I do not get it, why do you believe Mining becoming increasingly important for Miners will lead to a contradiction in the Decentralized structure of Bitcoin?
I didn't write that. I wrote that
fees are becoming increasingly important for miners. The increase in fees means less decentralization because the miners become more (much) dependent on the users.
If Block Rewards are about zero by that time and Bitcoin becomes twice as scarce every four years, then it simply sounds like Mining Fees will become worth enough to make Bitcoin Mining desirable to most Miners.
But what if it isn't? Is it even desirable for the security of the network to depend on the level of fees? At the moment, the fees are used by users to prioritize their transactions. However, the miners are not dependent on the fees. And that wouldn't be good either, because unlike the mathematically predetermined reward, you can't plan the fees.
I don't have a definitive position on this. I don't have a suggestion that says: "this is how we have to do it!"
But I do know that in 16 years we will need eight times the market price of today to have the same fee-to-reward ratio.
As things stand now, the Bitcoin network would continue to exist with almost unchanged computing power even if there were not a single transaction in it. The miners would simply create empty blocks.
But will that still be possible in 20, 30 or 40 years' time?
And if the answer is no, then my question is simply whether that can be a problem?
My answer: I don't know, but I can't rule it out either.
But enough, I really have no idea. And I think smarter people than me still have a lot of time to think about it.