Production stops 2017

[OMGBobMarley]

If mining is essentially hosting a ledger and supporting the transfers of bitcoin, how will bitcoin survive past 2017 when they say they will stop producing at 21 million? If the miners are not being rewarded with bitcoin they will stop hosting the ledger and bitcoin transactions will end.

What am I missing?

Sorry if this is the wrong forum, maybe off topic?

[Korbman]

If mining is essentially hosting a ledger and supporting the transfers of bitcoin, how will bitcoin survive past 2017 when they say they will stop producing at 21 million? If the miners are not being rewarded with bitcoin they will stop hosting the ledger and bitcoin transactions will end.

What am I missing?

2017 only marks the next reward split, from 25 coins per block down to 12.5...which will give us another 4 years before the next split to 6.25..and so on. We'll technically never reach the exact 21 million, and there will be a point when solving blocks doesn't generate any reward at all.

Instead, the reward would be the transaction fees..which I imagine will go up once the normal block rewards prove to be less fruitful.

[OMGBobMarley]

If mining is essentially hosting a ledger and supporting the transfers of bitcoin, how will bitcoin survive past 2017 when they say they will stop producing at 21 million? If the miners are not being rewarded with bitcoin they will stop hosting the ledger and bitcoin transactions will end.

What am I missing?

2017 only marks the next reward split, from 25 coins per block down to 12.5...which will give us another 4 years before the next split to 6.25..and so on. We'll technically never reach the exact 21 million, and there will be a point when solving blocks doesn't generate any reward at all.

Instead, the reward would be the transaction fees..which I imagine will go up once the normal block rewards prove to be less fruitful.

Transaction fees, that is what I was missing. Makes sense now.

[induktor]

Hi
Sorry I hijack this thread but i was wondering.
today transaction fees are very very low, to the point it makes no sense to mine only for this, how will this change to make it profitable, or at least, sustainable for miners?

any idea?
thank you

[tiptopgemdotcom]

Hi
Sorry I hijack this thread but i was wondering.
today transaction fees are very very low, to the point it makes no sense to mine only for this, how will this change to make it profitable, or at least, sustainable for miners?

any idea?
thank you

Yeah, tell us.

[tacotime]

Miners can reject any tx they want to.

--> Miners will just reject every tx beneath a certain fee threshold, forcing you to pay for faster confirmations.

Already there are blocks with 25+ BTC in fees though, if traffic is large enough it's not a big deal.