Mr. Andresen urged his followers and readers not to take his text on Bitcoin's (BTC) future 100% seriously but to read it as a "little piece of science fiction."
When will Bitcoin (BTC) reach $6,000,000?
According to the article by Mr. Andresen, by the year 2061, the Bitcoin (BTC) price will reach $1,000,000 in today's value that will be equal to $6,000,000 due to inflation.
Miners will receive negligible rewards (0.006103515625 BTC) per block plus ultra-high transactional fees (5 BTC for 4,000). The network becomes slow, extremely expensive to use and, therefore, heavily whale-dominated.
As such, most Bitcoins (BTC) will be locked in multi-sig storage: "real" transactions will occur between Bitcoin-pegged synthetic tokens on other blockchains, not unlike modern WBTC and RenBTC.
Only super-rich whales will be able to transact: the Bitcoin (BTC) network will be used by centralized exchanges and miner entities. They will be interested in maintaining the network as they will receive all the fees they pay.
Here's how whales will shut down Bitcoin (BTC) by 2100
In the next 50 years, the Bitcoin (BTC) network will become even slower and more expensive: miners' rewards will drop to zero, and whales may starting shutting the network down.
They will abandon the bridges between Bitcoin and other blockchains and send "wrapped Bitcoins" to destroying addresses. So, once there is nothing to secure, the network will stop for good.
By this time, all Bitcoins (BTC) will be curculating on different blockchains. Digital gold, therefore, will always remain the first-ever scarce asset of the Web3 era.