Cyber Capital's Justin Bons has dropped a warning so cold it could freeze your sat stack: Bitcoin might face a total meltdown within 7 to 11 years. His argument hinges on a shrinking security budget, a rising threat of 51% attacks, and what he calls a set of impossible choices for the network that look like a trap with no exit.
At the core of his thesis is Bitcoin's declining security budget. Following each halving event—like the one in April 2024 that sliced block rewards in half—miner rewards get chopped like a bad haircut. Bons contends that keeping current security levels would require either unrealistic, sustained exponential price growth or permanently high transaction fees, neither of which he sees as viable in a market that treats volatility like a feature, not a bug.
Bons argues that miner revenue, not raw hashrate, is the true measure of network security. As hardware efficiency improves, hashrate can rise even as the cost to attack falls—like adding more security guards who are actually cheaper to bribe. When the cost to mount a 51% attack drops below the potential gain from double-spending, such attacks become economically rational, essentially turning network security into a degen math problem.
With block subsidies trending toward zero, Bitcoin would rely almost entirely on fees, but limited block space caps total fee revenue. Bons suggests sustained high fees are unlikely, as users tend to flee the network during fee spikes faster than a rug pull. It's the classic crypto catch-22: you need fees to pay miners, but high fees push users to cheaper chains, leaving miners underpaid and security weakening.
He also warns of a potential 'bank-run' scenario. During panic events, the network could become so congested that users are unable to exit quickly enough—imagine trying to sell during a crash while stuck in a mempool traffic jam. This could trigger a death spiral: a price crash forces unprofitable miners offline, slowing block production until the next difficulty adjustment, which in turn causes more panic and further price declines, like a feedback loop of doom.
Bons concludes that Bitcoin faces a fundamental dilemma. The network could increase the 21 million supply cap to preserve miner incentives, but that would undermine its core value proposition and likely cause a chain split—essentially turning Bitcoin into a fork buffet. The alternative is to tolerate a weakening security model, increasing exposure to attacks. He predicts that in 7-11 years, both scenarios may occur simultaneously, with governance constraints making a timely fix unlikely until a crisis forces action, like waiting for a car crash to fix the brakes.
