What are the proposed fixes for Bitcoin's security budget?
Six exits are seriously argued. Five require changing Bitcoin or assuming something its record does not yet show. One does not, which is the only reason it is interesting — not because it is better.
1. Let fees grow into the gap
The default answer, and the only one that needs no change to anything. It requires fees at about 18% of miner revenue, held permanently, against 0.64% today. Bitcoin’s longest run above 20% is 40 days. The arithmetic in full.
2. Rely on price appreciation
A higher price pays miners more dollars. But the security budget as a share of what it protects does not improve, because price is in both terms and cancels: that is why 0.82% becomes 0.41% in 2028 at any price. This fixes the dollar figure and not the ratio, and an attacker’s prize scales with price too.
3. Scale on-chain volume
More transactions per block means more fee revenue at the same fee level. This is a live argument, and it collides with the block size debate that Bitcoin has already had once. It also cuts the other way: cheaper transactions mean lower fees per transaction, so volume must rise faster than price per transaction falls.
4. Add a tail emission
Keep issuing a small amount of bitcoin forever, as Monero does. It directly solves the budget and directly breaks the 21 million cap, which is the single most load-bearing property of the asset. Peter Todd proposed a version of this and later argued against his own proposal. It requires a consensus change that has no realistic path.
5. Tax idle coins, or similar redistribution
Pay miners out of dormant holdings. Solves the budget, changes what holding bitcoin means, and requires a consensus change even less likely than a tail emission.
6. Pay miners from outside consensus
Have something other than Bitcoin pay whoever mines each block. Merged mining is the oldest form of this. It needs no consensus change, cannot dilute bitcoin, and can fail without taking anything with it, because nothing in Bitcoin depends on it. It is also the only one on this list that can be tried today rather than argued about. What it cannot claim is certainty: an external payer is worth what a market says it is worth. See what a second subsidy is.
What the six have in common
None is free. Five change Bitcoin or assume a future its record does not yet evidence; the sixth adds a dependency on something outside Bitcoin’s control. The honest position is that this is a genuinely unsolved problem, and that the interactive version of this argument, where you can try each exit and see what breaks, is Fix the Budget.