what happens when all bitcoins are mined?

[bitcoin_bagholder]

As other users have stated, when all bitcoins have been mined, the incentive for miners to continue will be transaction fees. There will need to be enough transactions going around or the price will have to be high enough for miners to continue while staying profitable, I assume.

I hope this answers your question!

I've been at this for over a year and never really thought about it.  So when all the blocks dry up, miners continue to mine workable hashes for which they'd get a piece of the transaction fee?  It just seems like something that would be done by mainstream businesses as opposed to miners.  Are miners currently mining for a piece of the transaction fee?  Seems like that's not something exclusive to when the coins dry up but something that would be going on all along.

Miners currently receive transaction fees. The consensus (or hope, take your pick) is that if Bitcoin is still around after all the coins have been mined, they will be worth a lot more than current value, earning miners much more value per transaction even if the percentage remains the same as it is now.

Pipe dream?

[DannyHamilton]

Miners currently receive transaction fees. The consensus (or hope, take your pick) is that if Bitcoin is still around after all the coins have been mined, they will be worth a lot more than current value, earning miners much more value per transaction even if the percentage remains the same as it is now.

Pipe dream?

The shutting off of new bitcoins will not be a sudden process.  It will happen very slowly over more than 100 years.

Right now, every new block includes 25 new bitcoins.

In the year 2016, that will change to 12.5 new bitcoins in each block.

Then approximately every 4 years after that, the amount of new bitcoins in each block will be cut in half again.

Therefore, it will be:

• 6.25 new BTC in each block after 2020
• 3.125 new BTC in each block after 2024
• 1.5625 new BTC in each block after 2028
• 0.78125 new BTC in each block after 2032
• 0.390625 new BTC in each block after 2036

And so on until it is only:

• 0.00000004 new BTC in each block after 2128
• 0.00000002 new BTC in each block after 2132
• 0.00000001 new BTC in each block after 2136

And after 2140, there will be no more new bitcoins created.  But at that time, the amount of new bitcoins created per year will drop from 0.00000052 to 0.0  That's not a very big drop.

Either the system will automatically adjust over time to the increasing percentage coming from transaction fees, or else Bitcoin will completely fail LONG before we ever get to the point where the last piece of a bitcoin has been created.