Bitcoin Forum

If the network need miners to be supported. What will happen when all the 21 million bitcoins will be mined and no ones will be mining and supporting the network anymore?

I will personally buy every accessible Bitcoin, then dominate the world. ;D

The world ends. I guarantee you that you will be dead when that happens ...

the 21 million bitcoin will be mined in 15 years... I will be certainly not dead. Well I hope so!

Well, that's about 100 years into the future, so we can't say for sure. However, miners would still be needed to secure the network, as well as to process transactions, so the general conclusion is that they would live on the transaction fees. At this point, the transaction fees aren't much, but when there is no block subsidy people might be more willing to pay a fee in order to have their transactions processed.

Regardless of whether a subsidy is created on each block, the blocks must still be created for the network to function.

Is the network will need more and more miners to be supported?

More miners would be good from a security perspective, but the network would still function with few miners.

Cool thanks for answering.

The block reward continually halves; we will asymptotically reach the theoretical limit of 21 million. So yeah, you'll probably be dead...

You might want to recalculate that.  Technically we will never reach 21 million coins but it will be a lot longer than 15 years before the subsidy goes to zero.

Yeah but it will converge near to 0 in 15 years.

What happens if the BFL asic is real and an extra 10000TB/S is added in minining

The difficulty will go up to match the new speed and keep block production steady. And there is no need to worry that we will run out of difficulty levels; they can go to a hugely high number to match whatever new technologies can throw at it.

Rjk's got it.  When all the ASIC devices start reaching consumers (whether its from BFL or some other competitor) then the difficulty will rise accordingly.  At worst, the jump from 25 BTC to 12.5 BTC will come a few months sooner than originally expected.  It is likely that when ASICs start reaching consumers, we will see a few weeks where the time it takes the network to solve 2016 blocks (i.e. the # of blocks needed for a difficulty readjustment) will be shortened to a span of a few days rather than an average of 2 weeks.  But, once the majority of ASIC purchasers have received their devices, then we will be back to the 2 week average.

Stupid roundoff error.

To make this assumption come true, you would have to significantly increase the computing power over several retargets. My bet is ASICs will not accelerate the whole progress of getting to 25BTC block reward at all as they will not be available before that. Definitively not in an amount to compete with existing hashing power.

To have the jump "a few months sooner", you would have to have a constant increase of hashing power of 100% per retarget for two "few months".
Doubling network speed per retarget/week would take 2 few months to arrive few months early. As two months is the minimum to qualify as "few months" and "two few months" would be more than 16 weeks we would have to see 16 weeks of doubling that would end at about 655PH/s. Hmm … I wanna see that :)

A single T/H added to the network at the current moment would decrease time it takes to reach the next difficulty adjustment by more than a full day.  A full week would require a doubling of the network hash rate (~24-26 T/Hash).  A full month would require ~175-225 T/Hash.  This is easily forseeable.  

Let's say that the average miner has an output of about 5 g/hash.  If you take an average network hashrate of 13 t/hash, and divide that by 5 g/hash, you're looking at about 2600 miners.

Now, let's assume the average cost of a 5 g/hash mining setup is $4000.  In terms of ASICs, $4000 will get you approximately 120 g/hash (you can buy 3 of BFL's $1300 40/ghash models).

Now, multiply 120 g/hash (or .12 t/hash) by 2600.  You get 312 T/Hash.  And there you have it, the time it takes to reach the 12.5 BTC is decreased by more than a month.

Then, take into account all the new miners that will enter the picture in the next 4 years.  If the number of miners has reached ~2600 in the past 4 years (actually, it's been less than 4 years, and miners didn't REALLY start to enter the picture until the first quarter of last year), then it's reasonable to assume that the number of miners will at least double, if not triple, quadruple, or even more.

Let's say we have 4 times the number of miners by the year 2016 (2600 x 4 = 10,400), then we're looking at ~1.245 P/H.  Then, also take into account the declining cost of ASIC units over time, and this number could increase even more.

I think it's quite reasonable to assume the jump to the 12.5 BTC reward will occur at least 2 months earlier than anticipated.

Edit:  BTW, I think you meant 8 weeks = 2 months, and not 16 weeks = 2 months.

1) I thought you talked about the drop to 25BTC, not 12.5BTC
2) 16 weeks was correct. 2 times "few" months > 2 * 2 months > 2 * 2 * 4 weeks = 16 weeks

So there were only 2600 miners last year?


I thought we had a few hundred thousand miners now but it looks like we're probably under 10,000.

So I have 2 questions:

1) If I'm right and Bitcoin gets the ETF license, we should see a massive inflow of miners coming in and with ASICS getting so cheap and soon on real mass quantities, and not BFL "lie quantities", we should see a massive jump in difficulty.

So where do you guys see difficulty going next year if we get an ETF license.

And...

2) What do you guys see happening to the price of Bitcoin when there will not be anymore coins to mine?

It's hard to predict as that had never happened to before. 

Can we get a debate going about this, I'd like to have an idea since I've been accumulating ixCoin which is set to run out of mined coins in about 18 months. 

Thanks!

It's long since run out of value.  But your attempts to pump it up are impressive. I suggest you find something better to spend your time on.  Write it off and move on.

I thought the last coin wouldn't be mined until year 2140?

At least that's the number I've been telling my friends.

Found this : (bitcoins mined /day)

Halving 1 (2012) : 3600.00000000 #Halving was November 2012
Halving 2 (2016) : 1800.00000000
Halving 3 (2020) : 900.00000000
Halving 4 (2024) : 450.00000000
Halving 5 (2028) : 225.00000000
Halving 6 (2032) : 112.50000000
Halving 7 (2036) : 56.25000000
Halving 8 (2040) : 28.12500000
Halving 9 (2044) : 14.06250000
Halving 10 (2048) : 7.03125000
Halving 11 (2052) : 3.51562500
Halving 12 (2056) : 1.75781250
Halving 13 (2060) : 0.87890625
Halving 14 (2064) : 0.43945312
Halving 15 (2068) : 0.21972656
Halving 16 (2072) : 0.10986328
Halving 17 (2076) : 0.05493164
Halving 18 (2080) : 0.02746582
Halving 19 (2084) : 0.01373291
Halving 20 (2088) : 0.00686646
Halving 21 (2092) : 0.00343323
Halving 22 (2096) : 0.00171661
Halving 23 (2100) : 0.00085831
Halving 24 (2104) : 0.00042915
Halving 25 (2108) : 0.00021458
Halving 26 (2112) : 0.00010729
Halving 27 (2116) : 0.00005364
Halving 28 (2120) : 0.00002682
Halving 29 (2124) : 0.00001341
Halving 30 (2128) : 0.00000671
Halving 31 (2132) : 0.00000335
Halving 32 (2136) : 0.00000168

After 2060 less than 2 bitcoins will be mined in nearly 80 years.

With the current protocol, the last satoshi will be mined in block 6929999, approximately in the year 2140. But at that point we will not have 21M bitcoins, only 20,999,999.9769.

The minting will be completely insignificant a long time before that, of course.

(We have until 2049 to decide if we want to increase the precision, thus making the final amount closer to 21M.)

You listed the amounts per day. There are 1441 days in 4 years, so actually, 2563.4553 BTC will be mined after 13 halvings.

There are exchanges, strong being is reduced to keep stable. Additionally, there may be another forked for improvements to add up to 92 to suit the planet. The last bitcoin never be mined but close to the target due to exponential nature.

My bad , still that's around 0.01% (?) of the total number of bitcoins.

Pump what?

Hahhahaaa.

I could have sold and doubled my money last week (ixCoin) but I was actually adding as high as 9802, and I was buying large blocks.  I'm now a near 2% holder.


So do I sound like a pumper when I'm going around asking people if they have any ixCoin to sell?  I really want the price to stay lower a while longer but that's getting hard to do.

You've now twice said I'm trying to pump ixCoin.

Here's me adding at 9802 just last week.  With ZERO SELLS.  Is this what a pumper does after owning 2%?

Let's stop the silly chatter.




https://i.imgur.com/PeDtHML.jpg?1

So let me ask again, what will happen to the value of Bitcoin when There's no more Bitcoins to mine?  TIA

Transaction fees will still be mined
People with bitcoins won't want to see them become worthless so they will spend some % of their net worth to "secure the network"

miners will work for tx fees...

Right guys, I know the mechanics of it and the idea of mining for fees.

My question is, what will happen to the price of Bitcoins given there will be a sudden and sharp drop in supply?

Will it skyrocket even more or will it collapse given the real benefit to mining it will be gone?

This is why I brought up ixCoin, because it's set in fast forward to see what will happen to Bitcoin.  But I would like to figure this out before I keep adding more ixCoin to my portfolio.  It is my favorite coin but it is risky given nobody seems to know what will happen when those coins are all gone from the mining world.

I do not believe that mining difficulty or block rewards correlate to the fiat value of btc.

Mining rewards decline so gradually that any effect will occur long before the last satoshi is mined.

When the reward went from 50 to 25, what happened to the value as a result of that? Did it even matter?

I think the only way it matters is if mining is over-centralized and the fairness of the system is undermined.

It does indirectly.   The block rewards, or lack thereof, directly affects the supply which then affects the value of any fiat.

But if the bait to mine Bitcoin is all of a sudden gone, will people simply choose to go to a different coin which will reward mining and totally abandon Bitcoin?  That's the dilemma here.

Ok, so we don't have to wait over 100 years to find out - but that still doesn't answer the question.

And it does matter.  This is a fiat and the constant supply will simply die off.  Something of great effect will happen, but I honestly can't tell in which direction it will go.

I was hoping to skim some insight from some of the more senior guys on here or some of the guys who understand Bitcoin and coding much more than me.  But so far I have not seen any real insightful answers, just pure guesses which I have plenty of myself.

Thanks for your input!

There won't be a sudden and sharp drop in supply.  The largest nominal drop in daily new generation has already occured.  Ever subsidy cut going forward will have less and less of an impact.  Already today the effect of new coins on trading is minimal.

http://ixcoin.org/img/800px-Ixcoin_Inflation.png

Ok, great point.  And thanks for the good attitude.

Ok, then what do you guys think will happen in the case of other coins, such as ixCoin, where there will be a sudden and sharp drop-off in supply.

I'm not mining right now so its hard for me to see what I would do. 

What would the miners here do?  Would you guys keep mining ixCoin for its paltry fees?  Would you remove it from your list?  Would you dump the coins beforehand, or would you buy coins beforehand thinking the value will go much higher since there will be no more coins being minted.

There's a lot I like about ixCoin but the fact I don't know what will happen in 18 months does worry me a bit.

ixcoin will die.  It has no support, no infrastructure, no services, no merchant adoption.  The supply will go max monetary inflation to 0% inflation overnight.  If it was robust and heavily adopted it might be able to absorb that kind of shock but it isn't so it will do as well as a egg going from 50 mph to 0 instantly when it hits a brick wall.

That is the the kind of thing that would be useful to look into before heavily acquiring the coin.

What an interesting graph, man.

Why is there such an inverse correlation between ixCoin and Bitcoin when in fact ixCoin is printing much more coins and has way less users and miners while Bitcoin has a much larger velocity and less and less coins being minted.

This graph confuses me even more as I'd expect ixCoin's price to go the exact opposite direction, given its supply is growing at such a more rapid rate with near zero support and near zero velocity.

Can anybody explain this phenomenon?  Because I cannot think of any coin with such little interest with a higher current inflation rate that would chart like this against Bitcoin, the last few years.  And at such a consistent rate.


What's more odd, when Bitcoin went to $68 a couple months ago, ixCoin actually got cut in half and as Bitcoin doubled over the last 2 months, over 90% of the coins out there imploded while ixCoin went up some 30% higher relative to Bitcoin.

Once again, it simply makes no sense.


TIA!

Well, I have been looking into all these things, but there are no definitive answers. 

Your answers at least carry factual biased theories which of course worry me.  But I will stay invested in ixCoin because the ETF 2.0 theory of mine still feels right.  But I would feel much better if the expected outcome in 18 months would appear less bleak.

Thanks for your input.

The graph is on money supply not value. ixCoin HAS gone down if you look at it on a long timeframe.  Down by 99% or more.  In the short term pump and dumpers can easily make moves of 100% or more .... until the dump.  None of that has anything to do with value.


The money supply is well known and predictable for both coins and is based on the subsidy algorithm.  ixcoin money supply went up faster (i.e. higher annual inflation) because it was designed to do that.  Still both of those graphs are only an estimate as due to network growth blocks can be found faster than expected over a short period of time.

Ok, I've only been around for 4 months so I don't know what ixCoin was once selling at.  I can't trust graphs since so many show flawed prices, like $10 for devcoin.

But for the last 4 months, ixCoin has surprised me in that it has moved opposite thn the way I would have expected it to.

But I admit this could have been from outside factors such as pumpers or it could just be a bad case of confirmation bias.

This does worry me a bit as I've put over 30 BTC into it just based on the feeling bankers will want to do a second ETF and ixCoin would be a good fit either by itself or in a basket of alt coins. 

Transaction fees will go up, to replace the block rewards.

Right, but unless there's a massive network, these fees will be peanuts.  And even with Bitcoin, I doubt any fees will compare so the actual bitcoins one could mine.

In one year the % of miner compensation paid by fees for Bitcoin has increased from 0.3% to 2.5%.
http://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees?timespan=1year&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=7&show_header=true&scale=1&address=

Oct 2012.  
30 BTC per day in fees. 144 blocks per day.  
Average fees per block 0.21 BTC.  
Subsidy per block 50.
Total miner compensation per block 50.21 BTC
Fees as a share of total compensation: 0.4%

Sept 2013.  
90 BTC per day in fees. 144 blocks per day.
Average fees per block 0.62 BTC.
Subsidy per block 50.
Total miner compensation per block 50.21 BTC
Fees as a share of total compensation: 2.5%

This trend has been continuing for a long time.  If we look back further to say Oct 2011 fees were ~ 0.02 BTC per block or 0.0004% of total miner compensation.

The rise in fees as a share of total compensation is due to three factors
a) avg fee per tx.  while the min fee has gone down by a factor of 100x the % of tx paying a fee (any fee) has increased
b) number of tx per day/block.   ~ 100 per day in 2009, ~ 400 per day in 2010, ~5,000 per day in 2011, ~18,000 per day in 2012, ~45,000 per day in 2013
c) the block subsidy decreasing from 50 BTC to 25 BTC (and will decrease to 12.5 BTC in 2016).

As long as those trends continue it is possible that fees will be more than 20% of miner revenue not in a 100 years but by the time of the next subsidy.  As an example.  TX volume in 2016 is 5x higher than today or 300K tx per day.  Average fee per tx is 0.004 BTC (double today).  Block subsidy is reduced to 12.5 BTC.   That puts fees per block at ~4 BTC, the subsidy is 12.5 BTC for total miner reward of 16.5 BTC.  Fees are 4/16.5 = 24%.

20%?

But the fees in the end have to be cheaper and more efficient than banker fees.  So given the difficulty will reach some mind numbing number, how much then can a miner expect to earn mining bitcoins, in real dollar terms?

So if I have a strong ASICS miner and today I'm getting say 1 BTC per day, how much would a similar investment get me when there are no more coins?

There is a caveat:  people will be able to merge mine many coins so in that case, mining Bitcoin for even a nominal fee would still be a good incentive.

And in that case, people may choose to mine ixCoin when there are no more coins to mine given it doesn't cost anything extra to merge mine it along with Bitcoin.

Higher tx volume = higher tx per block = higher total tx fees per block.  Even if the fee per tx remains low.  Measuring it in dollars makes no difference.  If fees are 20% of miner total compensation then are 20% of the total compensation in BTC or USD regardless of the exchange rate.

Fees per tx don't have to be high for the total revenue to rise.  As a complete hypothetical in USD terms today miners collect (collectively) ~$180M USD in combined fees and subsidies.  PayPal has a tx volume of ~50 tps and today Bitcoin has a tx volume of ~0.6 tps.  If Bitcoin grew to be as large as PayPal and the average fee per tx was $0.02 that would be $31B a year in miner compensation or >150x higher than today even if the subsidy was zero.


Not possible to say.  How many tx will there be per block 100 years from now?  However if we look forward just 3 years and say IF tx volume keeps growing, and % of txs which are paying grows, and the block subsidy is halved then the % of miner total compensation will rise.  Even if the % of tx that pay a fee doesn't increase AND tx volume doesn't' increase after the subsidy cut rise fees be ~5% of miner total compensation.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=296217.0


http://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees?timespan=180days&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

Ouch yeah that will throw the average off.  :)  If we exclude the last 10 days then average fee per block in Sept was 0.28 BTC per block or 1.1% of total miner compensation, not as impressive as 2.5% but still fees as a % of BTC revenue tripled in a year.   One interesting note is excluding those accidental high fee txs, the average fee per tx in BTC terms actually declined.  That makes sense because the min mandatory fee was reduced 80%.  An interesting factoid is that compared to a year ago a higher % of tx are paying a fee which IMHO is a good sign.  So more txs, lower fee per paying tx but greater portion of tx paid some fee.  In USD terms, fees paid to miners rose from $300 per day in Oct 2012 to ~$5000 per day in Sept 2013.

http://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees-usd?showDataPoints=false&show_header=true&daysAverageString=7&timespan=&scale=1&address=

ixcoin is worthless and I can't believe you really bought 30BTC worth of them.  You should dump them ASAP unless 30 BTC is nothing to you.  You're just part of the dump.

i havent read all the posts, but my reply to the topic is this.

unless governments change, more tree's are planted and we move away from fossil fuels. the least of our grandkids worries are what happens with the last mined satoshi

Wow man, I've never seen it put in numbers before.  That's incredible and I think it's gonna be even better than that.  So it's definitely worth it to invest in some ASICS gear.  If that gear pays itself off then anything made after that is free money.

Thanks!

I could dump them at a decent profit now but I cannot do that unless my view changes.  And no, 30 BTC is a lot of money for me right now since I'm not even working a regular job at the moment.

 Not to mention I wanna buy an ASICS rig which means I've gotta spend another 50 BTC in the next few days.

This crypto thing ain't cheap.  I sure hope I'm right on either the ASICS rig move, ixCoin or preferably, Both.

I think we'll find out before this year is over - as I feel we'll get news regarding a Bitcoin ETF by then.

1) we will all be dead a long time before

2) I guess miners will earn more BTC via fees than by block reward, this, within a decade

3) unless BTC worth nothing, and are'nt used anymore, there will always be miner to supprt the network.  I'm sure of that because I'll be one of those ;)

Now wait hold on.
I don't know much about about ixcoin but I do know its 13 in the coin market cap.
I also know that they will all be mined by 2015.
Don't short 30BTC worth of ixcoins, that sounds nuts.  :o
Just hold and don't let pump and dumpers get to you.
Also the ROI of ASIC miners is not a guarantee.
Just keep a cool head and don't be rash man. 

How could I short ixCoin?

I am being cool about this, I have been adding ixCoin for 3 months while everyone is telling me I'm stupid and crazy.  I see the coin much higher so I keep buying as I get more BTC.

Now I'm taking a break and just holding what I have (about 2%) cause I'm trying to buy some ASICS before we get ETF news and the lines go around the block and the ASICS prices through the ceiling.

Yeah sorry I skipped the "at a profit" part of your sentence.
I thought you wanted to sell at a loss.

So you think ixCoin can go up as we approach their final days of mining?  Should be interesting.

Well they got the supply part of the supply and demand equation down.
Now there needs to be services goods that you can trade for ixcoin for the demand part.

Well, I'm curious, what services did BITCOIN offer back in April, right before it shot up to $266.

Cause I'm looking around and I see coins like DGC, with tons of services and it's doing nothing for the coin's value.

So I'm thinking these crypto fiats are a different breed - and nobody seems to know how to make one increase in value consistently.

Oh it shot up after foodler started accepting bitcoins I think.
As for what could services could make Ixcoin appreciate in value...
I don't know. Get it on coingas?

While i agree services are great to have, I don't think services had anything to do with Bitcoin hitting $266 and I think the exact opposite happened - the coin shot up, everyone took notice and that's when services exploded.

What this means is that you could take a coin like ixCoin and reverse engineer it to be much more valuable.  It takes money to do so and that's why it would be a great coin for a second ETF.

Any experts have a better idea yet what will happen to Bitcoin, or ixCoin once the 21 million limit occurs?  TIA!

It will be slow process. There will be fewer mined coins but I believe mass adoption will create more transaction -> more fees -> so miners still will have motivation to do their work - keeping chain save.

All of our Bitcoins will continue to go up in price.

All of your ixCoins are destined to be worth exactly zero.

No shit?

Then maybe you can explain to me why while Bitcoin has gone from $68 to $180 over the past 2-3 months, almost all alt coins have been killed, even that CrapCoin, Litecoin, while, during the same period, ixCoin has actually been up more than Bitcoin, on a % basis.

I can't wait to hear your brilliant explanation.  Thanks in advance, asshat.

Dude,  that is my opinion - the opinion of a totally random guy on the internet.  I am sticking to my personal opinion.  I have bet very heavily on my opinion by not buying a single ixCoin.  In a few years you can laugh at me from you yacht, or not.

Cool man, sorry for the attitude, thought you were mocking.

Well, is like to know why Bitcoin would continue going up and if so then why wouldn't ixCoin continue gong up.  I'm just looking for some informed answers but those are difficult to find.

You should diversify if you've got the ends.

Good luck!

More important to ask yourself why would ixCoin go up, not why wouldn't it go up.

And diversification involves investment in fiat.

Then why don't you ask yourself the same question about Bitcoin?  Or does Bitcoin have some secret intrinsic value which ixCoin lacks.

I only asked why wouldn't it go up since you said Bitcoin would go up when it stopped printing coins so if that's rhe case then the valid question is, why wouldn't ixCoin then also go up since it will stop printing coins in less than 18 months, way ahead of Bitcoin.

I have no idea why ixCoin would go up but not do I or you or anyone know why and how Bitcoin will go up when it runs out of coins, hence the reason for my original question.

An answer or even an educated guess would be nice cause all this circle jerking is not helping anyone.  Thanks anyway, but it looks like you don't even know why Bitcoin will go up let alone ixCoin.

Good luck!

ASIC will be used to mine Alt-coin. Then more and more Alt-coin will be in the market by that time..

Bitcoin has a pretty wide adoption and it can actually be used to buy stuff and it's in the news constantly.  It's a decent currency to bet on.  ixCoin has.... ?

A year ago Bitcoin didn't have any of those things.  It was just another scammer and drug dealer coin.  Forward thinking is required here.  But I agree there's 99% speculation on my part on this.

It will take us more then a decade to mine 21M, so who knows.

Um... you can half it more?
Can't the 8 decimal be increased?

Yes. It won't happen for mining though. It will only happen if trading justifies it, but off the chain transactions can already be done sub Satoshi, so why bother? In order to have billions of people trade in bitcoin you need to go off the chain anyway so even for trade there is no practical benefit of more decimals. If by that time a Satoshi would still not buy you a meal, people wouldn't bother changing things as fees will buy the miners many meals if Bitcoin survives to that date.

Edit: My assessment about fees might be inaccurate. There is also a possibility of mining turning into an expensive effort with no reward from the ordinary bitcoin users, run only by those with high stakes in Bitcoin merely out of their own pockets.

If no mining no transactions. Bitcoin will die unless some type of new reward for mining. 

You're off by an order of magnitude.

It will take us more than a century to mine 21M.

(Actually, we'll never mine 21M, the maximum will be 20,999,999.97690000)

(Actually, it'll be a bit less than 20,999,999.97690000 due to an issue a few years ago where a miner failed to mine the appropriate number of bitcoins)

That won't get you past 21M.

Furthermore, it isn't easy to increase the decimal places.  It is hard coded into the protocol the way it is right now, and would be a forking change to the protocol. 

Everyone would be Chasing after the transaction fee then.

More like a century but who is counting?

That's right, it will be over a century so then why do I keep seeing 2033 all over the place?  I've seen reputable sites quote 2033 or something like that?  Is it because the hashrate is always 2 weeks ahead and during those 2 weeks, due to a exponential climb in the hashrate and the difficulty lag, the reward scheme goes from 10 minutes to around 5 minutes and in theory that could even go under 1 minute for certain periods of time so people then may be guessing that the 21 million will in fact but totally mined in another 20 years?

I don't know, it's the only thing I could think of and I do find it odd that Satoshi made it go through the next century - I mean, what's the point of that? 

If someone can clarify why I've seen so many people say Bitcoin will mint all the coins sooner I'd appreciate it.

First of all, if the block time goes down to 5 minutes instead of 10, that would imply that a 100% difficulty increase is needed. So far the highest we've had since the onset of the ASIC-age was the most recent one, 46%. So while block times are accelerated compared to the target of 10 minutes, it's not nearly that dramatic. And the general expectation is that the difficulty growth will slow down eventually, probably next year, and with it will come block times much closer to 10 minutes on average.

I'm not entirely sure why 2033 is coined as a year where all coins have been mined. It is factually wrong. What is true and relevant is that the speed at which coins are mined will decrease considerably over the next decade. With a block time of 10 minutes, there's a block reward halving every 4 years. At that rate, 2033 is the 6th block reward halving and at that point only 1/64th of all bitcoins are still left to be mined. With all the accelerated block times we've had, it's quite reasonable to assume that 2033 will actually be closer to the 7th block reward halving, which means that at that point more than 99% of all bitcoins will have been mined.

Block rewards will continue to be non-zero until they fall below 1 satoshi, which happens around the 32th block reward halving, which will take place 128 years after the Genesis Block (not counting speedup in block times). However the income from block rewards will be extremely low in the decades leading up to this moment, hopefully they'll be negligible compared to the transaction fees.

Thanks for the clarification, that makes perfect sense.

Hahahaaaa.

I've decided, I'm going with BTC for the short term [3-12 months] and I'm going with ixCoin for the longer term.

There will be no real winners here in the long term as any riches you make will be digitized and fully controlled by the banks and the government and if you want to eat your Cheetos with this new-found wealth you're gonna have to forfeit your freedom, your religion and your life and submit to being chipped like a junkyard dog.

That there will be the toughest choice the masses will have to make.  Lots of crypto-tears are coming.

Some impatient and lazy person took a look at this graph from the wiki page and assumed that since the graph stops at 2033, coin creation must stop at 2033.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/File:Total_bitcoins_over_time_graph.png

They then spread this incorrect information to anyone that asked.  People believed the bad information they were receiving rather than looking it up themselves.  They then repeated it to others. And so on, and so on.

You'll also hear some people claim that coin creation stops in 2024.  That came from the same sort if misinformation when someone was too lazy an impatient to scroll down on this wiki page:

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

They saw the "Projected Bitcoins Short Term" chart near the top and assumed that since that chart stops at 2024, coin creation must stop at 2024.

Well we won't be there to see it happen, maybe our kids will see it in their lifetime...

Relax there is one benefit that is bestowed upon us by the mere existence of bitcoin: you can be your own bank.
Bitcoin is more than just another asset class.
The balance of power has shifted for the first time in the direction of the people. That is the main reason banks are so worried.

You think banks are worried?  Lol, is that why they haven't done anything to kill it?

One piece of legislation and the banks own Bitcoin and all of your assets.  It's gonna be that swift and easy and once you've gone digital there is no going back. 

My theory of why 2033 popps up again and again was that journalists assume that rewards below 1Ƀ won't work.


Why do you hope for transaction fees? I hope both will be negligible by any standard. Mining is a terribly misleading term and should in fact be called securing. There will be people interested in securing the network just because they have stake in it and not because they can harvest fees or block rewards.

We will reach 21m bitcoin when...

there are GUNDAMs and humans as pilot...

:D

I would love to live to see that day...

What will happen when the 21M bitcoin will be mined

our corpses will either be dust in the wind or worm feed..

miners fee's of the next century should be less of a concern then how we will spend our current investments on our bucket lists, this century

Because people are dumb.  Someone citing 2033 as the projected end of block subsidy is not reputable.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/File:Total_bitcoins_over_time_graph.png

The chart ends in 2033 so "obviously" so does Bitcoin.  Of course the source for that chart (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_Currency_Supply) explains the subsidy won't go to zero for over a century so anyone quoting 2033 hasn't done even a few minutes of self research.

The date the subsidy will go to zero on the 34th halving of the block subsidy.   That is ~132 years (~2138) after launch IF the network hashrate was constant.  However over time the network hashrate is rising so it will occur prior to that.  How much depends on what the average network growth rate is during the life of Bitcoin.  If we assume the average growth rate is 15% per adjustment period (unlikely to be that high) it would "only" take (1-0.15)*132 = 112 years, still over a century to go.

I believe alt-coins will gain market share from bitcoin in commerce once bitcoins becomes too valuable to spend.
Therefore a high value of bitcoin and low inflation will in the end lead to the stagnation of bitcoin as a medium of exchange (money) and instead make it more a storage of wealth, like gold.

Bitcoin is perfectly divisible it will never be too expensive to spend.  People may hoard it when the short term price appreciation is greater than their desire for goods/services but a stagnation of price would be the perfect time/reason to spend.

Gold is an imperfect unit of currency because small amount of gold are very difficulty to effectively buy/sell/trade/spend.  Bitcoin doesn't suffer from that problem.

We will be dead wheb that happens. See the difficulty chart

BTC will lose all value by then.

We'll be dead, who cares. :o

The commission fee will keep the market up

Nobody knows what the commission fee will be.

We will see much sonner, with the block halving every 4 years it wont take long to see... Maybe in 20 years block reward will be much less than fees...

Things will be interesting long before. Already now people add fees for almost no reason at all. Many people desperately wait for the first full blocks and a year later full blocks will be the norm, so to get a transaction through you will have to compete for the space. (Unless, what I wrote some posts above, off chain is standard by next year but never mind :) ).

20 years = 5 halfings = 25Ƀ / 2^5 = 0.39Ƀ reward. With no need at all we now have on average 0.2Ƀ in fees per block.

2⁵ = 32

25 / 32 = 0.78125

25 / 32 != 0.39

Oops. I better don't mention that I studied math ;D
My gut feeling was "ah, 20 years, rewards will be irrelevant by then."
My wrong math supported that less clearly than I had expected due to my off-chain-assumption.

Yeah, I better had not posted that :(

Satoshi is a good mathematician / programmer - but he/they suck at basic economics.
If they had a real economist in their group they would have made the inflation curve of bitcoin much different from what we have today.
I like bitcoin, but I hope we get a new altcoin that is something between gold and fiat in terms of inflation.
Or even better: a coin with unlimited inflation that enables IOU trading over blockchain so that the blockchain don't become an asset for speculation, but rather a tool for trading OTHER assets.

Maybe he or they had something else in their mind

Precisely.

Like mass hysteria brought on by the thought of riches for every fool and $10,000+ Bitcoin price.

The real global digital currency will be like any other fiat, with massive room for inflation which will take that fiat to zero just like 100% of the fiats before it.

Bitcoin is the bait and switch - everyone has been bated, now we just wait for the switch.

but when that will gonan happen, noone knows

Looking at the macro economic view all this is set to happen by 2015, my guess is September 2015.  The major currencies of the world cannot survive longer than that at the going rate.

So that gives you exactly 22 months to get your shit together.  Good luck!

The fee might be as close 25 BTC  if the whole world uses it on a daily basis... then we have never ending Bitcoin mining ....

than you will loose more than you can get

25 coins per block?

Where do you get this from?   Nobody knows what the fee will be.

But don't worry, whatever global currency they choose, it will be like any other fiat before it which means there will be mining forever - this whole limited coins thing is a joke and a game to create higher Bitcoin prices which in turn excite the lemmings so they embrace digital currencies that much faster. 

This is the sad effect of a shit-poor education system in the United States.

This has already been done.  See https://ripple.com

See you then and we will find out exactly who bet on the correct horse.

It should be really low unless the whole world treat it as a currency and use it on daily basis.. Otherwise.. its doom for miners...

Eventually it will probably not be feasible to use transaction fees to maintain network security and ironically it might have to be government that secures the blockchain.

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/876/how-much-will-transaction-fees-eventually-be/895#895

ontopic :

the system gets  a reboot ?  :D

i know what will be happen, we will all be dead :D