~2024 BTC reached 21M BTC, the miners will now be receiving the transaction fees without the generated BTC.
Will this be enough for the large scale miners to operate profitably? We do not know the energy costs in the future, but a guess is that they will not be lower than today. (Maybe some of the mining farms will have solar panels on the roofs?)
On Dec 22nd, 2017, the mempool size was at it's largest level which sent the average transaction fees to a all time high. The people that were on the bottom of the mempool needed to wait quite some time to have their BTC transaction completed. Will this be the scenario in 2024? High transaction fees which will incentivise the miners to continue operations?
Or will it be unprofitable to run a mining farm with low transaction fees? If that is the case, BTC will just have smaller mining operations which may slow down transactions?
With all of the 'alt' coins around, maybe they will be the choice for transactions? (Anonymity, low transaction fees and fast confirmations)
We are a long way away from 2024, the market will always lend somewhere that works in one way, and by that I mean miners will feel fairly rewarded and transaction costs will be fair as well. Often times we stray from that but ultimately we come back to it and that's in large parts thanks to the great developers who are always innovating when it comes to bitcoin.
