Bitcoin Forum

I am new to this so might be a dumb question. I am wondering if all bitcoins will be mined? I have read that its not worth mining anymore for people with standard computers because it's too hard, better mine litecoins. What happens when it becomes even harder? In six months when the difficulty is even harder it may not be worth all the electricity keeping the stuff running.

Is it even worth getting the mining computers for $5k+ anymore?

Dude do a Google search on Bitcoin and look at a Wiki. Yes there is a cap to the total number of Bitcoins.

Yes it is not profitable to mine Bitcoin with standard PC equipment. Yes the difficulty will get worse as more ASIC miners hit the network in the next few months.

Yeah Litecoin is possibly the next safest coin after Bitcoin to mine right now and you can use standard equipment but it has quite the following and don't expect to get big shares out of it. I mine it with HD 7790 and pull a little over 0.1 LTC a day at curret difficulty. It's not a great card but that should give you some idea.

Wiki's will tell you how hardware stacks up too.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

Values are in MHash/s but based on the result I get, they seem to be in KHash/s.

The system is continually rebalancing.  If it becomes too "hard" some miners will quit (those with the highest cost and least efficient gear), when they do difficulty will fall and remaining miners will earn more.  Of course that lower difficulty will bring in new miners who will drive it back up.

There can never be a scenario where nobody mines because it is too hard.  If less people (or hashpower) is mining then difficulty will get easier not harder.

AFAIK, mining is necessary, because it calculate the hashes of the ongoing transactions. Therefore, mining will never end and the miners will earn on provisions.