Bitcoin Forum

Scenario:

The year is 2148 (we're all dead, but ignore that), the block subsidy has dropped to zero, miners are forced to survive only on tx fees. But the fees are not quite sufficient to keep the security on the current level and are often mining at a loss. Any attempts of 'fee market' or slightly higher, fixed fees failed badly (reducing number of txs made).

You are in charge of making a decision how to go around that. What do you do?:

1 - Switch to PoS (or something similar, hopefully with 'nothing-at-stake' problem resolved).

2 - Remove 21m cap and implement constant, small block reward.

3 - Do nothing, hoping the things will balance on their own. That could mean (some) mining farms going bankrupt, drastically reducing hashing power (security) + centralisation risk. Or maybe the largest BTC-related businesses will take the mining operation on themselves (mining at loss, but securing their long-term interests).

4 - Other option - specify


Purpose: To get the basic idea, whether bitcoin users are more attached to fixed 21m cap, PoW system, or equally to both.

Changing votes allowed.

Not a single reply? Where are those sig spammers when you need them the most.

I think it's an interesting topic.

So far option 3 in the lead (85.7%), only 7 total votes though.

I voted do nothing because I seriously have no clue and cannot see so far in the future... One thing cannot happen for sure: the second option. If we change the cap it won't be Bitcoin anymore, it will become another coin, because the basis of Bitcoin was broken (not saying it is an impossible option in the future, but it seem highly unlikely and not suitable).

Switch to PoS might happen, but I don't see how bitcoin can incorporate PoS safely in the future...

1. why 100 satoshi? It's a completely arbitrary number, and unlikely to be a good amount.

What should happen, is that the tail emission should roughly model the amount of bitcoins lost per year. So if we find that approximately 3% of bitcoins are lost every year do to accidents, deaths, etc, then approximately 3% tail emissions would work best. This would be like having people who lost their bitcoins "donating" their bitcoins to the security of the network.

2. Doesn't do anything, people don't have to follow those wallet creators.

3. Doesn't do anything. How much energy miners use is based on the amount of rewards they get from mining. Efficiency of the ASICs has absolutely no affect on the total electricity output.

The more miners or mining farms stop mining, the lower the difficulty. The lower the difficulty the bigger the opportunity for the small fish to get back

on board. There will always be people invested in Bitcoin, and these people would subsidize the mining side, to sustain their other businesses. If a

exchange or a big merchant are making millions from Bitcoin, and the mining side collapse... they will be forced to contribute in some way to save their

core business. {Even investing in a few ASIC's and doing the mining on their own}

2 - Depends, if fees are still affordable, no one will be tweaking with wallet or be looking for alternative one. If wallet prompts you to pay 8 cents worth instead of 6 cents, most will likely accept the increase.

3- you mean input? Of course it does, the whole idea of improving efficiency is to reduce cost/income ratio, which could mean same result with less electricity usage.

Probably some kind of new pos hybrid..
More interesting question would be how internet gonna look like..
Censored? Centralized we heading to NWO? Network supported through people devices like android phones but more powerful..

4 - Other option > Maybe we will return to stone age *more likely ? All blocks will be those stones all around..All knowledge forgotten not only bitcoin.

When I voted i was sure this would be the most voted option.

That is the spirit of bitcoin, and I'm glad to see most people support this idea since now!

I love this community!

 ;D true...

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i would never change the 21cap because you can have that with every fiat currency atm  ::)

I dont think its a good idea to ever remove the 21million bitcoin cap.  We can add more 0s rather than increasing supply. I would assume that if bitcoin is still around by that time then its doing fine anyway and there would be no need for any changes.

Now it's clear that is is the third option that won the match :D. Personally that's what I support because the two otehr solutions are bad and would basically kill the day-to-day usage and Bitcoin's value.

2148 is StarTRek century.
Money is useless since humanity travel over space and distances.

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img633/8320/0HFg4p.gif

but, cats always exist ... so perhaps, Bitcoin, too.

I personally think that once mining is done the network will maintain the same rules and the market will correct itself. that is... if we ever get there...

 Doing nothing. Let it self-regulate

I knew it!

just let the natural market laws, offer and demand, regulate it!

That's the smooth way to freedom.

Exactly, I think that a lot of Blockchain technology progression will occur over the next decade, and then it will primarily be self-regulated from there. We will always have to improve security to maintain an edge over faster and newer computer systems and software, but there will be fewer major changes such as the classic vs core debate going on right now.

It's not going to be a problem. The mining can remain relatively centralized with big parties competing against each other AS LONG AS we have decentralized nodes and the main devs are talented and pro privacy (Core devs and not other like the Classic ones which would make the project look like a joke). Let's just hope sanity prevails.

I also think that it will self regulate to become a stable financial network. Once more hardware is put to support transactions, instead of pure mining, we'll have a powerfull grid supporting the flow of values!

In fact, that's a real problem. The number of Nodes in the network are decreasing year by year, which has a direct connection with the mining difficulty. Thus, runing a node has no monetary incentive while mining has.

TBH I have no clue. I still hope we will feel the joy of Bitcoin in our lifetimes.

This ties into my theory that most of the technological advancements with blockchain technology will occur in the next decade; if the decrease in nodes is noticeable and becomes a burden on the network, there will likely be a fork which will allow for some monetary benefit for those who run the nodes, either through combining nodes and mining, or through some other means.

In 2148 there may well be something still named Bitcoin and you'll still be able to redeem coins that were made in this period of time. Other than that I don't think there'll be one single line of code or technical operation that we'll be capable of recognising. The initial principles may well still be in existence. How they're maintained might be totally different.

Great thread.

I will vote other.

You cannot trade in diminishing intangibility.

When you stop producing something, eventually nothing is left.

PoS is one solution, although the main factors building any Bitcoin 'value' from the get-go are finite, rarity and scarcity vectors and of course the electricity used to generate the coins.


Other option - specify;

Arguably, a near perfect solution (for any finite crypto-currency) would be for the network to be able to automatically determine addresses with unspent coins for x duration (say more than 100 years / or 'holder' determined time-frame) and then to have those dormant coins automatically returned back into the network as mined 'transaction fees'.

This is likely the only true solution to maintain a finite supply of 21 Million BTC, whilst preventing the otherwise certain effects of diminishing intangibility.

Of course technically very difficult to implement (security wise), much could be possible within 150 years, if Bitcoin makes it that far, although so far, so good.   8)
  

Yeah that's a bit the point ^^

In more than one century, Internet might not exist anymore. Humanity might no longer exist xD

So difficult to question the btc future!

It's quite hard to reach consensus on updates nowadays. It'll get even harder as time moves on, regardless fees would have long taken over by 2148.

Can't really sit on a high horse and call mostly everyone on the forum "spammers" when you are participating in a signature campaign your self.  I know I am too, but still man... this is not a topic that you can easily "spam" about, hence probably haven't gained as much traction.

But here's the thing though... you can't really predict this kind of stuff, because this year is 132 years away.  The governments finally going off of the gold standard is still a pretty new concept and has only been around since the 1970's... so only around 45 years or so.  So in a way, the current monetary system that pretty much every nation goes off of is still relatively "new" in a way.

The bitcoin monetary system has only been around 7 years, which makes it extremely new, and therefor it is pretty much impossible to tell what the best thing would be to do when 2148 comes around... I have a feeling that our kids and their kids will be so so so much smarter than we are, and I feel like they would be able to tackle these problems more adequately.

In the 2148 we will die  :-[ but in the world peoples use bitcoin. Because they will be know that

If bitcoin is still used by that time, I'm sure there'd be something like colored coins programmed on top. Such an implementation would help those in need of anew asset instead of increasing the max cap of bitcoin itself.

I voted
Doing nothing. Let it self-regulate

This was how it was designed right?

Either way it just made me sad that I wont be around to see what happens :(

My vote is;

"Doing nothing. Let it self regulate"

And I am happy that most of us trust the community and market's own behaviour... 

Remember all those good expectation, beyond 2000, and many of them are still sci fi! i'm convinced future is not so bright as we expecting..Today we have hunger and poverty what will have for 100 years? Population will explode! And peak of oil..Virus outbreaks..
Who knows if we'll have electricity?
In best case scenario i can expect one world government and one currency.

If something happened and bitcoin become world currency, we can expect hybrid pos + pw ,
because pos is not secure as pow..And only pow is not possible with constant rise of hasrate!

I'm thinking by that time, we can have btc to 10,000

in the scenario with a space travel humanity the only currency that can work is blockchain currency, you can sent the data and store them forever with light speed.
And if we cant find a Quantum transmission of information then we will break and the time limit of light travel.

Anything that touches the fundamental 21 million limit would destroy Bitcoin overnight. It is simply unadulterated insanity to even think about the idea of removing the total coin limit, there are 0 reasons to do so ever.

I hope but doubt that bitcoin will still be surviving then... If it is, great, it will have the power to regulate itself!

http://www.quickmeme.com/img/79/799b0f2f0ceb875758c9f04b2d5755dbe7e1c3a68b9aeb2a76089d45c6af2efd.jpg



I could sympathise with the first part of your post, but the last part is simply wrong. There are plenty of good reasons for having unlimited supply (one stated in OP).

I'd likely be in favour of doing nothing. Let it self-regulate.