What will be the condition of bitcoin in future?

[Indianacoin]

What will happen if the 21^st million block is completely mined ?!

1. Will bitcoin status change from "beta" to "full version"?

2. Will it collapse like other fully mined altcoins?!

3. Will it become fully stable like other fiat currencies ??

Please share your views on this!

[Amph]

there are only two ways, the price increase to a very good level to help miners keep securing the network, or the price will not increase high enough, therefore forcing the miners to leave the scene, and proclaming the bitcoin death as a result

not much else can happen

[Indianacoin]

there are only two ways, the price increase to a very good level to help miners keep securing the network, or the price will not increase high enough, therefore forcing the miners to leave the scene, and proclaming the bitcoin death as a result

not much else can happen

You mean the miner fees will also rise since they will not be mining new blocks, only securing the ongoing transactions ?

[Herbert2020]

there are only two ways, the price increase to a very good level to help miners keep securing the network, or the price will not increase high enough, therefore forcing the miners to leave the scene, and proclaming the bitcoin death as a result

not much else can happen

You mean the miner fees will also rise since they will not be mining new blocks, only securing the ongoing transactions ?

this is the way to go in the future. as the block reward decreases, in order to make mining profitable for miners transaction fees needs to be changes.
it is worth mentioning that fees have changes a couple of times in the past to be a reasonable price because of the price changes.

[Amph]

there are only two ways, the price increase to a very good level to help miners keep securing the network, or the price will not increase high enough, therefore forcing the miners to leave the scene, and proclaming the bitcoin death as a result

not much else can happen

You mean the miner fees will also rise since they will not be mining new blocks, only securing the ongoing transactions ?

if bitcoin price rise it mean that a single satoshi is worth more, so fees will be worth more

for example if bitcoin reach 1M, pure dream, but let's assume it for the sake of it, the current fee will be worth around 0.5 btc at current price

[ranochigo]

After Bitcoin gets fully mined, the miner's main revenue would be from transaction fees. Due to the limited supply, the price may rise more and hence the earnings would be around the same. If not, the difficulty would drop and the efficient mining ASICs combined with low electrical prices may make profit possible. By that time, the block size would likely be bigger and so will the transaction fees per block. The price is likely to remain as violatile as there isn't anything to back it and lack of regulations allows people to manipulate the market.

[DannyHamilton]

What will happen if the 21^st million block is completely mined ?!

1. Will bitcoin status change from "beta" to "full version"?

2. Will it collapse like other fully mined altcoins?!

3. Will it become fully stable like other fiat currencies ??

Please share your views on this!

You mean the miner fees will also rise since they will not be mining new blocks, only securing the ongoing transactions ?

It is clear that you haven't made any effort to understand how bitcoin works, or what the purpose of "mining" is.
The miners are creating blocks that set a permanent ordering of the transactions.  The proof-of-work that they supply makes any attempt to re-order any transactions that are more than a few blocks deep in the blockchain extremely expensive.

In exchange for providing this service to the network, they are rewarded with bitcoins.  Their reward consists of the sum of a block subsidy (newly created bitcoins) and all the transaction fees of all the transactions that they confirm in their block.

At the moment the block subsidy is 25 BTC, and the average fees are about 0.1736 BTC per block.

Every 210,000 blocks (approximately 4 years), the block subsidy is cut in half.  The next reduction will probably be in July of 2016 when the subsidy will be reduced to 12.5 BTC per block.  Then it will be reduced to 6.25 BTC per block about 4 years after that.

Meanwhile, as bitcoin becomes more popular, there will be more transactions, and those transaction may pay a higher value in fees.  Eventually the fees in the block will surpass the subsidy in the block. It is difficult to say exactly when this will happen, but it will probably happen sometime in the next 32 years.  Once that happens, perhaps we will stop calling them "miners" and instead use a name that describes what they are actually being paid to do.  Perhaps something like "transaction processors".

The block subsidy will continue to be cut in half every 4 years until somewhere around the year 2140 when the subsidy will be 0.00000001 BTC block.  Then with the next reduction, then subsidy will be reduced to 0 BTC.  Blocks will continue to be created, and the "miners" will continue to receive the sum of the transaction fees as their reward, there just won't be any subsidy added into the block any more.


As for your specific questions:

1.  No.  The "beta" vs. "full" designation has nothing to do with the block reward at all.

2. It may collapse long before the year 2140, or it may continue long after the year 2140.  That's essentiall impossible to predict at this time, and anyone that gives you any prediction is just making a random guess.  You could get just as accurate of an answer by flipping a coin.

3. It will either be stable long before the last subsidy is paid out, or it will never be stable.  There is nothing about reducing the subsidy from 0.00000001 BTC to 0 BTC that would suddenly stabilize anything.

[thejaytiesto]

Well, considering Bitcoin will reach it's 21th million coin at about year 2140, im hoping that to reach full version (version 1.0) it takes a little bit less than that. I don't want to be a grandpa that is still waiting to use something out of the beta phase of Bitcoin, I hope the full version has arrived by then

[pavan@hosur]

i think in future the price increase to a very good level to help miners keep securing the network mentioning that fees have changes a couple of times in the past to be a reasonable price because of the price changes.

[Indianacoin]

It is clear that you haven't made any effort to understand how bitcoin works, or what the purpose of "mining" is.
The miners are creating blocks that set a permanent ordering of the transactions.  The proof-of-work that they supply makes any attempt to re-order any transactions that are more than a few blocks deep in the blockchain extremely expensive.

In exchange for providing this service to the network, they are rewarded with bitcoins.  Their reward consists of the sum of a block subsidy (newly created bitcoins) and all the transaction fees of all the transactions that they confirm in their block.

At the moment the block subsidy is 25 BTC, and the average fees are about 0.1736 BTC per block.

Every 210,000 blocks (approximately 4 years), the block subsidy is cut in half.  The next reduction will probably be in July of 2016 when the subsidy will be reduced to 12.5 BTC per block.  Then it will be reduced to 6.25 BTC per block about 4 years after that.

Meanwhile, as bitcoin becomes more popular, there will be more transactions, and those transaction may pay a higher value in fees.  Eventually the fees in the block will surpass the subsidy in the block. It is difficult to say exactly when this will happen, but it will probably happen sometime in the next 32 years.  Once that happens, perhaps we will stop calling them "miners" and instead use a name that describes what they are actually being paid to do.  Perhaps something like "transaction processors".

The block subsidy will continue to be cut in half every 4 years until somewhere around the year 2140 when the subsidy will be 0.00000001 BTC block.  Then with the next reduction, then subsidy will be reduced to 0 BTC.  Blocks will continue to be created, and the "miners" will continue to receive the sum of the transaction fees as their reward, there just won't be any subsidy added into the block any more.


As for your specific questions:

1.  No.  The "beta" vs. "full" designation has nothing to do with the block reward at all.

2. It may collapse long before the year 2140, or it may continue long after the year 2140.  That's essentiall impossible to predict at this time, and anyone that gives you any prediction is just making a random guess.  You could get just as accurate of an answer by flipping a coin.

3. It will either be stable long before the last subsidy is paid out, or it will never be stable.  There is nothing about reducing the subsidy from 0.00000001 BTC to 0 BTC that would suddenly stabilize anything.

This is by far the most perfect explanation I ever received But I have few questions regarding your explanation:

1. How is this subsidy(newly generated coins) calculated and from where is this subsidy coming from? (I want to know the technical side of it)

2. Since the subsidy is somewhat related with mining difficulty, suppose in future, many pro-miners quit their mining operations due to very low or negative profit, so accordingly the difficulty should get lowered and will the subsidy rise due to that situation?

P.S. I know these are some noobish questions but please try to answer them!

[maokoto]

There is no possibility to secure the network without the miners? Perhaps there could be a system to reward people running nodes, and implement it as mining difficulty raises.

[adamstgBit]

the future equivalent of the FED will convince everyone to do a hard fork to increase block rewards for a target inflation rate of 2%  

[DannyHamilton]

1. How is this subsidy(newly generated coins) calculated and from where is this subsidy coming from? (I want to know the technical side of it)

When a solo miner (or mining pool) creates a new block of transactions to solve, they include a special transaction that pays the reward to themselves.  This special transaction doesn't spend any bitcoins, and only receives bitcoins.  Therefore they essentially come into existence out of nothing more than the miner (or pool) saying that they now exist in the block.  The protocol that ALL full nodes on the peer-to-peer network are all running requires that the reward transaction (frequently called a "coinbase transaction") be less than or equal to the current subsidy amount plus the sum of all transaction fees in the block.  If a miner attempts to create a transaction that pays themselves more than that amount, then every peer that they attempt to send the block to will recognize the block as being invalid and will refuse to accept it, refuse to relay it to other nodes, and refues to add it to their own block chain.  The protocol requires that software implements the calculation of the current block subsidy by:

• Determining the number of "halvings" by dividing the current block height by 210000 and truncating any decimal portion
• Starting with a binary representation of 5000000000 satoshis
• Perform a binary right shift on the 5000000000 satoshi value the number of times that the "halvings" indicates

2. Since the subsidy is somewhat related with mining difficulty, suppose in future, many pro-miners quit their mining operations due to very low or negative profit, so accordingly the difficulty should get lowered and will the subsidy rise due to that situation?

The subsidy is not related with mining difficulty at all.

The subsidy starts at 5000000000 satoshis, and is cut in half (and any decimal portion thrown out) every 210000 blocks.

The difficulty is determined by calculating how much time it took to solve 2016 blocks:

• If it took more than 20160 minutes then the blocks are occurring too slowly.  The difficulty is reduced proportionally to increase the speed at which blocks are solved.
• If it took less than 20160 minutes then the blocks are occurring too quickly.  The difficulty is increased proportionally to decrease the speed at which blocks are solved.

In your scenario, there is less mining occurring.  The difficulty adjusts so that the same number of blocks are solved in any given amount of time.  Since there is less mining, each of the remaining mining participants is getting a larger portion of the bitcoins that are available.  If that still isn't enough profit, then even more miners will quit.  Eventually the system reaches an equilibrium where the percentage of the available bitcoins that each miner receives is enough for them to decide to continue mining.   

P.S. I know these are some noobish questions but please try to answer them!

Certainly.

[LiteCoinGuy]

What will happen if the 21^st million block is completely mined ?!

1. Will bitcoin status change from "beta" to "full version"?

2. Will it collapse like other fully mined altcoins?!

3. Will it become fully stable like other fiat currencies ??

Please share your views on this!

i will be dead.

[gentlemand]

In 125 years there might still be something named Bitcoin. I don't think it'll bear any technical resemblance to what's around today.

The idea of sending unforgeable money through the ether isn't going away any time soon. Bitcoin needs to reach a useful place in the coming years and then slowly develop with the times.

[Mickeyb]

We are all bitcoiners here and we would all like that Bitcoin does succeed and that it stays as the first crypto option in the future. But let's not kid ourselves, this might not happen.

If Bitcoin doesn't improve and it doesn't serve it's purpose the best it will be replaced of something better comes around. I strongly believe that the blockchain technology is here to stay in this or that for, but will it be necessarily Bitcoin? I sure hope so!

[NorrisK]

In 125 years there might still be something named Bitcoin. I don't think it'll bear any technical resemblance to what's around today.

The idea of sending unforgeable money through the ether isn't going away any time soon. Bitcoin needs to reach a useful place in the coming years and then slowly develop with the times.

that is the same as saying in 125 years there will still be cars, but they won't bear any technical resemblance to what's around today.

125 years ago we were almost still using horses.

Let's hope it evolves in a way that is good for us.

Although, I don't think it will be bitcoin that will be the leading coin by then. It will we replaced by something newer, more fancy, easier and more secure.

[flock123]

i think  bitcoin will change status from "beta" to "full version"

[Snorek]

What will happen if the 21st million block is completely mined ?!

I would not worry about that, we will be long dead before that will happen

1. Will bitcoin status change from "beta" to "full version"?

This is full version, but this is just constantly growing and upgrading, bitcoin in 10 years could be completely different than it is now.

2. Will it collapse like other fully mined altcoins?!

It depends on the market, mindset of poeple and many other factors, hard to tell

3. Will it become fully stable like other fiat currencies ??

FIAT currencies are stable? Since when? Are you talking about volatility of bitcoin? It can be stopped by mass adoption.

[yenxz]

i really dont have any idea with this