Is Bitcoin designed to last forever?

[rosablu]

Interesting question!
I think that the duration of btc depends mostly on how people will react to it over the next few years.
If the majority of people will continue to feel skeptical about it, btc use won't spread.

[Aamir1]

This is philosophical question, probably every creator or designer have a wish on beginning to his work live as longer as possible. But can something last forever? Nature around us says that everything has an end, bitcoin as technology will have and can have much longer life then things from nature.
As a man who have faith in bitcoin, I think bitcoin will last very long time. For now bitcoin have 7 years behind, and when we look period of 100 years bitcoin is still very young currency. We will see how old bitcoin can be, and will something younger and better will replace it one day.

I wonder if something better than bitcoin would be made in near future, maybe someone will do it later on but still i feel bitcoin would be used as an alternative if its price still stays high.
And as you said, everyone after making something wishes that his thing should be too successful and to be used forever, but that may don't happen or it may, because technology is something that can stay forever until the world exists and bitcoins is a technology.

[Zadicar]

Yes nothing lasts forever, especially in the tech sector.

I agree with you , nothing  really last  forever and  shall passed away  its  either  been broken or  just  normally passed away  but   in the field  of  technology  , i could  say that  bitcoin is not designed  to last forever   but  im somehow assured  that  it would   took  up for  many years  before it would  gone because as  we all  witness now  that  bitcoin  is   already being  adopted  by people   and  increasing  as the days  goes  by and this  indicates  it would  last  up, bitcoin would end if  no people would  tend to use it anymore.

Time will tell and its the users will make it possible with so many adoption and so much earnings coming from this investment many interest has been gathered so we really cant say if btc can survive forever but hoping that it continue to works the way its working right now.

Time would   really  can tell because we wouldnt  know  on  what would be the future  of bitcoin on  upcoming years  to come, it might  been  adopted even  more  or  it would fade  away easily but  as we can see  on  bitcoin its  already  building  its  reputation  and we could somehow  say  that  it would  last for more years  to come.

[coynedterm]

I've been thinking about it since last night and I couldn't find an answer to myself.
I know that there's a 21 million block cap and we wouldn't actually be here to see that time it comes to that point.
But assuming that we have reached reward era 34, what happens then? Miners wouldn't have any rewards from mining then.

Anyone care to help explain a few things for me?

ofcourse , it is made for forever because we see that there is no limit of creating account of wallet and no limit of create new btc adress .
so these qualities indicating that it is made for forever without limit .

[arcanaaerobics]

This is philosophical question, probably every creator or designer have a wish on beginning to his work live as longer as possible. But can something last forever? Nature around us says that everything has an end, bitcoin as technology will have and can have much longer life then things from nature.
As a man who have faith in bitcoin, I think bitcoin will last very long time. For now bitcoin have 7 years behind, and when we look period of 100 years bitcoin is still very young currency. We will see how old bitcoin can be, and will something younger and better will replace it one day.

I don't thinks it's a philosophical question, is more like a technic question... And yes, bitcoin is designed to live "forever", the mining system if "perfect", it will rest 100 years and after that miners can profit with fees that will be bigger. The major problem with bitcoin is their users, a lot of scammers trying to take some advantage.

[Liad.Services]

Yes nothing lasts forever, especially in the tech sector.

I agree with you , nothing  really last  forever and  shall passed away  its  either  been broken or  just  normally passed away  but   in the field  of  technology  , i could  say that  bitcoin is not designed  to last forever   but  im somehow assured  that  it would   took  up for  many years  before it would  gone because as  we all  witness now  that  bitcoin  is   already being  adopted  by people   and  increasing  as the days  goes  by and this  indicates  it would  last  up, bitcoin would end if  no people would  tend to use it anymore.

Exactly. "If" everything goes well for bitcoin, it could last a decade or even more.

The only thing that could prevent it from happening is a big fall in price for bitcoins which  make a large amount of miners to leave and may cause transactions not to get confirmed which will make the price even lower and may cause the community to lose trust in bitcoin which can lead it to a big fail.

[Wandering Soul~]

Well No one knows if it's designed forever, Only Satoshi himself. But I think that even if the 21million btc's has been mined as long as there are many people who uses it, then it will not be gone.

[mirakal]

No such thing that will last forever but I am sure bitcoin is designed to last forever and we will be the one to make that happen.
We have to trust bitcoin all the time so we can continue to make this a success and hopefully will last forever.

[Leonard2016]

No such thing that will last forever but I am sure bitcoin is designed to last forever and we will be the one to make that happen.
We have to trust bitcoin all the time so we can continue to make this a success and hopefully will last forever.

nothing will last forever, and anything that has been created so far and will be created in the future will have an expiration date. this can be 1 year or 10000 years from now.

for bitcoin there is still a very long time to go, most possibly more than our lifetimes.

[croutonhexagon]

Like other currency which doesn't have any deadline bitcoin also have no deadline. It would exist on this planet as long as human being want to keep the network alive. Bitcoin is fully depended on its network and if something happens to the bitcoin network then we might loss all our bitcoin forever

[funkenstein]

Thanks OP for asking this question.  People are finally starting to ask it and to think about it.  This will be an issue long before the last coinbase satoshi is handed out in 2140 because bitcoin's distribtution curve is a rapidly converging geometric series.  Already more than 3/4 done.  

As you know if you have looked at woodcoin, there are ways to do coinbase distribution without rapid convergence, and without infinite inflation.  

But lets look instead at the possiblities for what happens to the original bitcoin around 2030 or so when the coinbase reward drops below fees:


1)  Mining Centralization.  This is the NXT model.  Fees stay low but miners keep mining at high security because they hold a lot of BTC and want to see BTC still work so that their coin will hold its value.  I find this hard to believe but it's a possibility.    

2)  Large Fees.  This is how Satoshi said (briefly in passing) that it would work.  Security against double spends will be paid for by large fees on transactions.  As long as not too many people flee to other coins and they stick with btc (at this point solely because the market values it highly) this could work.  The network becomes a high-value-tx network only, as transactions on the scale of a case of beer simply won't be able to afford to get into the blockchain.  This is what most people envision; there is some stability question from a game theory perspective though, as users wishing to use coin for small tx will flee to other coins.  

3)  Coinbase Adjustment.  This hardfork is sacrilege to suggest at this point and I see 0 chance of it happening.  However to make the list theoretically complete it should be here.

4)  Pro-bono mining.   This also seems quite farfetched, but you never know.  People might just mine the thing because they love the community or some such.  

5)  Flight to other coins.  There could be a more stable and robust diverse public coin ecosystem at that time and markets will evaluate coins accordingly.  My suspicion is that it will be more complex than I can predict at present.  

      

[danherbias07]

Thanks OP for asking this question.  People are finally starting to ask it and to think about it.  This will be an issue long before the last coinbase satoshi is handed out in 2140 because bitcoin's distribtution curve is a rapidly converging geometric series.  Already more than 3/4 done.  

As you know if you have looked at woodcoin, there are ways to do coinbase distribution without rapid convergence, and without infinite inflation.  

But lets look instead at the possiblities for what happens to the original bitcoin around 2030 or so when the coinbase reward drops below fees:


1)  Mining Centralization.  This is the NXT model.  Fees stay low but miners keep mining at high security because they hold a lot of BTC and want to see BTC still work so that their coin will hold its value.  I find this hard to believe but it's a possibility.    

2)  Large Fees.  This is how Satoshi said (briefly in passing) that it would work.  Security against double spends will be paid for by large fees on transactions.  As long as not too many people flee to other coins and they stick with btc (at this point solely because the market values it highly) this could work.  The network becomes a high-value-tx network only, as transactions on the scale of a case of beer simply won't be able to afford to get into the blockchain.  This is what most people envision; there is some stability question from a game theory perspective though, as users wishing to use coin for small tx will flee to other coins.  

3)  Coinbase Adjustment.  This hardfork is sacrilege to suggest at this point and I see 0 chance of it happening.  However to make the list theoretically complete it should be here.

4)  Pro-bono mining.   This also seems quite farfetched, but you never know.  People might just mine the thing because they love the community or some such.  

5)  Flight to other coins.  There could be a more stable and robust diverse public coin ecosystem at that time and markets will evaluate coins accordingly.  My suspicion is that it will be more complex than I can predict at present.  

      

Seems like number 1 is contradicting number 2 about the low fees then large fees? Or is it just on a different timeline? Are those different fees you are talking about? Just asking.

[funkenstein]

Thanks OP for asking this question.  People are finally starting to ask it and to think about it.  This will be an issue long before the last coinbase satoshi is handed out in 2140 because bitcoin's distribtution curve is a rapidly converging geometric series.  Already more than 3/4 done.  

As you know if you have looked at woodcoin, there are ways to do coinbase distribution without rapid convergence, and without infinite inflation.  

But lets look instead at the possiblities for what happens to the original bitcoin around 2030 or so when the coinbase reward drops below fees:


1)  Mining Centralization.  This is the NXT model.  Fees stay low but miners keep mining at high security because they hold a lot of BTC and want to see BTC still work so that their coin will hold its value.  I find this hard to believe but it's a possibility.    

2)  Large Fees.  This is how Satoshi said (briefly in passing) that it would work.  Security against double spends will be paid for by large fees on transactions.  As long as not too many people flee to other coins and they stick with btc (at this point solely because the market values it highly) this could work.  The network becomes a high-value-tx network only, as transactions on the scale of a case of beer simply won't be able to afford to get into the blockchain.  This is what most people envision; there is some stability question from a game theory perspective though, as users wishing to use coin for small tx will flee to other coins.  

3)  Coinbase Adjustment.  This hardfork is sacrilege to suggest at this point and I see 0 chance of it happening.  However to make the list theoretically complete it should be here.

4)  Pro-bono mining.   This also seems quite farfetched, but you never know.  People might just mine the thing because they love the community or some such.  

5)  Flight to other coins.  There could be a more stable and robust diverse public coin ecosystem at that time and markets will evaluate coins accordingly.  My suspicion is that it will be more complex than I can predict at present.  

      

Seems like number 1 is contradicting number 2 about the low fees then large fees? Or is it just on a different timeline? Are those different fees you are talking about? Just asking.

Yes, those scenarios are contradictory.  I'm just trying to list ALL the different things that could happen.  

[jak3]

i think yes. bitcoi will be live till we trade it. demand and suppy will decide the validity of bitcoin and i donot see any stoppi or brake in the path ever even banks can not stop this nor governments

[BitcoinPC]

Like other currency which doesn't have any deadline bitcoin also have no deadline. It would exist on this planet as long as human being want to keep the network alive. Bitcoin is fully depended on its network and if something happens to the bitcoin network then we might loss all our bitcoin forever

Yeah, bitcoin currency has no deadline, So it has clear mean that bitcoin never going to be end, it will be live long till the end whenever we are using it and investment with it and earn from it. Now we can say that bitcoin has a bright future, but may be in future, suddenly something will be wrong with it, and bitcoin give us big circumstances, or may be bitcoin would be converted with another crypto currency. But that's all are thinking, not in reality, now bitcoin still going up and better and useful for us, so 100% chances bitcoin live long life.   

[Labumi]

Like other currency which doesn't have any deadline bitcoin also have no deadline. It would exist on this planet as long as human being want to keep the network alive. Bitcoin is fully depended on its network and if something happens to the bitcoin network then we might loss all our bitcoin forever

Yeah, bitcoin currency has no deadline, So it has clear mean that bitcoin never going to be end, it will be live long till the end whenever we are using it and investment with it and earn from it. Now we can say that bitcoin has a bright future, but may be in future, suddenly something will be wrong with it, and bitcoin give us big circumstances, or may be bitcoin would be converted with another crypto currency. But that's all are thinking, not in reality, now bitcoin still going up and better and useful for us, so 100% chances bitcoin live long life.   

Possible or prediction that we do indeed something reasonable thing and it will give you a pretty good effect if we could deepen the prediction is done or heard or read. I was also so, that I am sure that bitcoin will become the largest physical currency and will be most widely used by everyone because of the nature of the benefits and not owned by any existing currency. So this will be a very great thing

[rizkyhiw]

Like other currency which doesn't have any deadline bitcoin also have no deadline. It would exist on this planet as long as human being want to keep the network alive. Bitcoin is fully depended on its network and if something happens to the bitcoin network then we might loss all our bitcoin forever

Yeah, bitcoin currency has no deadline, So it has clear mean that bitcoin never going to be end, it will be live long till the end whenever we are using it and investment with it and earn from it. Now we can say that bitcoin has a bright future, but may be in future, suddenly something will be wrong with it, and bitcoin give us big circumstances, or may be bitcoin would be converted with another crypto currency. But that's all are thinking, not in reality, now bitcoin still going up and better and useful for us, so 100% chances bitcoin live long life.   

Bitcoin will survive alive as long as possible
Bitcoin users itself the only thing that can make bitcoin last forever or dead very soon
But i believe satoshi itself not sure about what will happened to bitcoin in the future
So there's no something called 'bitcoin designed to last forever

[AxlYo]

I am pretty sure bitcoin wont last forever. Everything we see is temporary but as long as bitcoin is still in operation let's make the most out of it.

[machinek20]

No nothing in this world can last forever include bitcoin, but the good things about bitcoin is decentralized, so if there is still transaction and pump and dump, bitcoin will stay alive, but when people dont't used it anymore then bitcoin is dead

[ged00u]

I am pretty sure bitcoin wont last forever. Everything we see is temporary but as long as bitcoin is still in operation let's make the most out of it.

Yeah you're right, nothing lasts forever even this planet won't escape from extinction so just enjoy it while you can. But I think when this all ends, it'll be long long after our grandchildren's death so it's not necessary to worry about this problem now.