Bitcoin Forum

What will happen when 21 mil blocks are mined?

will there be no more blocks, or will there still be more blocks, just that there's no block reward except for the transaction fee?

Miners won't be able to mine anymore since all BTC are mined of course , so they will be earning BTC from the transaction fees & Most of all we will be all dead by that time .
Read more about it : http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/18103/what-happens-when-the-21-million-cap-is-reached

From what I can tell, there will still be blocks.

Although I think that bitcoin will have two paths to go down when it reaches it's end of it's mining phase.

1) It will die out, as miners are most of the bitcoin community, and the reward of transaction fees will turn away alot of miners.

2) It will thrive, if there are lots of users when the end comes.

i think we wall will be dead by that time.....it will be around 1million years+....to get that spot or maybe longer than that

Logically it's the first  because Bitcoin should worth much so the transaction fees that miners will earn will have more value , a lot more then now so miners will probably won't stop helping the network and get transactions confirmed .


It's not a on million year , all bitcoins should be mined by 2140 .

By that time hardware will have become insanely fast and cheap, heck just look at the last 2 years and the incredible leaps in hardware power.  Btc will have become much more accepted around the globe as a currency and as such transactions will increase and their fees.  So mining will become transaction processors at that point will be able to make a good profit from increase in hardware speed and the increase in transactions.

I love the speculation and guesswork in this thread.  A million years until the coins are all mined?  LOL.

Bitcoin is based upon a finite supply of coins.  Those coins are distributed into the ecosystem in a decreasing amount until all 21 million of them are dispersed.  Every 210,000 blocks the amount rewarded for finding a block is halved.  So, the first period it was 50 coins.  This, being the second period it is 25 coins.  Next period will be 12.5 coins.  So on and so forth until there aren't any more to create.

You can very easily calculate the expected dates of each one of those events, and of course when the date on which all 21 million coins will be created. (Hint, 144 blocks are expected to be created a day).

To answer the OP's question: once the 21 million coins are generated, there are no more block rewards.  The coinbase transaction of the block will contain only the transaction fees.

maybe they will add a specific sidechain, so miners can keep securing both chain, the main one of bitcoin and the other,, double reward in the case bitcoin was not where it was supposed to be, by value

it could be a possibility, "if the big volume or no volume" from satoshi will not be true

There will be no more blocks - but this isn't slated to happen 'till somewhere around 2140.

 In THEORY, the transaction fees should have gone up enough on average by them to make mining still profitable - but it's going to take a major change over those years in average fee level, or a major DROP in difficulty AND a few generations of "more efficient" hardware for that to happen at current average fee levels.

by theat time a digital currency will substitute btc at the same range price and to be miner for more 200 years and better like the 2140 i wount be here and i dont have kids soo the money there does not worrie me but i can understand your consern into 2140 and further on

OP you have made a terrible mistake and no one of the previous posters have noticed. 21M bitcoins, not blocks! 21M blocks will take much longer to mine than the year 2140, trust me!

Yeah... All bitcoin is is a cool code and a unique idea. When someone else comes with an even cooler code, bitcoin will lose out.

I don't think bitcoin will last another 100 years. It had alot of flaws that need time to be ironed out.

Oh, yes. OP, haven't seen you in a while! Come back! Fix your typo!

everything has flaw, the new technology that you think may surpass bitcoin in 100 years, will not come without flaw either

from this point of view do not expect much, better to embrace what we have and make it better

It won't take more than 50 years from now untill all coins are mined, i think that there will come better and better technologys, so the mining will fo much much faster than it is now. At least i hope that will happen and then it is time to buy some miners :)

Well by then miners will earn based on transaction fees but it will still good enough for miners to keep the blockchain work because at that time bitcoin will have already gone through many halvings and the fee will have gone up high enough to keep miners pointing their hashes to it

Correct, the previous comment stating it will not be possible to mine anymore is completely wrong.
This will be progressive anyways, so the blow will be much lower than our current halving, since when the block reward drop to 0, it will have been very tiny for a very long time.

If the mining fee is too low, this just mean many people will drop out and the others will resume mining profitably.

Just a follow up on the transaction fee. Is there provision in the "system" for transaction fees to be increase to compensate to some degree for the reduction in Block Reward?

Rich

No. It is solely based on competition to getting a TX included in a block. Basically its a bid system to get your Transaction confirmed. Which mean if we increase the block size, the per transaction cost will be much lower.

If we don't get a bigger block size and the rate of transaction being requested go higher, the fee will raise as well.

I think that you have not to think about this because the chances to be alive when are blocks are mined are low.

A picture[1] that i took from bitcoin wiki shows that even after 100 years there are still blocks to be mined.

[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/w/images/en/b/b7/Controlled_supply-timeline_estimation.png

Actually this bitcoin's ideal thing of 10 minute block was from the time when technology hadn't grown as fast as today so I think that we don't have a clear idea when the block of 21mil will be mined. Just look at the dream of Bitfury, they intend to unleash 1000 Ph although this could take a long time but if that comes true this will break the ideal thing of bitcoin for sure

the mining activity will be exhausted in a much less time frame, we are talking about 2032 at most or 2036, so 20 years not 50

As long as there is someone mining, the blocks will continue beyond 21 million. You are more likely talking about 21 million Bitcoin but that isn't accurate. In reality, only 20999864.7679BTC can exist. After the block rewards become insignificant, the main income would turn to transaction fees. The prices would likely be higher, electrical prices and hardware efficiency would be better. The difficulty would adjust itself if people decides to bail out of the mining game. Keep in mind that the block size will increase which would give you more transaction fees as more transactions can be included.