Bitcoin Forum

Well most of us are waiting the next bitcoin halving and speculate about how it will affect the network, mining, fees, and prices

But I wonder how the bitcoin environment will be in years of the last halving. (I know i am not going to live to see that but in any case i want to dream a little with that).

So, picture this: It's near the year 2134 or 2138, and we've experienced the last-ever bitcoin halving. At this point, miners are going to get only 1 Satoshi per mined block, plus transaction fees. It's a far cry from the current scenario and for the next period of 4 years only 210000 new satoshis will be created. That made me think that we need to start trying to save every satoshi available.

For miners, it's safe to assume that transaction fees will go through the roof. As the mining reward shrinks, miners will need to get creative to keep their operations profitable. They might start looking into greener, more sustainable energy sources to cut costs and invest in better mining hardware to maximize their returns.

On the other hand, for folks like us, the incentive to spend our bitcoins may decrease. With rewards diminishing and fees on the rise, there's a stronger argument for holding onto our digital treasure unless it's absolutely necessary. Think of it as a futuristic savings account where every satoshi saved feels like a victory.

In the end, none of us may live to see the year 2138, but it's exciting to imagine how the world of bitcoin will evolve after the last halving. The balance between mining rewards and fees, along with the motivations of miners and users, will surely transform. Who knows what kind of innovative solutions and changes are in store? Until then, let's keep dreaming and HODLing those precious satoshis!

What are your thoughts about the future of bitcoin in times of the last halving ?

In fact, halving does not affect Bitcoin transaction fee too much.

Bitcoin average transaction fee (All time) (https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees.html#alltime).

The chart shows Bitcoin transaction fee usually is not too expensive. Halving does not affect it as the chart shows but some hypes like Ordinals BRC20 a few months ago, made transaction fee on Bitcoin network became expensive months ago. It did not last too long and transaction fee on Bitcoin network drops back to its normal level.

There are some who argue that it does not really affect Bitcoin transaction fees, but some also argue that transactions will increase when Halving occurs.
This only happens in the short term and will soon recover.

And as you said, transaction fees were quite high during the BRC20 Ordinal hype a few months ago.
I had felt the increase when I wanted to send bitcoin and was charged about $30 in one transaction and the time it took to be confirmed was also quite long.

But that's still nothing compared to the transaction fees that occurred in 2018 which reached $55 and the highest in 2021 was around $62.

Miners don't need to be creative during that time for them to keep on profiting from their miners. They'll stay and will still get paid to mine for the confirmation of transactions.

I am thinking about how many zeros (not decimals) it will be for the price of Bitcoin if ever it's still alive by that time.

It's still far away from now and so much will change in over 100 years, so we just don't know and just can judge from a current perspective with many if's and could's.

Yes, block rewards won't play any major role anymore because Bitcoin is designed that way.
Even around 2100, block rewards won't play any major role anymore because rewards will be very tiny.

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/05/22/halving2901d0a7cfc0c761b.png
We are still early

I believe transaction fees will carry Bitcoin way sooner than we might expect.
And while more people will use Bitcoin, it won't be a problem to reward miners mostly from transaction fees.


As a conclusion, I believe the last halving doesn't matter much. It's just a symbolic milestone of Bitcoin.  :)

the only halfing that mattered was the 1st.. after that happened we all now know it works; the rest is just math. no surprises.

No, it's not!
Miners don't dictate the fees as a bank does, clients choose how much they are willing to pay for it.
That's why with the same block reward we had days of fees of 1sat/b and of 200sat/b.
Nobody is going to pay $1000 worth of BTC for a tx when buying a $40 pizza.


Of all the fillings I've read coming from mining companies that are forced to release data, nothing was able to beat Marathon Group Beowulf coal powerplant costs at 2.10 cents/kwh. Sustainable energy doesn't mean cheap energy!


Lighting Network!

In the next topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5465389.0), it was asked whether small buyers should rely on bitcoin. Your post provides an answer to this question. If in 2134 or 2138 year miners were only getting 1 sat. for every block they mined, then today's small buyers with a couple of tens or hundreds of satoshi would be millionaires.:)

Actually, that's right. This was the case in previous years. A couple of bitcoins seemed like a mere trifle, and now these are already impressive amounts. The same will happen with satoshi. Now it costs almost nothing, but in the future, it will become difficult for many. If I were a bitcoin-hater, I would still spend a couple of tens of bucks for a few satoshi and put it in my wallet and keep it for a very long time, forgetting for years. If my expectations are not justified, then the losses are small, but if they are justified, then even a couple of satoshi can pleasantly surprise in the future.

In the future, there may be an incentive to pay in bitcoin. It is never known what the BTC-community will invent and in what direction it will move, but in any case, saving some bitcoin/satoshi will benefit the holders.

If the forum survives until 2134-2138, then our dreams and discussions about bitcoin and the last halving will become historical artifacts. :)

l don't think that transaction fee will increase all that as a result of the halving, for the reality that it has happened before like in the 2016 and 2020, after halving and not quite long after the increase, everything returned to almost normal. If there is too much increase in transaction fee, a lot of people will be forced to leave the exchange concerned, and if the transaction fee is too high generally, more people will be forced to leave depending on the gain one encounters at the end of it all.

An interesting topic you have started here. I consider myself the king of imagination world but its an obvious thing that my imaginative thoughts might be of no importance or to be liked by other and same goes for me. But still, in my imagination, till 2040 BTC will have alternative, or such unique developments that will make the whole scenario look as a normal scenario. Mean till then the inflation will be to the Mars and prices of everything will be 100x from now. But still people will be living and to them all of that money is nothing. For example millennials can relate this. To them 100$ were a lot of money back in there time but that same $100 will be of $1 worth at 2040.

But seriously, we should enjoy the moments we have and get benefit from the features of BTC while we have the time. To be honest I still think we are so early in adopting the BTC as if we compare ourselves with the future people's of 2040 then we will realize that we really are early adopters.

I’m curious about this too since transaction fee is fixed in sats value while it’s equivalent value in fiat will grow exponentially in future due to the price discovery of Bitcoin.

I doubt people will still use Bitcoin if the fee will grow more zero in fiat value since this is not economical. Maybe there will be some adjustment in the future the amount of transaction fee in sats in proportion with the fiat value.

If a financial system works well for a hundred years that is not bad at all. In the meantime, technological advances will bring something new that can do even better. Technology is always evolving and our economy as well. There was an era when people traded with gold then came fiat currencies Now it is time for digital currencies. Who knows what lies in the future? Maybe by that time, people will trade with stored energy.

I think until that time bitcoin would have been detached from the concept of halving and bullishness. Bitcoin will become cyclical and it's bull run would come from some other thing than halving. But yes it'll be interesting to see a scenario where there won't be any more supply reduction. Will people still feel bitcoin to be appreciating if this happens.

In my imagination, that time will be last time people care about BTC I think because if halving stops I mean to say if mining stops then the POW mechanism will be of no use at that time because then miners has nothing to work on. This seems so easy to imagine the future but still no one can really predict what will happen at that time.

What if Satoshi put some work or mechanism there that at the end of halving he came and said here are more BTC to mine. I know technically that's not possible but hey we are imagining here.
You are right, because the scarcity and other features of BTC has proved that it is a great hedge against inflation which means in current era inflation is so higher than then the inflation which was in 2010. But still the deflationary nature of BTC still made profit to all bit coiners. It indicates that, at the last halving miners will still make profit and who knows till then what type of green energy sources will be discovered or invented.

Miners will benefit from transaction fee to keep the network running,because there will be no more bitcoin to mine. The halving does play any significant role on transaction fee.

The whales and private investors with a good significant amount of bitcoin will be the wealthiest in the world

Your chart is in fact proving you wrong. Take a look at the average transaction fee in stable periods, for instance 2018-2019 and 2022-2023 and you'll see the fee has doubled. Bull markets produce extreme fees, so it's easier to look at bear market years and at this period of bitcoin's cycle the fee is higher every time.
It's also important to add that we aren't talking about the next 10 years but OP is talking about a 100 years time. If we can see the fees going 3x in the low volatility periods over the course of 10 years, it will probably keep happening as we move forward.

how many bitcoin are there left from the ones mined already, we can have a look on this statistics regarding the blocks mined and the ones left, i know that we are gradually getting there, but it may be obvious that not all of us would have waited till then to witness the last mined block, what do you think would have been the fate of those who will waited until this very last moment, there's still alot of future opportunities yet to be unfolded with bitcoin if we invest and hodl.

Stats on bitcoin
https://twitter.com/AltcoinDailyio/status/1696401685961421134?t=eB3CngHCAa3q6X2hAbjqiA&s=19
https://talkimg.com/images/2023/09/01/Mxe7D.jpeg

The problem will become much more apparent than it currently is, much, much sooner than in 2140. In 20 years from now, there will be less than 50 thousand bitcoin left to enter circulation. The block reward will be less than 0.2 BTC, and a four-years later, even less than half of 0.1. Transaction fees will be the main source of income long before 2140, and perhaps even before 2040. Bitcoin will remain experimental until then. In practice, there will be people transacting, but there's a bet here: There have to be much more than they currently are, and the median fee must rise either.

That means, network dependent on second layers. And as per my experience goes, they don't work quite well yet.

I don't think we need to wait for the very last halving, simply in 2048 the reward will be approx 0.0488, and 2048 means only 25 years from now, and that looks like a small reward, at today's value we're talking of approx $1,300. Regarding the fees it wouldn't make any sense to increase them because people would simply use bitcoin less and less at that point so it could became a payment system only for the rich people.

That is true and the other reason where it will affect the transaction fee is when there are lots of transactions going on like aandn attack where people will have to pay more fees in order for their transactions get confirmed faster rather than waiting for days or even more than a week then the fees will increase just like what happened before when the mempool is congested not long ago.

While I believe Bitcoin will keep increasing in price, price increases will slow down every cycle.
It's already happening, where all time highs are getting less impressive every cycle:

2014: 1400 USD
2017: 19000 USD
2022: 65000 USD

Next all time high will be probably around 100k USD, making an x2 from 2022.
Yes, we can't predict it exactly but a similar increase like we had earlier (from 2014 to 2017) is very unlikely from today's perspective.

Why would fees go through the roof? Miners don't charge fees, they just collect them and the users choose the fee. And since blockspace is limited, it incentivizes users to put higher fees. So the only way miners could rise fees if they would form a cartel that artificially rejects fees that they deem to low. But it might fail if not all miners join it, or if users start making less transactions.

If the fees will be high in 2130s, it's because a lot more people will be sending transactions. But if transaction rate will remain the same as it is now, there would be no reason for high fees.

I believe if Bitcoin still exists during this time, its price is more likely to be stable and not swing wildly when there is negative/fud or hype around.  Aside from that, the halving won't have an effect anymore since the change in the blockreward supply is almost negligible and miners are now profiting through transaction fees.

Although we might not be alive during this time, it is still very interesting to think about the possibilities in Bitcoin's future.

Price increase must be smaller in future halvings and cycles because like stocks, when a price is high and expensive enough, market cap becomes big enough, price can still increase but won't have high multipliers as the past halvings and cycles.

Nevertheless, it looks not interesting if an investor only want to take profit with one cycle, it is still very good if you can wait like 2 or 3 halvings and take profit. Not too far, from 2017 to 2022, price increases 3 times. If I hold it till 2024 and 2025, price can increase to $100,000 that is 5 times from 2017 all time high. It's very good profit and must be taken into account that risk of losing money because of rug pull, dead project with Bitcoin does not exist.

When we talk about profit, we must combine it with risk. Risk and profit come together.

You are right here, it is all about a good HODL.
But for example, for institutional investors, it's a big difference if money is invested 4 years or 12 yers. Because when money is invested in Bitcoin it needs to stay at Bitcoin. Some companies might to go for a shorter investing period because money needs to be liqiud for such company.

Of course, you are right here. Risk is very important consideration, especially for institutional investors. Many institutional investors are still hesistant because of risk. But when risk is getting lower due to Bitcoin getting more proven and more accessible, many people will consider Bitcoin as a good store of value.  :)

I can imagine that at that time 1 satoshi would also not be taken for granted. Well we know nowadays 1 satoshi we don't even care that much. But when the last halving happened, I think there will be many who want to buy 1 satoshi. But all of this could happen if other digital money had not appeared that did not exceed the advantages of bitcoin. Well, 100 years from now it will definitely be a very different world with technology that we may not yet be able to imagine. So I prefer to think about whether bitcoin will last until then.

These projections into the future I think we have to take them as a glimpse into the past. When we look at what the price was 10 years ago, for example, and see how much whoever bought Bitcoin then and has been able to hold at least a portion so has been able to profit.

In the same way, the OP poses a look far into the future that can serve as an example to see how precious a few satoshis will be then. I think we don't even need to look that far into the future. I think in 10 years or a little more 0.1 Bitcoin will be a small fortune.

Please correct me if I misunderstood. As far as I know, when the price value of Bitcoin increases, it is also possible for its transaction fee to increase. Why? because it only has a limited number of transactions to process per block, right?

Of course, the miners will demand a higher fee to perform a transaction as the value of Bitcoin increases. And whoever is the highest giver, that is what they will prioritize. Now, if we want to avoid the high charge fee, we can use layer 2, because this is the purpose of layer 2, so that we can get a low transaction fee.

IIRC, there was a point of time when transaction fees were zero but it has never happened again. And that's for sure that there will be adjustments and it has to happen to give incentive to the miners since they're the ones to confirm our transactions and the fee is determined by the difficulty and the demand.

Even after the halving if Bitcoin is still there but since the topic is about imagining Bitcoin is still operational even after the last bitcoin to be mined, so that's it.

What do you mean by that? Routing failures or something else?

Routing failures is one of a kind. It's been 7 years and the failures in transaction finality are very apparent. From my experience, one channel is just not enough, even with the most reliant and well connected node. And I'm not talking about high-value transactions, barely the minimum ($1-$30).

But if only that was the only problem. To retain self-custody, you still need to run a full node 24/7, or have an Electrum-like lightning wallet, with watchtowers. And then other problems like backing up in an easy, non-digital way. Ultimately, there isn't lots of development.

Because the overall market supply isn't expected to change significantly just due to the upcoming halving, the impact on the USD valuation remains the same, I suppose.

Here are a few other thoughts related to miners:

Miners don't always sell their Bitcoins, especially during a bull market, as they have strong belief in Bitcoin's value. This makes sense because they play a vital role in the network's decentralization. Some miners do sell a portion of their earnings to cover operational costs, but this doesn't have a substantial impact on the market supply during bullish or normal conditions when holding is more favorable.

Most of their selling pressure occurs during unfavorable times when they need to meet their expenses. This is why miner capitulation is linked to maximum selling pressure in a market cycle, and smart investors often look for opportunities to buy when miners are selling heavily. For instance, if Miner X is selling a fixed amount of Bitcoin every day to cover their costs, even if Bitcoin's price remains constant for a month, they would continue to sell the same amount of Bitcoin each day. After the halving, they might sell more of their newly mined Bitcoins if necessary to cover their costs. However, in terms of USD, the baseline depends on how much energy the current hashrate requires.

https://i.ibb.co/R2Khv6r/otan-emeis.jpg (https://ibb.co/9n0w84K)

How about this,
How about we try to value bitcoin based on the halvings.
Like, comparing the value of the block rewards as at 2020 to the value of bitcoin in 2016. In cause of this analysis, I’ll be concentrating on the block reward and value it based on ATH for each year of the halving respectively.

In 2016,
Block Reward = BTC12.5
ATH Value = $981
Valuation = (BTC12.5 X $981) = $12,262.5

In 2020
Block Reward = BTC6.25
ATH Value = $29,096
Valuation = (BTC6.25 X $29,096) = $181,850

The difference in valuation of block reward between 2020 and 2016 would be;
Diff. = $181,850 - $12,262.5 = $169,587.5

This is just to give an idea of what the increment or dollar valuation to every sat would be in the nearest future so, to a large extent, block reward would continue to play a role. My hypothetical thoughts.

Same here and that's also when I think it'll finally have more actual users than those who are trying to capitalize on its market activity... In addition to this, I can't stop thinking that the whole mining process would revert back to home miners ^{[e.g. technological advancements]}.

For sure we dont know what is going to happen in the future and we are not sure how the market is going to react, but if we are going to have a basis for sure the market price is going to skyrocket just because of the low market supply since we will not be able to have Bitcoin or mine Bitcoin anymore at a higher rate like in the past years, we could expect the market price to increase, since we can already see the Bitcoin adaptation is increasing in many countries and even in my countries cryptocurrency is already getting popular a lot.

To be honest, I dont really know what is going to happen if all of the Bitcoin is already mined, is it going to skyrocket the market price? or bring it down? Or is it going to evolve? Also, a lot of platforms area already adopting Bitcoin in a few years new technology could be integrated with cryptocurrency and even now we dont really know if cryptocurrency has some kind of proof that it is going to stay as an investment after a few years. But for now, we already see how the market reacted to the Bitcoin halving event we can already see it on the Bitcoin halving timeline.

It's actually something to be concern about, because if Bitcoin failed to keep at a very good price by then it will spell a disaster for Bitcoin, I know miners will still get paid because of transactions but that is if the payment is going to worth running the machines, I mean the miners, think about it very well, the last halving must have greatly reduce the reward anyways and what will make this nothing to worry about is the future value of Bitcoin at that very last stage, maybe that's when the new Bitcoin will be realized, not many people are seeing this as something to be worried about but I do because it's a critical situation. It's good to be hopeful but I do hope that before the last halving happens Bitcoin would have been well-adopted and acceptable in every countries around the world or else.

A very long years from now. None of us intends to be here in 2138 to see the final halving. As it is, all we can think of are the people that will be fortunate enough to see live a long time. I'm not sure how many halving seasons we will experience before we return to the ashes from which created

The halving of bitcoin that we keep talking about and anticipating sometimes makes me wonder what the price of bitcoin would be like before most of us as forum members of this forum experienced our final chapter on earth after like 10-15 (some may witness less halving seasons) halving seasons.

The next question will be: What can we anticipate from the subsequent halving that each of us will experience over the course of the upcoming halvings? There is a chance that we might as well purchase one bitcoin for $5 million.

Really?!

A chance means a possibility, it may or may not happen and with the current trend of Bitcoin adoption, I think it is better to think and witness first to see Bitcoin selling at half a million than these too far from reality price speculation.


Well, the reward of miners when the block reward becomes zero is dependent on the global adoption of Bitcoin.  Bitcoin become the alternative currency for global finances then there is a huge possibility that Bitcoin transactions can maintain the loyalty of miners since it is still profitable.  If not, then we can see the hashes of Bitcoin mining to be slowly diverted to somewhere else.

I wonder in what time of the future we start to see fractions of satoshis / vB in the main network? I know  right now that may sound ridiculous, but we're seeing fractions of Satoshi as fees in Lightning Network, so I think that is very probable to see the same thing on the main network.

I know that most of you don't want to think on bitcoin in terms of fiat but let me do that in this example:

Right now each sat represent (0.00026 $USD )

Lets to said that some predictions comes true and the bitcoin hits 1M per Coin

That means that every sat will represent 0.01 $USD  or just 1 cent of the fiat money,

At the rate of 1 sat/vB each single segwit transaction of 140 vB the fee will cost 1.4$ USD