Bitcoin Forum

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The last coin is mined just like the first. After that rewards come from transaction fees.

You can't have the last full Bitcoin. The exact number of Bitcoins to be produced is 20999999.97690000

once bitcoins are all mined. it is turned into PoS! Ironic isn't it?

No its not. Miners will still create blocks, it will still require work to create them, thus its still PoW.


Rewards half over time, thus the total amount possible is 20999999.97690000 without a fork as was allready posted.


No, that would require miners to stop mining, thus transaktions to stop getting confirmed, thus bitcoin to die. Or a fork, but everything is possible with a fork. If there are no more rewards, the fees take over. There are plans to increase the blocksize [1] over time to allow more TX per block, thus higher "income" from fees.

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=813324.0

Actually, no ... it's not. The network is then sustained on transaction fees.


It is its own reward. Kind of basic. Of course, it won't be an entire coin.


Well, you've got that right - between the last fraction of a coin reward, and the transaction fees, it should cover the energy costs. I think the mining community will have figured out a just-marginal profit margin by then.


No. Well, not in the sense that all the bitcoins (slightly less than 21 Mill) will be mined. If nobody else is going to mine them, my descendants will.

Price of bitcoin will either need to go to astronomical level or hash rate has to go down by many folds factor down the road for mining to continue.

And yes, the last block will be mined even if bitcoin price go down to less than 1 dollar.

Agree.  The blocksize will be increased to solve the problem of the huge amount of TX. At that time, the Bitcoin goes to mainstream, and much more transaction fees are going to the miners to be incentivized to continue mining and secure the blockchain after the the last block is mined. 

the blockchain has a half life every 4 years there is not "switching" of protocols. but miners will make more of a demand that people add fee's (it will become complsary

in 140 years once it gets to 20999999.97690000 (thats when there is only a 1sat reward per block for that last 4 year period) it will stop producing a block reward. then miners will rely on fee's only as their subsidy.

using gavins idea of 50% increasing the block datasize limit per year. right now the block is capable of 2k-4k tx's, in 20 years 100k-200k tx's and in 100 years... well the sky is the limit.

i dont think worrying about what is happening in 140 years time is worth anyones brain power. we just need to concentrate on the next 5-25 years and let our kids figure out the following 25 years

very possible.
When the last coins is  exploited, tha price will ……， I  really can't imagine

If a block now is capable of 2k-4k tx's and the blocks grow in size by 50% per year then, in 20 years, a block will accommodate:
100 years would yield roughly 800P-1600P tx's (about 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 tx's).

My idea is so.

oops 10 years= 100-200k, (over 50mb a block in 10 years)

Last bitcoin is estimated to be mined in 2140, I think my grandchildren might be able to see that last coin.

By the time it gets to the place where the last coin can be mined you wont need to worry about it if you know what i mean ;)

I cant even imagine what the price of bitcoin will be by then!

Of course not, because the real target is only 20999999.9769 BTC
Or they add more block so it's possible exact 21000000 BTC

But, who would mine with tiny reward & extreme diff.9
And i hope bitcoin not become PoS / something else  :( because miner only rely on tx fee
Expect, bitcoin price in future is high / all pool miner increase tx fee

dont worry it wont b POS.

POS is to distribute coin to whoever already has coin and has no relation on speed/security of making blocks.
EG mark karpeles can grab 5% of any fee subsidy just with 1 raspberry pi connected to his hidden stash.

mining will continue with current POW. but when there are 2.5 billion transactions per 10 minutes just a 1 satoshi fee would still be 25bitcoin subsidy.

although miners are getting greedy now, pushing people to add fee's when 25btc is adequate. (if they were not stupid to sell at a loss, and hoard instead) we would see a small demand that in 2 years time when the reward halves the price of bitcoin will jump, to compensate the halving. and we might see a 1% increase of fe demand as a bonus. so as long as miners dont start demanding 12.5bitcoin in fee's in 2 years, but a 0.125btc total per block (0.00005 per tx average) which as more tx's are allowed per block, this decreases the fee per tx rate, but increases the total tx per block due to transaction volume increases, we should be fine.

all depends on miners greed

Ah, I see.  No problem.

By the way, Gavin did mention the idea of having the growth end in 20 years here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=813324.msg9145004#msg9145004) in A Scalability Roadmap (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=813324.msg9106347#msg9106347).  The question of a desirable ultimate transaction limit was raised here too (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=813324.msg9148781#msg9148781).

I wonder what size mining countries (as opposed to the mining farms we see today) and what expense will be seen - all to mine those last 4 years of satoshis!

"YES I MINED A SATOSHI!!!"

Also remember difficulty can go down as well as up. We had a difficulty change of 1% a few days ago, apparently miners left the network at the same rate as new ones came in. The last satoshi of the last bitcoin will be mined approximately 10 minutes after the next to the last one.

That's how difficulty works. As long as there are 2 people mining with 386sx computers, a block will drop every 10 minutes.

C

correct me if I'm wrong but wont the last block reward be a single satoshi? (plus fees)

There. Is. No. Last. Block.

But to answer your question: Yes the last reward that is not from Fees will be 1 Satoshi.

so by the time this happens, bitcoin will be a worthless currency and transaction fees will be enormous  :o

never said there was.  :)

Yes, all things are possible.

Actually, yes, I think it is rather probable. Given our technology curve could very well create an abundance society which makes currency obsolete before 2140.

Hahaha!! That's one way of putting it.
Hopefully there will be more reward in fees than the lousy Satoshi of new BTC!

Reality is that there will be so many transactions that the transaction fees will far surpass the fresh BTC very early along. (As in within the next 50 years, my guess.)

Wow!

Just wow!

There is so much misinformation and misunderstanding and just plain incorrect statements in this thread, I don't even know where to start correcting them all.

Everyone who *thinks* they know how this works and has made a statment based on their belief needs to go get educated before they answer any more questions for anyone on this forum.  You are just spreading misinformation and confusion.

This includes:
Devin Chow
R2D221
lucky88888
shorena
jbreher
trader001
franky1
chenka563
Fioraver
sandykho47
fryarminer
Bitcoin Magazine

Some of you were just a little bit wrong.  Some of you seem to have made up entire protocols in your imagination and are now pretending like your imaginary protocol is Bitcoin.

I wonder how much the last Satoshi will be worth, and if it will be made into a coin as a collector's item? Maybe a great great grandkid of Mike Caldwell will make a famous coin!  

SWEET!! IM A RETARD!!

What did I say that was wrong?

In general, the block reward is the total amount the miner receives.

It consists of the sum of block subsidy plus the sum of the transaction fees of all the transactions included in the block.

Therefore, there will be no last reward, unless bitcoin eventually dies, and in that case it is impossible to know how big the last reward will be.

I assume that you are actually asking about the last subsidy.

If that's what you meant to say, then you are not wrong.

As a matter of fact the last 210,000 block subsidies will all likely be 1 satoshi each.

When you said this:


You implied that the only thing the miner would receive for solving a block would be a single satoshi.

The miner won't say: "Yes, I mined a satoshi!"

They'll say: "Yes, I mined lots of transaction fees!"

Why the hell does anyone care what's going to happen in 2140? Are you a vampire planning your future retirement?

To me that's like watching your child being born and as the head pops out you try to figure out when the baby's grandchildren are going to die.

Ok, yeah, I guess I wasn't concentrating on the transaction fees. But I can still say someone bragging about mining a Satoshi!

Like I said:

"Some of you were just a little bit wrong.  Some of you seem to have made up entire protocols in your imagination and are now pretending like your imaginary protocol is Bitcoin."

In your case: just a little bit wrong.

There are many reasons. Country regulators for example care about what would happen after the last bitcoin has been mined.

Hi Danny - I've learned a lot from your posts over the years. So much that I consider your statements semi-authoritative, pending evidence to the contrary.


I wonder if you might take the time to set me straight. I have made a couple of assertions in this thread. From a brief review, all I can detect that clashes with your statements is my use of the term 'reward' to indicate the coinbase reward, where you use the term 'subsidy' (you use the term 'reward' to refer to the sum of your 'subsidy' plus our shared understanding of 'transaction fees'):


I thought my usage made the distinction clear, so it must be the term itself for which I am being called out? If so, where is the authoritative glossary of 'approved' bitcoin terms? If not, what other errors have I committed?

Thanks!

Ok, here's a likely outcome: Bitcoin is the way of the future and businesses take over development, perfect the PoW security system and house huge transaction servers to completely erase transaction delay.

Here's another one: WWIII happens 100 years from now and we are all thrown into the dark ages.

And another: The child is just becoming a toddler and an ogre kills it as it's taking its first baby steps.

I just don't think there is any use in looking at that right now. Anything the powers that be like Andreas say to regulators will be the letter of the currently written code (which is subject to change within the next 120 or so years). I still think the most likely outcome is that businesses around the world control transaction processing. It will probably be more decentralized than it is today.

Not that I can answer for Danny, but his corrections often remind me off my Math Profs. A lack of precision can be considered false and I value these corrections especially since english is not my first language and I indeed missuse words in a way that lacks said precision. I dont think its a specific list of words that is acceptable, but any words that are able to express the different concepts of fees and the subsidy for the fees while bitcoin is still young.


@ jonald_fyookball: Sorry I missread. Probably because I read "last block" a few times before.

jbreher,

Much like fryarminer your mistake is rather slight.  It might even be considered to be excessive by some for me to say that you were "incorrect".

Specifically when you said:


Due to a bug in some mining software early on, there were some blocks where the block subsidy was not claimed by the miner when they solved and broadcast the block.  Those bitcoins were therefore not "mined" and now cannot ever be mined.

Although it's generally unlikely, there is always the possibility that some miner in the future could also choose (either intentionally or accidentally) to broadcast a block that does not pay them the full subsidy that they are due.

As such, it is already guaranteed that LESS than the originally intended number of bitcoins will be mined, and there is a possibility that LESS than the intended remaining amount of bitcoins yet to be mined will be.

Mea culpa. Knew it, forgot about it, didn't think to account for it. Thanks.

Example: The coinbase transaction of block 124724 claims 49.999 999 99 BTC where the subsidy was 50 BTC and the total of all included fees was 0.01 BTC.

Of course, there's always the possibility that this block will be orphaned in an epic 3-year reorg, but that doesn't seem too likely.

If such a reorg happens, then I won't bother with Bitcoin ever again.

You shouldn't assume that Bitcoin will stay in the same form for its entire life. That almost never happens with anything. What version of OS are you using? Is it the same as the first one you ever used? Probably not, right? Changes to the code happen all the time and major changes can happen at any time. I just hope all future changes end up for the better and none of them end up splitting the users into two camps.

Really? Where did I blow it? (I forgot with rewards, didn't I, LF uses relative addressing in his talking)

The last block with rewards could be solved by a single miner running on a 386sx/16 chip if there was only one miner left in the network but it would still only take that miner 10 minutes on average since the difficulty would have sunk as other miners left the network.

C

Sure. And Bitcoin number 42.000.000 can be mined as well.
All it takes are a couple of lines of code changes.
You know like, "hey, deflationary is stupid, screw that".

And 100% consensus from everyone running a full node on the network, which is probably a lot more difficult to get than it sounds.

Sorry.  Didn't mean to include you in the list.  I've edited the list and removed your name.

It has been said that any fork to bitcoin that involves having a different number of maximum of coins to be mined would not be bitcoin but rather would be an altcoin

Restating what you said to ensure I understand you correctly, If everyone using Bitcoin agreed to make the horrible code change necessary to increase the maximum number of Bitcoins above the current 21m then Bitcoin would become an altcoin. I guess that depends on the definition of altcoin. I suppose you could think of it as an alternate of itself. For that matter, any major change, like PoW to PoS, would make it an alternate of itself. Those things would also make two very divided camps of users, some supporting the change and the intelligent ones. Increasing the quantity of Bitcoins erases one of the basic principals Bitcoin was founded on called "scarcity". Scarcity just means "in short supply" and is a value point for Bitcoin.

A 3-year reorg would mean I effectively lose all my coins (since I bought them 2 years ago). Also, I do undersand that the protocol changes (and I know about the hard forks that have already happened), but losing my coins because of changes in the protocol goes against everything Bitcoin promises.

Many people think that bitcoin must retain several "features" in order to continue to be considered "bitcon" both the 21 million limit and PoW are among them. If the consensus was that some amount more then 21 million coins could be mined then the new altcoin could still be "name" bitcoin and could potentially be the largest crypto currency however would no longer be what satashi had created. This is regardless of how "good" of an idea either of these changes are.

You know that possibility is not very likely.




Yep, Bitcoin is whatever the people agree it is. Bitcoin, for good or bad, is already not exactly what Satoshi created because other people have already changed and updated the code. So far the changes have been relatively minor and for the better. Hopefully that pattern will continue.

Exactly, that was my point. It was kind of sarcastic. I have full confidence that it's astronomically improbable.

See, that's what I hate about written conversation, sarcasm is hard to present effectively. I'm glad you know that though. I thought you might be nuts but I was trying to be nice. lol

Technically i mean it should be yes. Even though block reward is low and difficulty is too high, people would still be mining for the fees. It might probably took a very long long time for that one final sat to appear.