Quote from: LongTimeAgo on Today at 12:43:48 AM

I know its heresy but I'd really like to entertain a discussion on both sides regarding a concern of mine. What if transaction fees aren't enough to incentivize the miners to secure the bitcoin network? I think this is a potential problem we may see in the next few decades as the halving continues on. My hope is that we will have enough people using the bitcoin network to have a healthy fee market, but if we have weak periods like now where there are several unfilled blocks, wont miners just turn off their equipment as they are unprofitable? What options or solutions are being discussed to help mitigate this?

We can speculate, but we don't know. Unless you know a time traveler from the future, we don't have a definite answer.
However, getting to rely solely on tx fees happens gradually, which each new halving, so we can try to get an idea. On the other hand, the final step will be far in the future, hence you should not be that much concerned.

For now the things go well, so there's nothing to fix/mitigate. I hope that you agree on that.
Then yes, if it gets unprofitable, some miners will be stopped. It has happened before. The network does adjust in such cases and the mining will be more profitable for the rest.
Keep in mind that there are already miners that run using electricity they produce. This (after all the equipment is paid for) means pure profit, something that may work just fine even if the tx fees remain small. Then the others will turn off, these businesses will prevail, keeping Bitcoin network running.
Then, as already said, I expect that some entities that use Bitcoin as reserve asset (now big companies, in the future maybe countries too) will also mine Bitcoin, not for profit, instead simply to do their part in securing the network.

I will end with the price. Its evolution is hard to predict on short term, but on long term, with increased adoption, it should get much higher. Of course, the profitability for the miners also depends on how many they are (how big the difficulty is), but until now, in most cases, the price kept staying high enough to cover the mining costs.

So, at least in theory, the things don't look bad. And since the real problems (if they will exist) will probably not happen during my (or your) lifetime... let's just chill Wink