“Even Millionaires May Not Afford 1 BTC”: The Three Structural Risks CZ Overlooks
3-Point Summary
- CZ’s “Bitcoin scarcity” thesis overlooks three structural risks that must be solved first.
- Bitcoin’s long-term security depends on sustainable miner profitability, quantum-resistant upgrades, and a viable fee-only incentive model after full issuance.
- Without solutions to these three issues, Bitcoin faces fundamental threats to network security, incentives, and long-term stability—well before extreme scarcity becomes reality.
CZ’s “Bitcoin scarcity” thesis only holds if three structural risks are solved first: miner sustainability, quantum security, and post‑issuance incentives.
20‑Second Shorts Video (Updated August 21, 2026)
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“Even Millionaires Won’t Afford 1 BTC?” Three Critical Risks CZ’s Bitcoin Scarcity Thesis Overlooks
Recently, CZ (Changpeng Zhao) claimed that “in the future, even millionaires may not be able to afford a full bitcoin.” His reasoning is clear:
- Bitcoin’s total supply is fixed at 21,000,000 BTC
- As of August 2026, more than 20,070,000 BTC have already been mined
- Only about 4.4% of the total supply remains to be issued
- An estimated 10–20% of all bitcoins are permanently lost in inaccessible wallets
In other words, the effective circulating supply is even smaller, and Bitcoin has a structurally strong deflationary profile. CZ argues that this will soon turn Bitcoin into an extreme “scarcity asset.” However, for that thesis to actually hold in the real world, three critical conditions must be met.
Condition 1 — Miner Hash Power Must Remain Economically Sustainable
Bitcoin’s network is secured and maintained by miners. But the fact that only 4.4% of the supply remains to be issued implies:
- Block rewards will continue to decline
- Miner revenue will keep shrinking
- Network operating costs will remain significant
Recent market conditions have made the miner profitability issue even more apparent. Despite Bitcoin’s weak price performance, the total network hashrate has not meaningfully decreased, which has kept mining difficulty at elevated levels. Combined with rising electricity costs, this has created periods where the cost of mining exceeds Bitcoin’s market price.
In other words, mining difficulty does not automatically fall when price declines. As long as mining infrastructure and hashrate remain in place, difficulty stays high — and in this environment, miners who rely solely on Bitcoin’s price cannot remain profitable.
A clear example is ABTC, a company fully dependent on Bitcoin mining: as BTC price dropped, difficulty remained high, and power costs surged, its profitability collapsed and the firm was pushed to the brink.
These dynamics are explored in detail in the following articles:
- The Two Mathematical Pillars of Bitcoin — And the Real Threats Emerging in the Quantum Era
- The Truth Revealed by Bitcoin’s Downturn: ABTC Is Falling, MicroStrategy Is Transforming
If miners lose profitability and leave,
- Network security weakens
- Block production slows
- Users begin to feel “security risk” more acutely than “scarcity value”
In short, for Bitcoin to truly become a scarcity asset, the miner revenue model must remain sustainable over the long term. If miner incentives collapse, the “scarcity narrative” CZ promotes becomes difficult to sustain.
Condition 2 — Security Upgrades Against Quantum Attacks (Hard Fork-Level Changes)
CZ emphasizes Bitcoin’s deflationary structure, but in the quantum computing era, the current ECDSA signature scheme is at risk of being broken.
A Bitcoin address exposes its public key the moment it is used, and once quantum computers become powerful enough, that public key can be used to reverse-engineer the private key. This means Bitcoin’s security model is structurally vulnerable in the quantum era.
This issue is explored in depth in:
Multiple analyses have highlighted the following points:
- Quantum computers can rapidly reverse public keys exposed on-chain
- Approximately 34% of Bitcoin addresses are structurally vulnerable to quantum attacks
- BIP‑361 is the first serious attempt to address this weakness
However, without protocol-level upgrades, Bitcoin cannot transition to PQC (Post‑Quantum Cryptography), and due to its consensus culture and conservative upgrade process, the pace of such a transition is likely to be very slow.
The differences in PQC transition speed and structural design between Bitcoin and Ethereum are analyzed in:
Therefore, if Bitcoin is to remain “digital gold” in the quantum era, a transition to PQC is essential.
But such a transition is not a simple software patch — it requires hard fork-level structural changes.
If this problem is not solved,
- “Security collapse” will arrive before “scarcity value”
- The main question around Bitcoin will shift from “How scarce is it?” to “How safe is it?”
In other words, for CZ’s scarcity thesis to be convincing, he must first present a clear security upgrade vision against quantum attacks.
Condition 3 — Sustainable Incentives After the Remaining 4.4% Supply Is Issued
Once Bitcoin’s total supply reaches 100%, miner rewards will consist only of transaction fees, not block subsidies.
This raises a crucial question:
- Can transaction fees alone
- Support miners worldwide
- Cover massive electricity and hardware costs
- And maintain enough hash power to secure the network?
In particular, once block rewards approach zero, Bitcoin effectively becomes a system that relies solely on fees to sustain the network. At that stage, both scalability and economic viability are under threat.
This issue is examined in detail in:
If fees are not high enough,
- Miners may exit
- Block production may slow
- Network stability may deteriorate
- Bitcoin risks becoming “a scarce asset that is difficult to use” rather than a functional monetary network
Thus, CZ’s scarcity thesis only holds if the incentive structure for ledger writers (miners and validators) remains viable even after 100% of the supply is issued.
Conclusion — CZ Must First Present a Vision for Solving These Three Problems
CZ is right that Bitcoin is a scarce asset. Its total supply is fixed, most of it has already been mined, and when permanently lost coins are taken into account, the effective circulating supply is even smaller.
However, for a world where “even millionaires can’t afford 1 BTC” to actually materialize, the following three issues must be resolved first:
- Miner hash power sustainability — profitability and incentives
- Quantum attack resilience — PQC upgrades and hard fork-level changes
- Post‑issuance incentives — can the network survive on fees alone?
If these three problems remain unsolved, Bitcoin will face fundamental challenges in security, incentives, and network sustainability long before it fully realizes its scarcity narrative.
Therefore, while CZ’s thesis is intriguing, what he must present first is not just a vision of scarcity, but a clear roadmap for how these three structural risks will be addressed.
Younchan Jung
Researcher exploring structural shifts in AI, blockchain, and the on‑chain economy.
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