Bitcoin Forum

Just wondering what happens if bitcoin reaches its 21 million capacity.
Would it continue going up or would it go down?

Thanks :)

Basically, miners are given a reward every time they mine a block, which is a big group of transactions.  The reward began at 50 BTC, and a block is mined approximately every ten minutes.

Every 210,000 blocks (four years), the block reward cuts in half.  So it begun at 50 BTC, then changed to 25 BTC, and as of 2016 it's 12.5 BTC.

The idea is that the amount of fiat money people dedicate to Bitcoin mining fluctuates around the Bitcoin price and block reward, and the network automatically adjusts how difficult it is to mine a block based on the amount of computing power dedicated to the network, so that there is still about one every ten minutes.

The cap will be reached around 2140, at which point mining rewards would be solely transaction fees.

But if now the Commission is already very high, it can lead to the fact that they will be even more and it can make people to abandon bitcoin, or to carry out only great deals to save money. Doesn't this situation would mean the end for bitcoin?

By year 2140, the entire economy should be running on the bitcoin blockchain, so it would be more than 100 trillion. Lightning network would also be working by then (hopefully :p) and miners will have a lot transactions to mine for wards from. Whoever doesn't want to mine will leave, lower difficulty, and bringing up a new opportunity for someone else.
It is a self balancing system. There's always an incentive for someone out there to participate.

As far as I know miners get transaction fees and generated bitcoins (correct me if I am wrong).
If the number of bitcoins reach to 21 million, There will be no generated coins anymore. So the transaction fees will be increase as a  compensation for generated coins that don't exist anymore. Am I right?

You are right, but keep in mind that the transaction fees in BTC would likely go down if for example 1 Satoshi is worth $10.

It would take up to year 2140 to get 21 millions bitcoins to be fully mined, so no one could really predict what would happen to the price of bitcoin at that point, but as there would be no more generated bitcoin rewards given to the miners from block, miners could only profit from transaction fees send by the users, so there might be a big increases in bitcoin values to attract miners for continuing to maintain the block-chain network.

Decreases in block reward are currently not causing high fees.  The cause of high fees currently is just a lack of network capacity.

As I indirectly pointed out in the previous post, the fiat value of mining investments change based on the fiat value of the block reward.  This means that:

1.  The fiat value of the block reward has increased by thousands of times since Bitcoin's inception, and Bitcoin functioned perfectly wellm with just a tiny amount of miners;

2.  A decrease in revenue would just mean that there were less miners.  While this could end up being a problem for centralisation in the short term due to the decrease in profits, it would sort itself out because miners who don't find it profitable stop mining, and the difficulty adjusts to reflect that.  Even if their reward was just transaction fees, and the transaction fees were quite low, the network would be secure unless some crazily rich person got control of >51% of the hashrate.

Maybe we can't be alive (yes) when bitcoin will reach it's full capacity. If we discuss with current situation, it must be very high because bitcoin is getting more popular and more people are using this. So the more people, the more money is needed and when there will be reached limit, price has to be high to be usable for everyone but there is another problem, more price means more high fee, also the more popular, the more chanses are of spam transactions (we see what it caused).

I wonder whether there'll be attempts to meddle with the block rewards and total number of coins in the years to come.

It's inconceivable now but who knows what attitudes will be like in a few decades? I wonder whether the principles will be set firmly in stone or there'll be enough greed to break them.

Wondering the same thing, though the inner me knows that it is innate to humans to ask for more even though it's clear that there is already a set rule for them to follow in which they shouldn't break. But again, imagine the number of years before we exhaust all of the 21 million coin supply waiting to be mined. By then we might not be existing even to begin with.

I have 1000 bitcoin but I do not know how to invest who helps me to work for me skipe pink.korn

no mining anymore after he 21 millions has been reached, but miners can mine for the fee, fee are very important and will increase in the future to compensate for the lower block reward

Hmm Good question. Let me give an example of federal bank system, private bank system and Commercial bank system. When people are saving money in homes. There is no money in banks. Then Federal bank system allows bonds to private bank / Commercial banks. Then people start buying bonds like that money comes to bank. When the people are saving money in banks instead using in consumption then bank increase the reserve system like that money come once again normal. Like that example is goes to Bitcoin. When the price decrease than the demand increase. When the price increase than the demand decrease.

There will never be more than 21 million unless the majority of users enacted a change in the code. There's not real purpose for more than 21 million coins since Bitcoin is divisible, there's always going to be less than 21 million since coins are lost every single day.