How much of Bitcoin's security budget gap could $NAT fill?
At a $1B market capitalisation, $NAT pays about $52.0M a year to miners: 1.9% of today’s $2.77B gap, and about half of the yearly average Bitcoin earns in fees. Covering the whole gap would take about $52.00B. Today’s market capitalisation is $29.9M.
A dial, not a threshold
This is the part most often misread. There is no level at which $NAT starts mattering and below which it does nothing. Emission is credited on every block today, so the contribution is continuous: a larger market capitalisation pays proportionally more, a smaller one pays proportionally less, and the arithmetic is the same at every point on the scale.
| $NAT market capitalisation | Paid to miners per year | Share of today’s $2.77B gap |
|---|---|---|
| $29.9M (today, 2026-09-07) | — | a last trade on a thin market |
| $1B | $52.0M | 1.9% |
| $52.00B | $2.77B | 1% of the gap |
Getting from the $1B line to full coverage is a factor of about 52x. That is a conversion between two market capitalisations. It is not a price prediction and no reading of it as one is supported by anything here.
What the fee comparison says, precisely
At $1B, $NAT’s per-block emission is about half of the yearly average Bitcoin earns in fees. Exact parity with the trailing-year fee figure sits at about $1.81B of market capitalisation, so the $1B line is comparable to Bitcoin’s fee revenue, not equal to it, and no stronger word than “about half” is claimed.
Against the fee scenarios
The gap depends on what fees do. This is every fee level in Bitcoin’s record, and the gap that survives it — today, and after the 2028 halving.
| Fee scenario | Gap today | Gap after ~Apr 2028 |
|---|---|---|
| today's 0.64% | $2.77B | $9.16B |
| Runes month 17.9% | $64.1M | $6.45B |
| Jan 2024 21.2% | no gap | $5.79B |
| Jan 2018 26.2% | no gap | $4.71B |
| Runes peak day 75% | no gap | no gap |
No fee level Bitcoin has ever achieved closes the 2028 column. That is the honest reason a supplement is worth discussing at all, and it is an argument for the category rather than for any particular token in it.