Bitcoin Doesn’t Need Another Bull Run. It Needs An Economy

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Bitcoin Doesn’t Need Another Bull Run. It Needs An Economy

Bitcoin usage still skews toward long-term storage, as seen in how much BTC sits unmoved, says Terahash co-founder Hunter Rogers. But this behavior preserves individual wealth while starving the network.

By Hunter Rogers|Edited by Cheyenne Ligon

Dec 15, 2025, 2:00 p.m.

Bitcoin continues to draw global attention, institutions continue to accumulate it, and a market cap above $1.7 trillion indicates how widely held Bitcoin has become. Yet when you look at how the network actually behaves, the signals don’t match the headlines. More than 60% of all BTC hasn’t moved in over a year, on-chain activity is decreasing (with part of that drop tied to ETF adoption), and miner fee income continues to fluctuate. For a system built to move value rather than simply store it, this becomes a real problem for how it works.

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So how far can a network go when most of its capital never circulates? After all, movement is what creates fees, creates demand for new tools and apps and helps keep the network secure. That’s why if the pattern observed today holds, the underlying incentive model will fall short of what the next stage of development requires.

Bitcoin’s incentive structure is reaching its limits

Bitcoin was never designed to stand still. That simply isn’t in its nature. Its architecture assumes one thing from the very beginning: economic activity. This means the network relies on transactions to pay miners and on steady activity to let the system function. But today, the system is stumbling upon a contradiction — a high-value network with low-value throughput.

Unlike Ethereum or Solana, where users interact with apps, stake tokens, or mint assets, Bitcoin usage still skews toward long-term storage, as seen in how much BTC sits unmoved. Yes, this behavior preserves individual wealth, but it starves the network. So the more people treat BTC as an untouchable holy grail, the less reason there is to transact, and the thinner the fee base becomes.

Now imagine this: the year is 2140, and the last Bitcoin has been mined. Subsidies are gone, and the network has to pay its security bills solely through transaction fees. But usage hasn’t scaled. There are fewer than 250,000 daily transactions, average fees under $2, while block rewards dry up.

What happens then? Either miners turn off machines, weakening security, or Bitcoin raises fees so high that everyday users get priced out entirely. That’s a deadlock.

The more severe truth is that, even in 2025, this scenario is already starting to sound less hypothetical. Fee income now accounts for less than 1% of rewards — far short of the 10–15% range needed to start easing reliance on issuance. That’s why functional velocity is the piece currently missing. Scarcity may support the price, though only circulation ensures the network’s viability.

So if movement is the missing piece, what will it take to get Bitcoin’s capital back in motion? That’s where the new incentive models come in.

Capital either becomes productive or becomes a burden

Even though Bitcoin has value, that alone isn’t enough anymore to let the network sustain itself over the long run. Its capital must become productive. . For the network to sustain itself over the long run, its capital must become productive. That’s where a new class of on-chain tools is starting to form — ones that activate BTC itself.

At the center of this shift is BTCFi — a financial layer emerging around Bitcoin’s most foundational input: hashrate. These protocols let holders lock their BTC into yield-generating products that directly support network security.

Naturally, that results in an incentive loop, where users help miners, miners secure the network, and the network returns value through sustainable on-chain rewards. For the first time at scale, Bitcoin’s raw computational engine is being plugged into a financial mechanism that reinforces the system from the inside out, instead of relying on speculative hype.

Of course, some are skeptical. Analysts argue that BTCFi has yet to deliver because adoption is modest, liquidity is shallow, and the majority of BTC still sits in cold storage. That’s a fair observation, and to some extent a correct one. Still, it doesn’t invalidate the direction. It, in fact, confirms the urgency.

Since Bitcoin was never meant to live in vaults, but, instead, was meant to move, interact, and circulate, BTCFi is its next natural step toward making BTC actually used.

A monetary revolution needs participants

If there is one lesson from high-engagement ecosystems like TRON, it’s that activity doesn’t happen by accident. Networks grow when participation is simple, incentives are visible, and value moves through the system rather than sits on the sidelines.

The same applies to institutions. They aren’t keeping Bitcoin inert deliberately; they just follow incentives shaped over a decade of treating BTC as a macro hedge. That’s why, as long as holding pays more than participating, trillions will remain in cold storage. Once risk-adjusted on-chain yield becomes undeniable, that behavior changes.

That’s the broader truth here. Bitcoin can’t survive the next century as a museum piece. It must become an economy.

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Note: The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CoinDesk, Inc. or its owners and affiliates.

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