We may need to switch to destroying coins by sending them to an unspendable address.
Ugh. No. That will simply bloat one of the network's key resources for all time.
See announce/commit sacrifices and other tools.
Frankly the Counterparty system is better off sticking with the unspendable address method. Unlike OP_RETURN it's standard now, it doesn't encourage centralization like announce-commit sacrifice-to-fees does, it keeps an even playing field and doesn't give discounts to big pools, it's way more convenient than sacrifice-to-fees, and finally it is
good marketing.
You can complain all they want, but you have to accept that in a decentralized system full of anonymous participants asking people to act against their own interests for some vague greater good isn't going to be very successful.
I am kind of lost. I thought by burning BTC we just send to the unspendable address as described in the tutorial here:
I hasn't seen OP_RETURN is used in this method. Does that mean the tutorial there has been obsoleted, or there's a new method using OP_RETURN?