"The incentive can also be funded with transaction fees. If the output value of a transaction is
less than its input value, the difference is a transaction fee that is added to the incentive value of
the block containing the transaction. Once a predetermined number of coins have entered
circulation, the incentive can transition entirely to transaction fees and be completely inflation
free."
It's the design, folks. Read the paper and think about what it's saying.
Satoshi was acutely aware that 1MB blocks could only encode a couple thousand transactions. So what do you think "the incentive can transition entirely to transaction fees" means in practice?
Of legacy electronics payment systems and their need to be mediator, Satoshi says this:
> The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the
minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions
If enabling small casual transactions was one of the goals, then they've failed terribly on that point.
BS. Bitcoin had small casual transactions up until recently. It was one of its main selling points.
Again, people don't like Satoshi's endgame vision. This is working as designed. Bitcoin was designed to evolve into this. It was not intended to stay static; it's in the whitepaper.
Break out of the groupthink. It's worth realizing when everyone around you is being irrational.
Satoshi expected Bitcoin to scale to Visa-levels of 100 million transactions per day. He expected the cost of a transaction to be less than Visa forever, not just while nobody was using it.
Try to find a quote and paste it. It's a useful exercise, because it forces you to constrain your thinking. Either from the whitepaper or from http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/
I don't think Satoshi said this, but I'll be happy to admit to being wrong.
In fact, here is Satoshi's clear and complete vision from the very beginning:
Total circulation will be 21,000,000 coins. It'll be distributed
to network nodes when they make blocks, with the amount cut in half
every 4 years.
first 4 years: 10,500,000 coins
next 4 years: 5,250,000 coins
next 4 years: 2,625,000 coins
next 4 years: 1,312,500 coins
etc...
When that runs out, the system can support transaction fees if
needed. It's based on open market competition, and there will
probably always be nodes willing to process transactions for free.
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf