Bitcoins security risk starts when one block gets far more fees than the next
Bitcoins security-budget debate usually starts with one total: how much miners collect in transaction fees as the block subsidy shrinks. Related Asset Bitcoin #1 BTC · $78,413.70 24-hour change: down 0.95% 24H Down 0.95% 7D Up 15.11% 30D Up 20.79% A July 2026 NBER working paper by Fabian Schär, Dario Thürkauf, and David Yermack points to a second variable. Using data from 2017 through 2025, the authors report that larger fee differences between adjacent Bitcoin blocks are associated with more competing blocks at the same height and a longer wait for the next block. The evidence is observational and identifies a network-level relationship, while miner intent and the cause of any individual block race remain unresolved. The finding still gives wallets, miners, and users a measurable signal: Bitcoin security incentives respond to how fees arrive from block to block, as well as how much the network pays over time. Fee gaps create a different mining incentive Bitcoin currently pays miners a fixed subsidy of 3.125 BTC for each block, plus the transaction fees included in that block. Successive subsidy reductions place more long-run weight on fees as a source of mining revenue. As of Aug. 26, a daily Glassnode measure put transaction fees at about 0.70%