Marathon CEO Fred Thiel predicts that bitcoin transaction fees will exceed block subsidies

Fred Thiel, CEO of Marathon Digital Holdings, a publicly traded miner, shared his insights into several key aspects of the Bitcoin landscape, focusing on transaction fees, hash rate elasticity, and plans for global expansion. Thiel highlighted the conditions for Bitcoin transaction fees, noting that large payloads that need to be prioritized raise fees. He highlighted that the volume of transactions in the memory pool is the main driver, with various value-added services built on top of basic transaction fees. Thiel likened it to a tiered system where best-in-class services guarantee the finality of transactions, while lower-tier services operate on a less specific basis. Thiel predicted that transaction fees will exceed block subsidies over time, especially as block subsidies continue to decrease.
Turning to the resilience of Bitcoin's hash rate, Thiel noted that while a significant decrease was predicted after the halving, the actual decline was less severe. He attributed this resilience to the growth announcements of public and sovereign miners. Thiel expects that public miners will merge and have a smaller share of the global hash rate as new sovereign states and other private entities enter the mining space, which will dilute the overall share held by public miners.