Bitcoin Forum

Guys, I have a very noobish question. I've held off from posting it so far, but now I want to know as I want to make some purchases.

So, I've always bought graphics cards for mining, with a view to selling them if I decide to get out of bitcoins or once all the coins have been mined.

I'm at the stage where to increase my mining power, I need to grab some more boards, cpus, etc, and I'm running out of viable locations to actually put them. So, FGPA is the answer !

I'm looking at some BFL singles, but, (and here comes the question) what happens once all the coins are mined ? do these devices become redundant, or can they be used for other purposes, and other virtual currencies ?

Thanks !

By the time the coins get anywhere near being all mined, 800mhash will be unprofitable anyway.

Somewhere in november the block reward will go from 50 BTC to 25 BTC.
Somewhere end of 2016 it will go to 12.5 BTC.
Somewhere end of 2020 it will go to 6.25 BTC.
Etc...
IIRC somewhere in 2200 the reward will go to 0 and the miners only earn bitcoins from the transaction fees.

What will exactly happen to difficulty and price when difficulty halves does nobody know.
My guess some people will stop mining so the difficulty will go down and price up, but it will correct after some time.

GPU mining is already not profitable in UK due to electricity costs.

For some ... not others ;)

thanks for the replies :)

I don't pay electricity so it's not that bad. But FPGA is the way forward for me now :)

Mining will always be necessary to confirm transactions, and can continue beyond the cessation of the block reward. Once the block reward stops, you can still make blocks by mining them, but they won't have an inbuilt value other than the transaction fees that you choose to include.

Same here in the Netherlands if I have my computer on for just mining.
But if my computer uses 200W during normal use and 300W during normal use + mining, then mining can be profitable because it's 3 times cheaper.