Bitcoin Forum

1)do miners process and verify transaction? what happens when all bitcoins are created, so there are no miners to maintain the system?

2)is it possible that the originator of bitcoins made a bunch of coins for himself before they became popular and others were verifying the code and creation of a limited number of coins? could satoshi have an unlimited hidden stash of coins?

Miners are compensated with both tx fees & the block subsidy (new coins).  As the block subsidy declines tx fees will become more important.  "Mining", block creation and verification will never stop.


No.  Bitcoin is a public ledger.  Every coin ever created is known any unknown coins would be rejected by honest nodes as invalid.   It is very likely Satoshi mined a lot of Bitcoins, how many is subject to some debate however for roughly the first year the hashrate on the Bitcoin network was very low, even a single average personal computer could have mined a small fortune.

Bitcoin is first and foremost an autonomous zero trust system. All Bitcoin nodes, not just miners verify all transactions and blocks and enforce the rules. This is part of what creates the incentives for miners to behave honestly.

Mining will continue forever (or at least as long as Bitcoin does).  The award of the initial bitcoins (subsidy) is only a small part of mining. Mining's primary purpose is to establish a decisive consensus on the ordering of transactions— the one decision the network must make which cannot be decided purely in an autonomous manner.  As the subsidy goes away mining will be supported by transaction fees.

The autonomous zero trustness of Bitcoin ensures that people couldn't have violated the rules anywhere in Bitcoin's past. When it introduce a new node to the network it obtains the complete history and validates it as though it were watching all along. Along the way it produces a summary which is uses to efficiently validate new blocks and transactions as they come in.  Because of this, auditing the source code is sufficient to be absolutely confident that the systems properties are as promised.

Man... hearing that just makes me churn.  Wish I took BTC more seriously before it boomed. Oh well. It's still kind of early I'd say.

Back to the first question.  When no more can be mined, how do we support mass adoption of the currency without it's value becoming too expensive?

Define "too expensive"?

Was about to ask that. :)

...and for the answer to these and other great questions, feel free to visit the "frequently asked questions":

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ#If_no_more_coins_are_going_to_be_generated.2C_will_more_blocks_be_created.3F