Will the death of block reward kill BTC?

[Fishbones78]

Hi
I was thinking about the blockchain and trying to re-evaluate how much I understand about how BTC works.

Bitcoin block rewards will not last forever, and mining is only profitable in rare cases. This means that when the block reward dissapears forever, mining will likely be profitable for nobody, and nobody will give hashing power to the blockchain because the miners fee only will not be enough to cover running costs.

To add to the problem, the miners fee is about to drop, and will never be ridiculously high (enough to solely cover miners expenses) because that in itself would kill Bitcoin. People wouldn't be willing to pay $5.00 to transfer $0.05 of Bitcoin, would they?

Thoughts?

[CyberKuro]

I don't think it will kill bitcoin even though miners only get fees, if scale solution has been implemented, then more people will be adopt bitcoin which make bitcoin price constantly increases over time.
I believe it will be happen over 100 years later when all of 21 Million bitcoin has mined, so we do not have to worry about that right now, because miners still generate enough bitcoin and get fees for every transaction that being made.
      Because the number of bitcoins created each time a user discovers a new block - the block reward - is halved based on a fixed interval of blocks, and the time it takes on average to discover a block can vary based on mining power and the network difficulty, the exact time when the block reward is halved can vary as well. Consequently, the time the last Bitcoin will be created will also vary, and is subject to speculation based on assumptions.
      If the mining power had remained constant since the first Bitcoin was mined, the last Bitcoin would have been mined somewhere near October 8th, 2140. Due to the mining power having increased overall over time, as of block 367,500 - assuming mining power remained constant from that block forward - the last Bitcoin will be mined on May 7th, 2140.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply

[GreenBits]

Essentially, its a self solving problem to me. If bitcoin is around for the time it takes to mine all blocks, bitcoin is a sure thing at that point, and we can safely assume there will be enough volume of transactions to make up for the block reward. but, this should also dictate that the average transaction size would go down as the price goes up, which should generate less fees per transaction, but more transactions. but im still stuck at "if bitcoin is here a century from now". quite possible, but I think we will have moved on to something much cooler, but similar, to bitcoin by then. bitcoin will be a collectors item

this was a good question

[farhaan]

It will take around 100 more years for that problem to be faced since by that time only,21 million coins would have been completely mined.By that time,more bitcoin users would be found all over the world and there would be huge number of bitcoin transactions at that time so that miners would enough income to continue their mining.

[CryptoBry]

It will take around 100 more years for that problem to be faced since by that time only,21 million coins would have been completely mined.By that time,more bitcoin users would be found all over the world and there would be huge number of bitcoin transactions at that time so that miners would enough income to continue their mining.

Yes, this is something we should not be worrying for now. Let's leave that problem to the next generations lol. Anyway, am sure that the Bitcoin community can always find the way though it might take long for the solutions to come just like what is happening right now on the scaling debate.

[iram1011]

it is not difficult to imagine that the time when all the coins are mined, mining chips will become small and highly efficient. This would reduce the burden placed on miners and would allow mining to become an activity with a lower threshold of initial cost. Transaction fees will surely increase for keeping par with initial cost but to which level is hard to speculate at this time.

[number37]

Hi
I was thinking about the blockchain and trying to re-evaluate how much I understand about how BTC works.

Bitcoin block rewards will not last forever, and mining is only profitable in rare cases. This means that when the block reward dissapears forever, mining will likely be profitable for nobody, and nobody will give hashing power to the blockchain because the miners fee only will not be enough to cover running costs.

To add to the problem, the miners fee is about to drop, and will never be ridiculously high (enough to solely cover miners expenses) because that in itself would kill Bitcoin. People wouldn't be willing to pay $5.00 to transfer $0.05 of Bitcoin, would they?

Thoughts?

Your thoughts not right. Even block reward become small, mining will get coins from network fees, in fact fee will become more and more important and will sustain the network, so there will always be miners and mining will not be stopped.

[michellee]

It will take around 100 more years for that problem to be faced since by that time only,21 million coins would have been completely mined.By that time,more bitcoin users would be found all over the world and there would be huge number of bitcoin transactions at that time so that miners would enough income to continue their mining.

i am sure in that time, we can see there is a way to solve this problem and we don't have to worried. and like conditions now, we have a problem about high transaction fee and we are trying to solve and we almost solve it by approval from many people which related with bitcoin. and if there is a problem like the OP said, i am sure we can handle it and we can find a way to solve the problem so bitcoin will be stay for future.

[Shady]

If after 100-200 years of demand circulating, the idea is to play with ideas on what can be done rather than what would lead to a downturn. I'd think more coins will be released every so often, like how DogeCoin has permanent supply each year. The idea to kill Bitcoin is ignored with any action that can solve this problem now and after coupled to the above.

I'd imagine each function enhancement as an update to bitcoin's economy, although easy to work around once brought to people's view.

[aTriz]

Hi
I was thinking about the blockchain and trying to re-evaluate how much I understand about how BTC works.

Bitcoin block rewards will not last forever, and mining is only profitable in rare cases. This means that when the block reward dissapears forever, mining will likely be profitable for nobody, and nobody will give hashing power to the blockchain because the miners fee only will not be enough to cover running costs.

To add to the problem, the miners fee is about to drop, and will never be ridiculously high (enough to solely cover miners expenses) because that in itself would kill Bitcoin. People wouldn't be willing to pay $5.00 to transfer $0.05 of Bitcoin, would they?

Thoughts?

Some miners in different parts of the world would be able to make a profit. For example in China and India, electricity is practically free, and most miners would be able to turn a profit. On other parts of the world, not much can be said.

Currently, there are 2 types of rewards that miners receive, block rewards and mining fees. The block rewards will slowly become less, due to the ever decreasing amount of available blocks to be mined. So the only alternative that can be done, are to increase the mining fees, and that will most likely be really bad for the everyday users of bitcoin.

Well, I guess we will have to cross that bridge when we get to it.