When 21 million coins have been mined.

[bitnanigans]

Still a long way to go before all 21 million coins are mined. In any case, once the limit has been reached, transaction fees should keep the network going.

[H.W.Z]

Still a long way to go before all 21 million coins are mined. In any case, once the limit has been reached, transaction fees should keep the network going.

your scenario is perfect but there is "if", if the bitcion's price is enough to satisfy the miner. When the 20M blocksize increase is implemented, What is the maximum fee collected by the miners? If 1K is charged with 0.0001 BTC, 20M can have 20,480K's transaction volume and can yield 2.048 BTC  earning for each block. It is just the best scenario that miners can get 2.048 BTC for each block if the block reward don't increase after 21 million coins have been mined. The price of bitcoin at that time is important factor.

[iram66680]

Still a long way to go before all 21 million coins are mined. In any case, once the limit has been reached, transaction fees should keep the network going.

your scenario is perfect but there is "if", if the bitcion's price is enough to satisfy the miner. When the 20M blocksize increase is implemented, What is the maximum fee collected by the miners? If 1K is charged with 0.0001 BTC, 20M can have 20,480K's transaction volume and can yield 2.048 BTC  earning for each block. It is just the best scenario that miners can get 2.048 BTC for each block if the block reward don't increase after 21 million coins have been mined. The price of bitcoin at that time is important factor.

Don't forget that a portion of the block is reserved for the free transaction and the actual earning may be much lower. The pool can easily set a minimum fee to add the transaction into the block too but there's no point. Given that there are no more new coins generated, the supply of Bitcoins could be very low while the demand is very high if it goes mainstream. There are other factors such as electrical fees, equipment cost etc to consider about. The operating cost may be much much lower than what you think.

[winspiral]

I'm sure many bitcoins are sleeping on accounts and will never wake up and die for ever with their owners...

[eerygarden]

So will our great great great great great grandchildren be protesting about immoral mining fees and calling for miners to be regulated?

[Q7]

While we try to answer the question, there are still many uncertainties at this point. Whether transaction fee will be enough to take over and become the standard network fee, it is probably is just a representation of the actual scenario of what we would like to have. I won't be around to see it but for me, I believe depending on the condition during that time, there's always options and workaround which can be implemented to change it.  

[cryptojumper]

So will our great great great great great grandchildren be protesting about immoral mining fees and calling for miners to be regulated?

How can miners be regulated? They will just turn off miners if not profitable and say goodbye. And what then? End of BTC? Miners keep this coin alive and their efforts must be rewarded. Use altcoins if you're sending dust amounts and complain about high fees

[iram66680]

So will our great great great great great grandchildren be protesting about immoral mining fees and calling for miners to be regulated?

Mining can't be regulated unless you are thinking of having majority of the miners excluding transactions from a certain address. I don't think paying a 0.00001 or even 0.001 BTC fee is immortal at all. In fact, I feel that it is a reasonably cheap fee in exchange for transparency, anonymity and reversibility. With increment of block size, the amount of fee per block would be significantly larger.

[roadbits]

Yes. With a maximum of 21 million bitcoins that can be mined, just imagine IF huge websites such as Amazon or eBay started to use them...21 million isn't even 1% of America's population! It will become very scarce eventually and 21 million is really a small number.

[Amph]

So will our great great great great great grandchildren be protesting about immoral mining fees and calling for miners to be regulated?

How can miners be regulated? They will just turn off miners if not profitable and say goodbye. And what then? End of BTC? Miners keep this coin alive and their efforts must be rewarded. Use altcoins if you're sending dust amounts and complain about high fees

no it does not work in that way, the whole network will never shut down, because the value will be always greater than zero, thus making mining activity always worth it, in the worst case it would reduce by a lot but noithing more

see how there are still died coins with a minimal network that is working, and they are nothing to bitcoin

[iram66680]

Yes. With a maximum of 21 million bitcoins that can be mined, just imagine IF huge websites such as Amazon or eBay started to use them...21 million isn't even 1% of America's population! It will become very scarce eventually and 21 million is really a small number.

That is why each Bitcoin can be split into 8 decimals. You can easily make 1 satoshi $1 but that would not be very realistic. More decimal place can be added if needed.

[eerygarden]

So will our great great great great great grandchildren be protesting about immoral mining fees and calling for miners to be regulated?

How can miners be regulated? They will just turn off miners if not profitable and say goodbye. And what then? End of BTC? Miners keep this coin alive and their efforts must be rewarded. Use altcoins if you're sending dust amounts and complain about high fees

I was talking in the sense that in the future miners require fees that are deemed extortionate to the average joe. Could this happen? Would miners have any say over the fees required once all bitcoins are mined?

[edric]

Just a newb question, what happens when the 21 million coins gets mined out. What will keep the blockchain moving after this point and just to confirm there will never be more then 21 million coins?

Please give me half a million of those when 21 millions have been mined  I thought the number should have been well over 50 million or so.

nah, having a much greater number would only delay the success of bitcoin, in the worst case scenario, where adoption will not raise by much and we will grow because of less supply dumped each day

actually it should have been lower, but when satoshi thought about the correct number, He also took into account the coins that will be lost

But to use it as a currency, and to make crypto-currencies competitive with the fiat currency, shouldn't it be much more?

[TibanneCat]

But to use it as a currency, and to make crypto-currencies competitive with the fiat currency, shouldn't it be much more?

from Bitcoin wiki

Bitcoin, however, offers a simple and stylish solution: infinite divisibility. Bitcoins can be divided up and trade into as small of pieces as one wants, so no matter how valuable Bitcoins become, one can trade them in practical quantities.

In fact, infinite divisibility should allow Bitcoins to function in cases of extreme wallet loss. Even if, in the far future, so many people have lost their wallets that only a single Bitcoin, or a fraction of one, remains, Bitcoin should continue to function just fine. No one can claim to be sure what is going to happen, but deflation may prove to present a smaller threat than many expect.

[bank of bits]

Yes. With a maximum of 21 million bitcoins that can be mined, just imagine IF huge websites such as Amazon or eBay started to use them...21 million isn't even 1% of America's population! It will become very scarce eventually and 21 million is really a small number.

That is why each Bitcoin can be split into 8 decimals. You can easily make 1 satoshi $1 but that would not be very realistic. More decimal place can be added if needed.

agree .actually there are too few bitcoin in existence, when the mass adoption will be complete you will see 21M is a low amount for 7 Billions of peoples

[Herbert2020]

So will our great great great great great grandchildren be protesting about immoral mining fees and calling for miners to be regulated?

How can miners be regulated? They will just turn off miners if not profitable and say goodbye. And what then? End of BTC? Miners keep this coin alive and their efforts must be rewarded. Use altcoins if you're sending dust amounts and complain about high fees

I was talking in the sense that in the future miners require fees that are deemed extortionate to the average joe. Could this happen? Would miners have any say over the fees required once all bitcoins are mined?

they might not have a say but they most definitely have influence on the amount of fee. they can include only high fees, exclude low fees. or they can even turn their machines off if it is not profitable for them.

[Amph]

Yes. With a maximum of 21 million bitcoins that can be mined, just imagine IF huge websites such as Amazon or eBay started to use them...21 million isn't even 1% of America's population! It will become very scarce eventually and 21 million is really a small number.

That is why each Bitcoin can be split into 8 decimals. You can easily make 1 satoshi $1 but that would not be very realistic. More decimal place can be added if needed.

agree .actually there are too few bitcoin in existence, when the mass adoption will be complete you will see 21M is a low amount for 7 Billions of peoples

not really, bitcoin is divisibile up to 8 decimal digits, the bitcoin value will rise as a consequence, if there will be a great adoption , and therefore 0.01(for example) will be worth what one bitcoin is worth now

so we don't really need a higher cap, but only more people using it

[ranochigo]

So will our great great great great great grandchildren be protesting about immoral mining fees and calling for miners to be regulated?

How can miners be regulated? They will just turn off miners if not profitable and say goodbye. And what then? End of BTC? Miners keep this coin alive and their efforts must be rewarded. Use altcoins if you're sending dust amounts and complain about high fees

I was talking in the sense that in the future miners require fees that are deemed extortionate to the average joe. Could this happen? Would miners have any say over the fees required once all bitcoins are mined?

they might not have a say but they most definitely have influence on the amount of fee. they can include only high fees, exclude low fees. or they can even turn their machines off if it is not profitable for them.

Unless they control 30%++ of the network, their own rules won't really affect Bitcoin much. It would be a bad move to include only high fees. They can easily accept all the fees and have much more profit than accepting only high fees.

[jones techbit]

Yes. With a maximum of 21 million bitcoins that can be mined, just imagine IF huge websites such as Amazon or eBay started to use them...21 million isn't even 1% of America's population! It will become very scarce eventually and 21 million is really a small number.

That is why each Bitcoin can be split into 8 decimals. You can easily make 1 satoshi $1 but that would not be very realistic. More decimal place can be added if needed.

agree .actually there are too few bitcoin in existence, when the mass adoption will be complete you will see 21M is a low amount for 7 Billions of peoples

not really, bitcoin is divisibile up to 8 decimal digits, the bitcoin value will rise as a consequence, if there will be a great adoption , and therefore 0.01(for example) will be worth what one bitcoin is worth now

so we don't really need a higher cap, but only more people using it

With only 21 million BTC, it's not hard to predict that owning 1 BTC would be extremely hard and the decimal places will start to matter more and more.

[mayflor2]

When 21 million coins have been mined, I will have been long dead, so I don't care

A good advise to be to spread more happy knowledge about bitcoin so more people adopt bitcoin and more bitcoin gets in, because if all these coins are ever mined, the price will just deflate and the market will crash.