Bitcoin Forum

Everyone knows the world has a total of 21 million bitcoins and a total of 17 million bitcoins have been mined. So what happens when 21 million bitcoins are exploited?

As far as I know miners have two sources of income when exploiting bitcoin that is:
1. Be rewarded with bitcoin from the number of deals they handle.
2. The main reward: the bitcoin reward, for each bitcoin block to be exploited.

When 21 million Bitcoins are mined, the second source of income will be gone. So how will the bitcoin network do when there are no miners? I do not think that with only a single source of income, it may be profitable for them when the Bitcoin price goes down.

I look forward to receiving an explanation from someone and thanks!

Well by the time all bitcoins are mined bitcoin will be so popular that it will be profitable to mine it even if the miners only receive the transaction fees. For example, let's say that bitcoin replaces all visa transactions, which is 24k a second. That means that bitcoin would handle 24k*60*10=14.4M transactions per average block. Also, if every transaction is going to cost, let's say 0.01$, it would mean that every block reward would be 14.4M/100=144k$ which is around twice more than the miners receive from blocks right now (78k$). It's a problem that will solve itself with time and we don't have to worry about it.

today, miners ' reward for transactions already occupies a decent percentage of the total reward, and over time, bitcoin will become more and more popular in many countries. If you start making payments with bitcoin in the world, the rewards will increase even more. Even if all 21 million bitcoins are mined, miners will not go anywhere and will continue their work getting a good profit because the price of bitcoin will also grow

miners will still mine

what should occur is that we move from a ~2k transaction per block. to a 4k transaction per block. to a 8k transaction per block
that way the 'fee' pools gather increases without costing users more.

its the basic math of
dont make 2 people pay 10cent and years later people pay 40cent
but
make 2 people pay 10cent and years later 8 people pay 10cent
that way everyone is happy users dont over pay and miners get extra fee while their reward deminishes

please dont turn this into a "we must remain with floppy disk space per block and charge more per user" fallacy. as thats soo 1990's misconception.
we live in a world where 256gb's is the size of a fingernail.

please dont turn this into a "we must remain with 56kb/s internet per block" fallacy. as thats soo y2k's misconception.
we live in a world where fibre optic and 5g cellular is the current expectation.
(56kbit/s =7kbyte/s = 0.420mbyte/min = 4.2mbyte/block)

..
anyway if we start saying lets not use onchain to transact and only let 2000 transactions occur onchain. the FEE would have to go up eventually.
this would cause even less desire for people to want to transact onchain. thus people stop using bitcoin. they will swap coin for cheaper altcoins when they decide to withdraw out of other networks

then no one is left to use the bitcoin network as it prices itself out of utility. and does so due to lack of onchain innovation.... not due to coin rewards

the most likely thing that bitcoin miners might do is to switch to mining altcoins, or they jump into the trade market, in my opinion that's the only thing miners can do

in my opinion when all 21 million bitcoins have been used up, miners still have a lot of benefits in getting profits, for example they switch to mine altcoins, and this also has great potential to earn profits. or they can turn into bounty hunters, and they can also create their own coins and in my opinion this is much better.

It's estimated to be 2140 when the last coin is mined, the miners still solve blocks for fee's after that.

Another bitcoin blockchain can launch around 2100 to start mining an entirely separate chain with different (cheaper) coins mined on the same protocol. Giving existing bitcoin hodlers with bitcoin 30-40 years to move to the new chain (if they want) and swap the value from the old blockchain. After 10-20 years of work is done on a new chain, expect their to be actual value there for all users like bitcoin currently has.

Thanks for such a great insight about profits. I am pretty sure transactions will cost a lot more and the profits will thus be even higher, but for the success will also need there transactions to happen. If people keep storing bitcoin and rarely buying and selling some, miners won't get enough transactions to confirming for their power usage to be compensated well. The community will be of essense at that time, I think.
Apart from transaction fees which were explained by buyinbtc, miners can always turn to other coins. I am pretty sure there will be enough to mine. Also, I am not sure it's technically possible with bitcoin (but since it is with ethereum, it gives hope), bitcoin can eventually become a Proof of Stake coin and those who mined btc will be able to profit from holding it.

It is quite obvious that the miners, creating bitcoin mining farms, were aware that the time would come when the last bitcoin would be mined. But by that time their equipment should not only pay off, but also make a profit. In the future, most likely the income will be received from the transactions with the coin.

they still running nodes to mine block transactions
so the miners still benefit even though the total supply of bitcoin has been mined
CMIIW

virtual currencies exists within the digital framework and can not be sent out of the network as it was designed to only function within the framework. either way, the bitcoin only exists online and even the miners who get bitcoins for mining compensations also spend the coins online so it is not possible to mine all the bitcoin out of the market since it all exists online.

Please take into consideration the law of supply and demand and the difficulty of mining. As we reach to the supply limit the difficulty of mining will increase as well as the value of bitcoin.

Take into consideration as well the number of supporters of this technology. Of course people who are holding huge amount of btc won't just let this technology down. The devs will always find remedy when this happens.

When all the Bitcoins are mined, there will only be 21 million in existence. At this point (sometime in 2100 or so), Bitcoin can be used as a long, lost digital currency and be treated as gold. I'm sure by then a good chunk of those Bitcoin will be lost to fires, electrical meltdowns or theft so the value will probably be a lot higher.

WHen you factor in the Blockchain and its connection to the Internet we could see a universe like Cowboy Bebop or Star Trek.

But there is a small question. when will 21 millions bitcoin be mined? I think it will last a long time.

the first, they will do a hodl for about 2 months for the BTC they get from mining, after that there will be a pump price, because everyone starts to realize that the circulating bitcoin will no longer increase
then the second is, they will look for new land to do mining. for example is ETH,
and the last possibility is that they sell mining equipment at low prices, then lock the proceeds from the sale at MasterNodes

Well miners can still help in the confirmation of transactions on the bitcoin network and earn from the fees that are charged upon such activities. Most miners would leave after bitconin has fully been mined and that might also bring about delay in making transactions on the blockchain network.

That is one of the "theories" thrown, but that's just an educated guess, if nothing else. It is not truly definite.

I believe we will be witnessing some fear to the "future of mining" when block rewards are halved to 3.125 Bitcoins on 2024, if the price stays near or below the "break-even cost" of mining.

We might see a miner or a popular member of the community make a debate for adjusting the inflation schedule through a hard fork to "save Bitcoin" too. 8)

This is a great point of view but on the other hand, right now bitcoin seems to evolve an asset more than a currency. If it keeps as an asset there won't be that much of transfer so even bitcoin valued very high, there won't be thousands of transactions at a time.

Miners are throwing rigs in the bin
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-20/whats-happening-now-crypto-devastation-collapses-hash-rate-forces-miners-dump-rigs

Are you sure this 20 million number will ever be reached because I am not

Shit-Code it was and intended to create CPU wars all along, game is all but over after fees hit $55 per transaction and since
then the price has been falling but keep "Buying on the dip" if you cannot read the writing on the wall

I think before btc have been fully mined, the miners of btc has gone mining other coins already. Mining a nearly fully mined coin will make you gain lesser coin from it. But the lesser you get from mining it, usually the value of the coin will become much more expensive and not going cheaper in the market.

Hahaha. In every Bitcoin crisis, there is always someone saying that "Bitcoin is dead".

Those miners were losing money. They made the correct decision.


What shit-code? Bitcoin is maintained by the best developers, and of people who deserve to be the stewards of the network.

Can you name a better team of developers?


Of course the price will keep falling, the bulls of 2017 kept the price surging artificially. This is an opportunity to "buy low".

Certainly, they will simply stop mining and start doing something else. I will not be surprised if today, many of them are thinking about becoming traders. Probably, certain guys will open their business.