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I again saw a Bitcoin maximalist making fun of how BTC critics often highlight both high fees and low fees when raising thoughtful criticism about Bitcoin. This is funny because they ignore how this paradox is precisely what makes the BTC model so broken. # THE BITCOIN PARADOX Yes. Both scenarios are damaging, whether you like it or not. I'll try to explain why. ## High Fees Bitcoin can't scale through its base layer; there is no secret here. Any meaningful demand for use will drive the network to its very low saturation point, which is the result of an intentional design supposedly made so that a larger number of users can run their own nodes. Moreover, Bitcoin's fee market makes sure that, during this saturation point, users can outbid each other, paying more to have their transactions confirmed first. You don't need to be a super smart person to understand how this inevitably leads to a high-fee environment during the network's most critical moments (when adoption, usage, and speculation are at their highest or during panic selling and low-liquidity events). During these times, only a very small group of people can use the network, intentionally (by design, remember) pushing all the other users to second and third layers that mostly fail on decentralization, security, and user experience. So, Bitcoin doesn't scale to have more users running nodes in the "name of decentralization" while not scaling fuel fees upwards, pushing users to centralized solutions outside of the network these nodes were meant to support. High fees also bring security issues to these users, who may see their balances becoming dust and have their funds locked in these second layers, sometimes literally losing part, or all, of these funds to extremely high fees, as could happen amid Lightning Channel's force closures. Moreover, fewer users being able to use the network can mean less demand for the underlying asset (BTC), which may have an economic impact on price, considering Bitcoin's circulating supply continues to inflate every day through the mining subsidy. ## Low Fees On the other hand, low fees may present challenges to maintaining Bitcoin's security model, which is built around direct financial incentives and reliability in this business model called Bitcoin mining, with high profit (in fiat currencies, let's be clear) expectations. This is because the block subsidy (Bitcoin's supply inflation) halves every 210,000 blocks (~4 years), literally halving the Bitcoin mining industry revenue with it if the BTC price remains the same. In summary, Bitcoin miners will get half of the reward/revenue for the same (or higher) amount of work and cost. You also don't need to be super smart to figure out how this system will, inevitably, create a centralization spiral, gradually centralizing the network in a few more profitable miners. As of this writing, the block subsidy is responsible for over 95% of the mining reward, with fees usually representing between 1% to 5% of these companies' revenue. So, in order to keep Bitcoin's security model working, fees would need to increase proportionally to the block subsidy decrease, weighted by BTC's price action. Handling more transactions per block could help here, but, remember, Bitcoin's (intentionally designed) low throughput prevents this from happening. Therefore, raising fees for each transaction brings up the problem we addressed before, creating a paradox. The Bitcoin Paradox, as I call it, is what evidences how broken this model is for long-term sustainability. It may work for now (questionably, as we already see the nefarious effects of sometimes high fees and sometimes a centralizing network). Gladly, the decentralized peer-to-peer electronic cash system world doesn't end in Bitcoin, so we are good as long as we remain open-minded to competition and truthful to the premises that brought us here in the first place.