaction fee, which many cost less than a penny.
After his work is done, Joey sends some money to his dad and Chandler.
Instead of caching the bus, Joey decided to get some exercise on this beautiful day and get dinner on his walk home.
A women named Sofia, who lives on the street, he’s walking down has just mad a big salad for her family and realizes she’s made too much and will have leftovers. For this reason, she takes a picture of the leftover salad and uploads it to a food sharing website. On that site, reviewers are paid with bitcoins to supply estimates of the tastiness of this salad. Within a few seconds, Joey’s phone rings because earlier, he had put in a request for a meal of at least an 8 out of 10 ratings in tastiness for no more than 15 satoshis that he could obtain on his way home, and Sofia’s salad meets his request!
When Joey rings Sofia’s doorbell, an NFC chip in the doorbell communicates with Joey’s wrist watch to establish a contract for the dinner salad. Automatically, the doorbell sends Joey’s wristwatch a bill for 15 satoshis for entry into Sofia’s impromptu restaurant.
How does Sofia know she can trust Joey in her house? Joey subscribes to an anonymous rating service, which for a 1 satoshi fee guarantees to Sofia that Joey (Phebe recommendation System) is trustworthiness score is 9.5 out of 10. This rating service is built into the Bitcoin blockchain in the form of a script. Users pay small fees to be part of the rating service, and the rating service uses these fees to pay for it’s online ads.
After a long day at work, finally at home, Joye relaxes is his recliner in from of the STV, In the middle of his favorite show Baywatch a pizza commercial appears. “Darn!” he exclaims. “That was a healthy salad I had for dinner today, but I could really go for pizza chaser.”
The reason for this commercial suddenly interrupts Joey’s movie is not coincidental. Just at that moment a pizza van driving by his apartment enters an automatic Bitcoin ad auction with Joey’s STV, earning the right to show it’s pizza commercial!
Joey’s gesture recognition system in Joey’s TV automatically sends 8 satoshis to the pizza van. In short order, the pizza van places a slice of pizza on a conveyor belt that extends from Joey’s room.
The Bitcoin End Game
Certainly, it is far too early to estimate where and whether Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin white paper will appear in the annuals of important scientific publications.
Just as robots have helped the world reduce menial physical labor, so cyptocurrency technology now gives us the tools to automate the menial labor of bureaucracy. Optimistically, the entirety of humanity will benefit as a result
