What happened to Bitcoin when 21 millions coins are produced?

[ijphlrnxewho]

His majesty the King Cuong V Truong wants to know:

1. What will happen to Bitcoin when the 21 million coins are produced?
2. What will happen to all the Bitcoin miners when the 21 million coins are produced?

[zoinky]

Hopefully mass adoption & they will mine for the fees.

[Come-from-Beyond]

His majesty the King Cuong V Truong wants to know:

1. What will happen to Bitcoin when the 21 million coins are produced?
2. What will happen to all the Bitcoin miners when the 21 million coins are produced?

More real alternative is that the coin generation algo will be changed. The majority will never let someone to have 1000 BTC when they have only 0.00001000 BTC.

[WinVery.com]

The value of the currency should exponentially "inflate" in a way no fiat currency could.

[maximian]

It will be bad… Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.

[Come-from-Beyond]

His majesty the King Cuong V Truong wants to know:

1. What will happen to Bitcoin when the 21 million coins are produced?
2. What will happen to all the Bitcoin miners when the 21 million coins are produced?

More real alternative is that the coin generation algo will be changed. The majority will never let someone to have 1000 BTC when they have only 0.00001000 BTC.

Yeah, that's not going to work. Let's examine the situation.

Almost 21 million bitcoins are already in the hands of people who agreed to the original inflation rate. They may even be the majority by the time it happens (hint: everyone posting in this thread will be dead by then).

Someone forks the chain to a new perpetual inflation rate.

The people who had coins prior to the fork now have coins in both chains. They don't want their coins devalued so they sell all their new fork coins and use the proceeds to purchase original coins. This has an obvious effect on the exchange rate of both coins.

The miners quickly realize that the transaction fees on the original Bitcoin are worth more than the block reward on the new fork. New fork is abandoned.

Now, this is just a guess, but it's based on the idea that the people already holding bitcoins won't voluntarily agree to having their coins devalued. I think that's a pretty safe assumption when they are given the option to choose. It's already been proven correct once, the block reward was cut in half and no one even bothered to try and make a "50 coin per block forever" fork, even though people loved to talk about it before the halving.

If a perpetually inflating coin is superior, one of the alt coins which already acts this way will take the market away from Bitcoin and we won't need a fork.

slaps self for responding to obvious troll

Valid points... for the current situation. Let's come back to this discussion after 100.000.000 ppl join Bitcoin.

[jayleno]

His majesty the King Cuong V Truong wants to know:

1. What will happen to Bitcoin when the 21 million coins are produced?
2. What will happen to all the Bitcoin miners when the 21 million coins are produced?

Who cares we'll all be dead by then

[Come-from-Beyond]

Valid points... for the current situation. Let's come back to this discussion after 100.000.000 ppl join Bitcoin.

You mean when 100 million more people are interested in not having their money devalued? Sure, I'd be happy to discuss it then.

Why 21m then? Let's make it only 15m. Less inflation, moar wealth conservation. Hell, why not just one single BTC?
I'm sorry but hard cap doesn't mean that Bitcoin will preserve its value. Most of ppl will just move to a fork and u will sit with a lot of useless numbers.

[ashleysly]

All miners will instantly become extinct and all hardware is blown up;) Jokes.
Probably something drastic but only time will tell.

[addi]

Probably too early to tell, we can already make a few assumptions which is quite good.

Anyhow, by the time we are there, bitcoin has grown either to be a success or failure. In case of success, the "issue" will probably sort itself out quite easily

[odolvlobo]

All miners will instantly become extinct and all hardware is blown up;) Jokes.
Probably something drastic but only time will tell.

Nothing drastic will happen. For the entire 4 years before the last satoshi is mined, a total of only 0.0021 BTC will be created. And, only 0.0042 BTC will be created during the 4 years before that. In fact, the total number of bitcoins created during the 20 years preceding the last block reward will be less than 1. In other words, if something happens because no more bitcoins are being created, it will happen long before the reward goes to 0.

Nothing will happen to Bitcoin. The block reward becomes less and less relevant as it goes to 0.

Miners get the transactions fees, and the idea is that fees will replace the block reward.

[dancupid]

The fees miners receive is growing exponentially, and will be much more than the block reward long before 21 million coins are mined

http://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees-usd?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

[odolvlobo]

The fees miners receive is growing exponentially, and will be much more than the block reward long before 21 million coins are mined

http://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees-usd?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

Unfortunately, that chart is in USD, making it difficult to compare to the block reward.

This is the one you want: http://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees

[nevel]

I guess it will never happen. Before the limit has been reached, people moved over to another 'hot' currency. Mining BTC doesn't pay off anymore. Bagholders left. This is how the real world works.

[odolvlobo]

I guess it will never happen. Before the limit has been reached, people moved over to another 'hot' currency. Mining BTC doesn't pay off anymore. Bagholders left. This is how the real world works.

We are already over half-way to the limit. It certainly is possible that some other currency will dethrone bitcoin, but there is no indication of that happening. There is no indication that it might happen. Thus far, bitcoin is just getting stronger, and any potential competitors are still far behind.

Obviously you are wrong about mining not paying off. Think about it. If mining BTC doesn't pay off, then there wouldn't be 51 TH/s devoted to it.