Bitcoin Forum

I know this question have been answered before but still i would like to know with all the new investor in big mining central,i would like to know if we will reach the mining final sooner than the early calculation estimated.

guys keep it simple,smile and cheese :)

The estimate is 2140 based on the block reward halving frequency of four years.

The intensity of mining (hashrate) has (virtually) no impact on the rate at which bitcoins are mined. BTC are currently mined at 25 BTC every 10 minutes, the reward halving every 4 years (next in 2016). I believe this runs until ~2140 AD.

Well That's a really long long time , we would be all dead by then :o Let's hope that Bitcoin will live ;)

Block   Reward Era   BTC/block    Year                   Start BTC             BTC Added   End BTC                    BTC Increase   End BTC % of Limit

840000   5   3.12500000   2024.978   19687500.00000000   656250.00000000   20343750.00000000   3.33333333%   96.87500011%
1050000   6   1.56250000   2028.971   20343750.00000000   328125.00000000   20671875.00000000   1.61290323%   98.43750011%
1260000   7   0.78125000   2032.964   20671875.00000000   164062.50000000   20835937.50000000   0.79365079%   99.21875011%
1470000   8   0.39062500   2036.956   20835937.50000000   82031.25000000   20917968.75000000   0.39370079%   99.60937511%
1680000   9   0.19531250   2040.949   20917968.75000000   41015.62500000   20958984.37500000   0.19607843%   99.80468761%
1890000   10   0.09765625   2044.942   20958984.37500000   20507.81250000   20979492.18750000   0.09784736%   99.90234386%
2100000   11   0.04882812   2048.934   20979492.18750000   10253.90520000   20989746.09270000   0.04887585%   99.95117198%
2310000   12   0.02441406   2052.927   20989746.09270000   5126.95260000   20994873.04530000   0.02442599%   99.97558604%
2520000   13   0.01220703   2056.920   20994873.04530000   2563.47630000   20997436.52160000   0.01221001%   99.98779307%
2730000   14   0.00610351   2060.913   20997436.52160000   1281.73710000   20998718.25870000   0.00610426%   99.99389658%

actually,all bitcoin will be mined soon

Interestingly, it will take more than 30 years to mine "the last" bitcoin.

The 20,999,998.9769th bitcoin will be mined at block 5121610 somewhere around the year 2106.
The last block reward will mine the 20,999,999.9769th and will occur in block 6930000 somewhere around the year 2140.

That means it will take nearly 34 years to mine that last full bitcoin.

it is an incredible thing,while today we have 25 new bitcoins every 10 minutes  :o
we hope bitcoin is more valuable in that days

yep, get em while they's cheap.

+1 ;) there is a long road yet for BTC, ppl should understand it and start to care about invest on it...



lol i was thinking arround 2040, 2140 is just awesome...

Until quantum mining is perfected, difficulty should be able to adjust for network hashrate increases.

It will be more valuable. 90% of the Bitcoin will be mined before 2070, someone can calculate a precise year?

I thought it was 2138 or 2139 since it is suppose to take 140 years from jan 2009

This is not true. The network difficulty is reset every 2016 blocks so that if the hashrate that was being used the previous 2016 blocks continues to be used (and the same level of luck is realized) then the next 2016 blocks will take exactly two weeks to be mined.

Every time the difficulty rises, it means that the previous 2016 blocks took less time then 'expected' to be found.

It is really not possible to know with any kind of certainty when the last block with a block subsidy will be mined as this is largely dependent on the difficulty between now and then

Another answer may be "never".

If bitcoin price rises over time, the number of decimal places may extend to accommodate smaller payments.  Each such extension increases the time before the block reward halving will round down to 0.0000......0

This can be a natural consequence of "lost or destroyed" coins, which increase the scarcity of existing coin and thus also perhaps the price of them.  So this can in principle continue for so long as there are people exchanging bitcoin with one another. 

if nothing drastic is canged in the Protocol then NO it will still be (I think it is) 2040 and only 21 million mined. that was how it was set up.

Bitcoin mining is loosing it's popularity recently... So it might take some time...

Its impossible to know this, as the difficulty increases, miners might go away, so it could be anytime within the next 100-200 years.
Expected is 2150 though/.

Moving the decimal does not change the number of existing bitcoin, only the divisibility of them.  A transaction (like a couple pizzas) that was once 10000 bitcoin could now be .01 bitcoins.  If by 2140 a couple pizzas is 0.00000000001 bitcoins, there will be no way to order them unless the we go to more decimals.  It isn't a very drastic change after all, and very possibly necessary.

If 50 -> 25 -> 12.5 -> 6.25 -> 3.125 -> 1.5625  -> 0.78125 takes 24 years, or about a generation with halving every 4 years, then if the number of significant digits increases by 4 faster than every 50 years...  it could be forever until there are no more block rewards at all and that last bitcoin is never completely mined.

That doesn't change anything : wikipedia bitcoin mining

Let's keep things in perspective. In 10 years 95% of bitcoins will be mined. The rest will be spare change and less and less relevant to miners for the next 100 years.

Transaction fees will be the main incentive for miners.

My guess ... 2138, because the difficulty change slightly lags the hashrate increase.

Never, there will always be a little block reward available everytime a miner solves the block hash.

The vast majority of bitcoins (99%) will be mined in 2140 or so, we'll be all long gone :(

I dont think it would be mined by then, even after all the estimates. A lot of miners would give up at low rewards .

Oh dear... Looks like many still don't understand the basics...

1. The vast majority (99%) will be mined in 2033 (give or take a year). About 100 years before 2140 ;) https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply)
2. Around 2140 the block reward will indeed go to zero. The thing is that it would be less than 1 satoshi per block, so they rouned that to 0.
3. If there are more miners the difficulty goes up. Less miners, the difficulty goes down. This way the supply remains constant.
4. The transaction fees will replace the fixed block reward. Miners get that today, but it's less than 1% compared to the block reward. So it's not included in calculators... In theory with wider adoption there will be more transactions and more fees collected.

More specifically, the last bit will be shifted out of the integer.

The current block height is divided by 210000 and the decimal portion of the result is thrown out.  The resulting integer is the number of "halvings" that have occurred.

The initial 50 BTC block subsidy is stored as an integer. A right bit shift operation is performed on the block subsidy value. The number of halvings indicates how many positions to the right the bits should be shifted.  Any bits that are shifted to the right of the least significant bit position cease to exist.  New zeros are shifted into the most significant bit position.  The resulting integer is the new block subsidy.  Once the value has been shifted 33 times, the last bit will be shifted out and integer value of the block subsidy will be zero.

Never actually got into those details. Thanks for the lesson! :)

the gnome project is taking off, young pill is coming, we might live to see that day

You don't even have to go that advanced. Even stem cell technology will soon allow people to grow replacement organs for many parts of the body, though I would imagine only rich people would be able to afford it.

supposedly around 2143.

Given your statements all agree with and elucidate what I said, I don't understand what I wrote that is "not true" - can you clarify?

I believe that we will not be alive to see it

The part that is not technically true is this:


exton was pointing out that the difficulty is based on the average of the past 2016 blocks.  This means that, as long as the has rate is increasing, when the difficulty adjusts, it doesn't adjust enough for the current hash rate.  As such the blocks continue to occur faster than an average of every 10 minutes.  Furthermore, the difficulty adjustment doesn't attempt to predict how much more the hash rate will grow over the next 2016 blocks.  As such, the blocks start out faster than an average of one every 10 minutes immediately after the adjustment, and then continue to occur even faster yet until the next adjustment.

Of course, this all assumes that the global hash rate will increase continuously for the next 125 years.  It is far more likely that it will level off and perhaps even decrease at times (the most recent two difficult adjustments reduced the difficulty).  Since it is impossible to predict how much or how quickly the hash rate will increase or decrease in the future, it is impossible to say if it will take exactly 125 more years, slightly more than 125 more years, or slightly less than 125 more years.

If it took exactly 4 years between block halvings, then the previous one would have been in January of 2013, and the next one would be in January of 2017.

However, since the hash rate has been increasing and the block have been coming faster throughout the past, the previous halving occurred in November of 2012 (almost 2 months early) and the next halving is currently estimated to occur in July 2016 (almost 5 months early).  As such, it seems likely that the final block subsidy could occur as early as 2137 or as late as 2143.

OK, I understand now. But I did say "(virtually)" in the first place to account for the fact that the block rewards are not coming at an invariant rate of 10 minutes, in agreement with those of you outlining the impact of hashrate changes. To me "2137-2143" is "virtually" the same as 2140 from our vantage point in 2014.

My reason for doing so is that many times here I've seen people shouting about mining/hashrates as if they think more mining has a strong impact on the rate of supply, and thus the supply/demand balance, leading to price changes. It does have an impact as you point out, but it's a very small one in the scheme of things.

Exactly. And this is the theory behind having the block subsidy decrease over time. The idea is that after a certain point, the total block reward will stay the same even when the block subsidy decreases

Imagine if you could go back to 2009 and tell people that the reward for solving a block, come 2014, would be about 8000 USD.

They would laugh at you.

Come 2050, same may be true. That last 10% may be worth warehouses full of fiat.

Very true.

If difficulty will be increasing so fast that can be before 2100 easy..

just prove you're the dumbest in the room

I do not think that mining finish is near future. There are a lot of mining companies over there, and BTC future seems very good  ;D

yeah right now we are producing more than the normal amount of bitcoin that should be produced every day, based on 10 min block

yes but not soon.... still many years !

You are mistaken.

On December 2 , the difficulty was reduced because the previous 2016 blocks took longer than an average of 10 minutes per block.

On December 17, the difficulty was reduced again, because the previous 2016 blocks took longer than an average of 10 minutes per block.

As of now (block 334857), the average block time since the last difficult change is 11.12 minutes. which is longer than an average of 10 minutes per block.

This means that ever since the difficulty change on November 18, we have been producing less than the normal amount of bitcoin that should be produced every day, based on 10 min block.

nice information :)

Around 2140, but the reward for mining will be negligible much sooner. I guess in some decades.

I think we will mine around 70% of BTC at most in 2016.

Your math is incorrect.

50% + 25% = 75%

Therefore, by the time we reach the end of 2016 more than 75% of the eventual bitcoin limit will have been mined.

With the exception of the last couple of difficulty changes, it has taken much less then two weeks on average to find 2016 blocks, the same is true for the majority of the time since the difficulty first increased in 2009. Every time the difficulty increased by 10%, it means that the previous 2016 blocks, on average were found every ~9 minutes. Since additional mining power has been added to the network at a somewhat even pace (excluding the last ~month) the average block time has stayed at ~8 minutes for most of the year, however if the difficulty had not changed then the block time would have further decreased as additional miners were added to the network

Interesting info

It is why the 2140 year is not the reference to have, a more intersting reference would be the year when 90% of bitcoins have been mined or 95% or maybe 99%.

edit : created a similar thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=648560.0

If we are going to have 210000 blocks every 4 years, the first 4 years give us 50%, 8 years 75%, 12 years 87.5%, 16 years 93.75%, 20 years 96.875%, 24 years 98.4375% and 28 years 99.21875%.