Bitcoin Forum

As we all know BITCOIN mining will stop once the 21 million mark is reached. According to the information we have 19 millions coins were mined and now circulating. The remaining balance is about 2 millions to be mined. Why it is not possible to mine the remaining BITCOINS before 2140 when the 19 millions mined in just over 10 years?

Take note that it's not that miners will stop their work once all bitcoins are mined. Currently, miners get the newly generated coins and the transaction fees. At that time, miners will still get the transaction fees.


That's how bitcoin is designed. The initial block reward was 50 BTC and it's halved every 210,000 blocks.

It may worth mentioning that the total supply of bitcoin will be exactly 20,999,999.9769 BTC.

Mining will NOT stop then. You have misunderstood something.


Actually a big chunk of those coins is locked in wallets either owned by very strong hands (and will probably stay locked for many years to come), either lost forever. The real circulating amount is smaller.


Bitcoin block reward is MEANT to halve every ~4 years. That's part of how bitcoin software was written, and it's also something that makes the coins price rise (not the only thing, still..).

You can easily make your own fork of Bitcoin, make the block reward logic change (maybe the difficulty logic too) and mine those remaining coins even in a day if you want to. But that will no longer be bitcoin and will most probably have no value.

It's worth to note that we'd never reach exactly 21 million due to the 8 decimals limit; 0.0231 BTC deducted there. Also, there have been thousands of bitcoins that have been provably burned (i.e., block rewards which didn't include the subsidy or, less than subsidy, or mistakes in Script language), and right as well as probably thousands of bitcoins that have been lost non-provably.

Because of the difficulty adjustment. Read about it here (https://learnmeabitcoin.com/beginners/difficulty). TL;DR: the more the mining, the more difficult it is to mine a block, and oppositely, the less the mining, the more easier it is to mine a block. This ensures that every block will be mined in about every 10 minutes, regardless of the hashrate. Now add halving to the equation, and you get ~2 million coins until 2140.

We don't know when a miner will stop mining and it is more difficult to guess when all miners will stop mining Bitcoin.

If in 2140,  when all Bitcoin in 21M total supply is mined, Bitcoin miners can get enough mining rewards in transaction fees, they will not have reasons to stop mining.

Like in 2009, they can get 50 BTC by finding a block (not yet counting transaction fee), with a few cents in value but thry continue to mine it because inout cost was so cheap. In 2023 they are mining with higher input cost because they can get profit from mining. Same thing might happen in 2140 is my belief.

How is the 21M Bitcoin cap defined and enforced? (https://blog.lopp.net/how-is-the-21-million-bitcoin-cap-defined-and-enforced/amp/)

True. If some reports about mining companies are to be trusted, we can conclude that their recent mining profit is still negative, but they keep their business afloat by selling coins mined a few years/months before. I can't say for sure if this is a spin from the media or just business trying to deter competitors from competing on their business though.

At the end of the day, the market will find the equilibrium and some miners will definitely stop mining due to mining costs, the question is whether the security of the network is good enough to sustain the network when that does happen. Considering how the BTC hashrate keeps rising though, I doubt we'll see that happen in the near future. CMIIW.

The Bitcoin protocol calls for the number of BTC created every 10 minutes to halve every 210,000 blocks, in a process known as "halving".  This means that while initially 50 BTC were created every 10 minutes, today only 6.25 BTC are created every 10 minutes.

 Since the "halving" process is predefined and cannot be accelerated, the number of BTC created will gradually decrease over time until it reaches the 21 million mark.  Even if all the miners in the world focused on mining the remaining BTC, the process of reducing the number of BTC created every 10 minutes would remain unchanged.

I don't think that you need to wait till 2140, most likely in the next 3-4 block halvings, "almost all" bitcoin are going to be mined or at least 99% of it. And that 1% could take centuries to be mined.

So in this case, it might be difficult to get bitcoin decades from now. Supply are dwindling, but that 21 million might not be reach technically.

Miners who are newbies in Bitcoin mining industry and joined when price was around all time high and don't have enough (experience of course, I skip it) deep budget to cover cost in bearish months or worse borrow to buy ASICs, supplementary equipments to set up and operate their farms, will have to capitulate in a long bear market.

It's what we saw some times in this industry, miner capitulation. Fortunately, it is one of good signals that bear market mostly touches its bottom range.

Hash ribbons indicator (https://www.lookintobitcoin.com/charts/hash-ribbons/)

All known issues related to this subject have been solved so far.  Say US Government was able to secretly build enough mining equipment to double the current mining hash rate.  One day they plug all of them in and now mining happens two times faster.  BUT!  Every 2016 Blocks, mining difficulty is adjusted.  This means their strategy would only work for 2016 Blocks at MOST.

Then you have the Halving.  This solves another solution.  Even if a Block is mined every 10 minutes on average.  Halving the mining reward every 4 years means the process is slowed down in half every four years.

These two combined make it about impossible to cheat the system.  Sure.  The date this happens in the year 2140 is not precise mostly because a Block does not take EXACTLY 10 minutes to be mined.  Sometime it takes 30.  Sometime it takes only 5.  But average is 10 anyway.  So the year will be somewhere around 2140.

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Regards,
PrivacyG

What you will consider is the bitcoin mining hash rate global distribution we are having, are they adequately enough to evenly satisfy the demands on bitcoin supply, are there currently challenges facing this global hash rate on bitcoin mining, how many countries and geopolitical locations are we having bitcoin miners, are they much enough to satisfy the demand on the required rate, many things had to be considered here before drawing into conclusion.

First, let's talk about your writing and grammar. Your English is not bad but you should improve it, especially grammar that temporarily damages what you want to express. I can guess what you want to discuss but improvement should be made.  ;)

• Grammarly.com (https://www.grammarly.com/). I advise you to use this one together with Grammar book

Second, you misunderstand about how Bitcoin blockchain works, how difficulty is set up to retarget. Hashrate on the network can rise or fall but difficulty retarget algorithm is always in place to do its task every 2016 blocks (which is about 14 days).

Bitcoin network's Total hash rate (TH/s) (https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/hash-rate). Choose all to see how it has risen with time. Then see how Network difficulty (https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/difficulty) adjusted in history with some deep falls.

If you want to discover some reasons behind this (like flood season in China mainland, mining crackdown), explorer in my topic

• The history of Bitcoin difficulty adjustment (in percent) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5286453.0)

A cool tool for Difficulty estimator (https://www.bitrawr.com/difficulty-estimator) is helpful for you to recognize that Bitcoin network can operate fine with either increasing or decreasing total hash rate.

As others have answered, it is relevant to the block reward that is halved every 4 years. As more time goes by, less Bitcoins are released into distribution. It is not possible to change the block reward or accelerate distribution...it will follow its projected trajectory until it is complete.

Fun fact - Did you know that up to 6,000,000 Bitcoin might be lost forever? (https://www.tradingview.com/news/newsbtc:219cbecdb094b:0-six-million-bitcoins-now-lost-forever-why-this-matters/)

Halving is the reason mate, on every halving, the amount of bitcoin released to miners is reduced by half, so by this, I believe you should understand why it took just 10 or a little more years to mine 19 million bitcoin, but will several years for the remaining 2 million bitcoins to be mined, this is clearly because, the blockchain reduced the amount of bitcoin miners get, from now on, they are earning far lesser bitcoin than they earned 10 years back.

If I think about the early times of bitcoin, I think that 6,000,000 Bitcoins that are lost forever is a pretty good estimate. This makes me wonder if there would be a good and fair way to determine if a coin is „lost“ and therefore could be returned back into the mining reward pool. THis would make sure we would have steady rewards even when officially the block reward would be close to 0.

There is no need for miners to retire due to the halving.  While reducing the block reward may make Bitcoin mining less profitable, there are still many incentives to continue mining Bitcoin, such as transaction fees and the prospect of a long-term increase in the price of Bitcoin.

 Furthermore, Bitcoin miners are often large companies or groups of miners who have invested substantial sums in mining equipment and infrastructure.  These individuals may have a long-term view and consider the halving as an expected event in their business strategy.

Miners won't stop mining even if all the remaining supply is mined because miners are important which is the reason why your transaction is confirmed. If there's no miners then what do you think will happen if you send BTC to one of your wallets? Do you think it will get through?. It's not just the newly mined BTC that a miner receive but also the transaction fees that you paid when you create a new transaction. When that happens then transaction fee may increase since the only incentive/reward they will get is only transaction fees unlike right now where there's still BTC reward for each block mined.

The image below gives a clear reason why it will be very difficult to mine the remaining 2 million Bitcoin before 2140, because after each halving, the reward for mining is divided into half, of which the first reward for mining Bitcoin was 50 BTC in 2009, and 4yrs later after 2012 halving, the reward got divided into half I.e 25 BTC, and likewise 2016 and 2020 halving reward, including next year's halving which its reward is expected to be 3.125 BTC.

https://imgvb.com/images/2023/04/05/08b1061110f1a526855a46513bd5af4b.jpg

Why after next year's halving, the next are as follows;
2028 = 1.5625  BTC
2032 = 0.78125  BTC
2036 = 0.390625  BTC
2040 = 0.1953125  BTC
2044 = 0.09765625  BTC
2048 = 0.048828125  BTC
2052 = 0.0244140625  BTC
2056 = 0.01220703125  BTC
2060 = 0.006103515625  BTC

The rate at which new bitcoins are mined is not constant and is actually designed to slow down over time. This is due to the Bitcoin protocol's built-in difficulty adjustment mechanism, which increases the computational difficulty of mining as more miners join the network. This means that it will take longer and longer to mine the remaining 2 million bitcoins as the network grows and more miners participate. Additionally, there is a finite limit on the number of bitcoins that can be mined due to the way the Bitcoin protocol is designed, which is why mining will stop once the 21 million mark is reached. So while it is technically possible to mine the remaining bitcoins before 2140, it is unlikely to happen due to the decreasing rate of mining and the difficulty involved in mining the remaining coins.

It is estimation that is certainly not correct!

Estimation is based on many assumptions which can be true or untrue in reality. I made my estimation in the past and you can use similar methodology to make your estimations with latest on-chain data and UTXO bands you want to use.

• Investigate, assess news. Don't simply read and make wrong decisions (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5281598.0)

My estimation 3 years ago.

• https://hodlwave.com/. I used this site in 3 years ago estimation but it stopped updating information since 2020.
• Two alternatives
  
  • https://unchained.com/hodlwaves/
  • https://www.lookintobitcoin.com/charts/hodl-waves/

• Controlled supply (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply)
• Equivalent network time (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5331087)

Visually

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fp5ekRQWcAAmPS5?format=jpg&name=small (https://twitter.com/Peer__2__Peer/status/1629844105277722625)

Because everything has a schedule. But the schedule is not time-based but formula-based. So here is the formula as to why there is only 21 million in total supply and why the generation of new coins will last until around 2140:

https://i.imgur.com/RmrW6T4.png
https://twitter.com/DocumentingBTC/status/1564742835223633921/photo/1

In addition to this, each block is mined within 10 minutes more or less, so while the formula above is based on blocks, subsequent halvings and when the final Satoshi is mined are still predictable. Hence, the estimates that the next halving would occur somewhere in April or May next year and the last Sat to be mined in around 2140.

This is because of the block reward. Every 210,000 blocks mined, the block reward is halved. This means that the amount of bitcoins generated per block decreases over time. As the block reward decreases, the amount of bitcoins that miners can earn for their efforts is reduced, and thus the incentive for miners to continue mining is reduced. As a result, the rate at which new bitcoins are mined will slow down significantly over time until the remaining 2 million bitcoins are mined. This is why it is estimated that it will take until 2140 to mine all 21 million bitcoins.

I think it's impossible, but the core thing is that it won't change anything, since nearly all the BTC are already mined. IMHO tremendous increase in mining speed is a threat for altcoins, since some of them have very small percent mined at the moment.

When viewed from the level of Mining Difficulty As more miners join the network and compete to solve complex math problems, the difficulty increases compared to the previous stage when fewer bitcoins were in circulation. Although it seems feasible to mine the remaining 2 million bitcoins before the year 2140 based on the first 19 million mining timeframe.

Mining won't stop when all bitcoins are discovered and mined. These "miners" facilitate transactions as well and the fees we pay the network actually goes to their pockets, so with that being said the mining industry won't necessarily go out of business when all bitcoins are mined. They'd just be redirecting their focus on something else.

As for why it's going to take time before all bitcoins are mined, one thing that you have to keep in mind is that the difficulty for earning bitcoins through mining isn't linear. It's exponential. What took a few minutes/hours for people back in 2011, is now taking weeks and months for powerful asic miners of this day, I don't wanna delve into the maths of it and the complicated tech jargon but basically picture this:

You have the whole planet (internet) to mine gold on (bitcoin), as more and more gold are mined from the land, the less the supply is, and the harder it becomes to mine and earn the remaining gold in the Earth cause the area you have to work with didn't get smaller as you're mining more gold, it became bigger and thus more land (blocks) must be mined in order to find gold. That is basically how it works for the bitcoin mining industry.

Bitcoin mining now requires a lot of patience because at the current rate of Bitcoin mining, it is difficult to raise the mining cost. There are many bitcoin miners in the world, not one or two miners, and only a certain amount is mined for each block, so it is not profitable to mine now.  Yet many mine to fulfill their hobby. The supply and demand of Bitcoin is very negligible right now so it is a great opportunity for us to save Bitcoin for the future.  0.0244140625 BTC will be mining rate when we start living around 2050. Then the price of Bitcoin will skyrocket. And those of us who are now failing to save bitcoins will just be hollering then

As bitcoin miners, they want the opposite, reduce their mining cost and raise their mining profit. I am sorry but you are saying oppositely to the truth and what Bitcoin miners want to have.

If they are newbies, they can mine Bitcoin to get experience but if they are professional miners, they do Bitcoin mining for profit, not for fun, curiosity or to satisfy their hobby.

Bitcoin miners have to pay their costs like power bills, buying ASICs, maintenance, staff operations and more activities needed for mining. They can not hold all bitcoin they received from mining process.

You again used a wrong term. Mining rate, it is not a right term and the correct term is Bitcoin block reward. You must know Bitcoin miners receive bitcoin from block reward and transaction fee.

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