Bitcoin Forum

How bitcoin maintain its network when bitcoin no longer mineable?

Miners will continue to work and secure the network , instead of getting block rewards they will gain the transaction fees instead.

Who cares really ? None of us will be alive at that point.

So we all will not be living by that time, but miners keep on mining even they don't get block reward as fee will be enough to keep mining. As by that time i think even 10000 satoshi fee will be valued more than a dollar so making mining still profitable by that time. Bitcoin network is self balancing for its existence this is really a great feature for sustanibility of bitcoin. That's why we all love bitcoin..

Simple answer, with transaction fees.
In reality? Noone really knows, we will see tho ;) i think it will go well, coz bitcoin is supported by devs/miners they will find solution if problems arise.

Miner's fees.

More or less, whenever we get around to that point, assuming the network had been constantly expanding and growing, we would see Bitcoin at a relatively high value, however the actual economics of it are fuzzy because there would be nearly no minimum value Bitcoin would be sold for. Aside from that this would allow for users to send relatively small fees along with their transactions (maybe smaller than today's if the block sizes are increased and the volume also increases) and yet pay the miners enough for everything to continue operating.

what realistic comment :) and a bit sad :(

But I think someone will survive ;) with the progress of medicine we can't know ;) our future ... and btc user really young (10 years) probably they can see the last btc mined!

Strictly speaking current miner's fee couldn't cover miner's expenses. But we expect that number of transactions will be increased as well as total amount.

exactly, bitcoin might never reach that point and die sooner then that. or they could find another way to "restart"(like a btc2.0  ::)).
Just relax, buy some bitcoins and you will have a good retirement.

This is something you needn't to worry about as this will not be the case for the next 124 years!
And if Bitcoin should still be around at that time, fees will have taken over as the main reward for mining a block.
So miners will still have an incentive to run their machines.

I've noticed that this is the general attitude of most people when someone asks that question.  Could it mean that most people don't really think that Bitcoin's long term prospects are bright?  If so, then could it also mean that Bitcoin's 'life expectancy' could be shorter than we think?

   

But our children will. Would you enjoy that our offspring go back to the dark ages in which we've lived so far with banks ruling everything, spending customer's money as they please, losing it all in loans that people have no intention of repaying, effectively destroying everything we accomplished so far with Bitcoin? I wonder why bother with Bitcoin if these things aren't thought out. If we lower our guard, nothing will change and banks and governments will keep doing the things they do.

right now the blockreward is the miners INCOME. and transaction fees are the BONUS
its important to know this..

some people call it the 'reward:fee ratio' or the 'income:commission' ratio

which in A FEW DECADES will switch. where the fee=income and the reward becomes the commission/bonus.
some estimate it to be at the 2032 halving.. (when the reward is below 1btc and people think that bitcoin would be fiat valued at under $10k_[4])
and then in the year 2140 will be completely FEE based income with NO BONUS

alot of people are stupidly thinking that the reward:fee ratio will flip this year.. and so they wish to push a fee war, out of fear that mining wont be profitable. they are wrong and rushing this year to push something that is not a worry for YEARS

now then.. here is the maths.
imagine that miners want ~$10k a block to cover electric costs (in a world where FEE's are the only payment(year 2140))
that equates
blocks containing 1000tx with everyone paying $10 (~400kb blocks)
blocks containing 10,000tx with everyone paying $1 (~4mb blocks)
blocks containing 100,000tx with everyone paying $0.10  (~40mb blocks)
blocks containing 1,00,000tx with everyone paying $0.01  (~400mb blocks)

REMEMBER this is the numbers required based on the year 2140.. NOT 2016, NOT 2032
and remember just 20 years ago. people thought that 3gb hard drives were the "max".. now its 3TB+.. so in the next 120 years the example 1mill tx requirement would be childs play. again for emphasis.. in one hundred and 20 years!!

and because its 120 years away there is no point even thinking about it because we personally will never see it in our lifetimes..
but lets at least think about something that will be seen and change in our lifetime.. the switch of fee:reward where fee becomes more important(but not the only fund)

as for 2032.. at the(theorized) switch where 50% of total funding is reward and 50% is fee.. blocks only need to obtain $5000 in fee's to pay the share of total funding

which works out as
blocks containing 1000tx with everyone paying $5 (~400kb blocks)
blocks containing 2500tx with everyone paying $2 (~1mb blocks)
blocks containing 10,000tx with everyone paying $0.50 (~4mb blocks)
blocks containing 20,000tx with everyone paying $0.25 (~8mb blocks)
blocks containing 40,000tx with everyone paying $0.12 (~16mb blocks)
blocks containing 100,000tx with everyone paying $0.05  (~40mb blocks)
blocks containing 1,00,000tx with everyone paying $0.01  (~400mb blocks)

now then the two i highlighted in green are possibility of transaction amounts this/next year. (emphasis: but the prices are not important this year so ignore the prices for now)
the 2500tx is todays situation(1mb) and the 10k tx is next years situation (hopefully, based on 2mb HF+segwit)

and the two i highlighted in blue are possibility of transaction amounts in the next couple decades (emphasis: not now. not next year. but slow natural growth stretched over YEARS) EG say it moved to 8mb in 2022 and 16mb 2028 giving 4 years further years for a 16mb buffer to fill upand be on target for 40ktx per block

now some things to take into account..
1. even with parts of the world measuring in at 0.5mbit upload internet speeds.. thats enough right now for 4mbyte blocks with nodes connecting to a couple other nodes (8 possible but couple without strain)
2. with Fibre growing in popularity (~15mbit-20mbit upload) that is enough for 16mbyte+ blocks with nodes connecting to a couple other nodes (8 possible but couple without strain)
3. raising point 2. thats a slight possibility now. but will be common place and even faster in decades(remember we were on dialup 20 years ago)
4. the fee/tx needed is only a theory of 2032 switch. if bitcoin went to $20k each then the fee:reward switch wont be a worry for even longer, where the higher the bitcoin fiat price is, the more time the reward remains important and 2032 becomes less important to that 2032 theory
5. raising point 4, forcing a fee war now ruins bitcoins desirability and the need for miners uphold the fiat valuation which is basically shooting themselves in the foot by selling off at a discount because the fee bonus is making them not need to pressure the bitcoin value

i think by the time there is no bitcoin to mine or when it become extreamly difficult to mine miners will change their mining to mine transaction fees by that time the fees will be more worthy to mine

Its clear the transaction fees can rise only to certain value which people are still confortable to pay. Thats why Im pretty sure you cant get 12.5 Bitcoins in fees after halving, making it together with reward about 25 Bitcoins, the same miners Bitcoin reward+fees income as today.

In the rest of your good post you already told the miners income depends on how many transactions they are allowed to include and the average fee. While the fee can rise only so much before people simply stop using Bitcoin, we are at transaction limit already. So increasing the number of transactions miners are allowed to add is the most important factor for decent miners Bitcoin income, thus longterm sustainability of Bitcoin blockchain security.

blockchain is the answer,bitcoin can adopt blockchain network even they have no internet connection,so even bitcoin no longer mineable,it can always exist and stay can transacted.

This is usually my answer to this question too, because it has been asked many time on this forum before, but I want to throw a spanner into the works... Let's say the volume of the transactions do not

increase? Would people be willing to make a donation to a central pool for miners to continue mining if it comes down to that? I do not think they will ..... Will they pay larger fees than the current

industry standard to get their tx's mined? I guess not..... How will we fund this experiment, if tx volumes decrease and nobody wants to pay extra large fees to feed these hungry miners?

In that case the miners with the most hash power would switch off because it would be unprofitable. There would always be smaller miners willing to carry on mining with cheaper equipment, and at a lower hash rate. The difficulty would drop and the little miners would keep the network going.

in short yes.
we should not be trying to bribe miners with private donations or huge fee's.
capacity increases help users pay less but give miners more over the decades
bitcoins deflationary fiat valuation increases help miners get enough to cover costs.

imagining that miners needed $10k a block.. 25btc at $400 was ample.. (as has been the case these last few years)
at the halving
imagining that miners needed $10k a block.. 12.5btc at $800 is ample...(which we are on course with, without even having to consider fee's)

bribing miners now and paying huge fees now. would make miners care less about bitcoins fiat valuation because they are being subsidized by the bribes and would sell cheaper to still get the $10k. making the bitcoin price drop and the requirement for bribes increase

again for emphasis:
we should not be trying to bribe miners with private donations or huge fee's.
capacity increases and deflationary value increases help everyone

I have not even got a clue what you are talking about, how is bitcoin not mineable? 

it wont be in 2140

He talking about the future.
There are only 21 million bitcoins that can ever be mined, Once all 21 million have been mined, there will never be any new bitcoins,the last bitcoin will be mined at 2140

I don't see the point for us to even be thinking of what will happen to miners by then because just as you said, we won't even be here when that happens and given the amount of time left for that year to come, that's quite a lot. There are nearly endless possibilities that can occur in that span of time.

thats a really long time to go to be honest and we shouldnt be worried about last bitcoins being mined in my opinion, sooner or later all bitcoins will be mined and we cannot avoid it

i think bitcoin network will be huge then, more and more will get interest in bitcoins to be honest and a lot of people will use bitcoins every day, i hope that by then bitcoin will become a currency of the whole world

Bitcoin will be hugely popular and worth a lot, or it will be dead and worthless.
In either case, the problem of no block reward will be solved.  :)

So the transaction fee will probably rise, right?
Hence, the price of bitcoin will rise too.

And then they will just going to circulate all the existing bitcoins around the world alongside the skyrocketing of the price.
But that's on 2140. None of us will be living by then.
And probably another better cryptocurrency is up on those days.