What happens when we hit 21,000,000 bitcoins?

[ahmad21]

This morning I was talking about this with a buddy of mine.

Right now we have miners all over the world trying to solve this exponentially hard algorithm to earn their bitcoins. That is their incentive and that is what drives them to do so.

What happens when we remove that incentive to "mine" aka "verify transactions" on the blockchain? What I'm basically asking is what happens when we hit 21,000,000 bitcoins from the perspective of the miners?

1. Ill be dead. And you will be too.

2. There wont be any empty blocks anymore.

Mining of all the bitcoins means there are no new blocks and not that previous blocks are filled. But yes there will be a huge impact on price. The supply will become limited and demand is ever growing. You will find hard time finding someone selling his bitcoins.

[loopes]

When we hit the maximum amount of BTC, then the value will go up a lot because no more can be created and demand will rise but supply will stay the same.

true dude, as like diamond or other valuable thing, demands of these thing are very high whereas the supply of diamonds is very limited that's make the price of diamonds are very high beside the beautiful reason which many people Interested. when bitcoin supply is limited but demands of bitcoin keep increasing the results is bitcoin price will sky rocket.

[valentin68]

Because it becomes exponentially difficult, then there is no possibility to obtain the last bitcoin of the 21,000,000 of the bitcoins. So computation will continue forever, and give exponentially difficult results. This will give the possibility for the bitcoin to exist forever. The last bitcoin, or the last part of it will be never obtained.  

[BingoDog]

That will not happen so soon so I'm not worried yet but when it comes to that the price will go wild. Demand is increasing all the time and with the time it will be even bigger and supply will be limited. Natural consequence of this will be huge pump of the price. Probably the fees will be also very high which is the bad thing. Bitcoin market will look very much different comparing to now. 

[Imran1271]

This morning I was talking about this with a buddy of mine.

Right now we have miners all over the world trying to solve this exponentially hard algorithm to earn their bitcoins. That is their incentive and that is what drives them to do so.

What happens when we remove that incentive to "mine" aka "verify transactions" on the blockchain? What I'm basically asking is what happens when we hit 21,000,000 bitcoins from the perspective of the miners?

All coins are destroyed and bitcoin starts from the genesis block again.

I don't think so because no one can imagine that how much price can be hit bitcoin. So if bitcoin hit 21,00,000 that will not imposed altcoin any more.

[hua_hui]

When we hit the maximum amount of BTC, then the value will go up a lot because no more can be created and demand will rise but supply will stay the same.

true dude, as like diamond or other valuable thing, demands of these thing are very high whereas the supply of diamonds is very limited that's make the price of diamonds are very high beside the beautiful reason which many people Interested. when bitcoin supply is limited but demands of bitcoin keep increasing the results is bitcoin price will sky rocket.

the supply of diamonds is actually quite high. It is just that the market go and hype it up and link it to engagement rings etc that cause the trends/hype. Otherwise, diamonds would be a worthless piece of junks. On the other hand, bitcoins solve a lot of real life issue like oversea transaction, seller protection, fees, limited quantity etc.

[Chrystora123]

i think nothing happen if we have to reach 21 million Bitcoin . because there is still are Ethereum , Litecoin , and another potencial Altcoin waiting for mining ..

[gulshan1]

At this time bitcoin is going popular very fast and day by day usage of it is increasing.No body can imagine price of bitcoin at the time of mining completion.but it true bitcoin will be stand on great and big handsome price with 6 digit figure. i think it will run very fast after the completion as compare to current time of growth.because at that time every body will know about this and total bitcoin will see less amount for the whole world.

[Silberman]

This morning I was talking about this with a buddy of mine.

Right now we have miners all over the world trying to solve this exponentially hard algorithm to earn their bitcoins. That is their incentive and that is what drives them to do so.

What happens when we remove that incentive to "mine" aka "verify transactions" on the blockchain? What I'm basically asking is what happens when we hit 21,000,000 bitcoins from the perspective of the miners?

Then all the bitcoins available would have been mined and then there would be nothing left to mine, so all we can just do is to keep confirming transactions as miners then, and earn just a little from transaction fees.

By that time miners will be so energy efficient that they will be able run hardware with very low energy costs and in that way they are going to be able to depend only in the transaction fees that they receive from the users that make a transaction, besides it may be possible that the devs change the hash algorithm to something else if most of the mining power moves to segwit2x.

[StevenS]

If there are less miners, the transaction will be as slow as you can imagine. Also this will affect the users, they might switch to other alternative coins for fast transactions. So in this scenario, less demand, low price.

But if the miners will just rely on transaction fee of course this will not be enough for them versus in what their getting in block rewards as a result of this, over time miners will not be interested to this and will quit. The lesser the miners ther slower will be the confirmation of transaction.

The Bitcoin protocol is designed to produce one block every 10 minutes. If the number of miners goes down, the difficulty will automatically adjust to keep the block time approximately the same. Thus, transaction speed will not change.

Because it becomes exponentially difficult, then there is no possibility to obtain the last bitcoin of the 21,000,000 of the bitcoins. So computation will continue forever, and give exponentially difficult results. This will give the possibility for the bitcoin to exist forever. The last bitcoin, or the last part of it will be never obtained.  

Because bitcoins are measured in Satoshis (.00000001 BTC), as an integer value, the block reward will actually go to zero, 4 years after it goes to 1, because 1 divided by 2 is 0, when using integer arithmetic.

[Falgorn]

If all 21 million bitcoins are to be extracted, it will most likely turn from a means of payment into a means of storing valuables. In addition, it must be taken into account that during this time a significant proportion of bitcoin will disappear irrevocably due to various reasons, such as loss of access to the digital wallet, etc.

[Silberman]

When we hit the maximum amount of BTC, then the value will go up a lot because no more can be created and demand will rise but supply will stay the same.

true dude, as like diamond or other valuable thing, demands of these thing are very high whereas the supply of diamonds is very limited that's make the price of diamonds are very high beside the beautiful reason which many people Interested. when bitcoin supply is limited but demands of bitcoin keep increasing the results is bitcoin price will sky rocket.

Just a clarification do not compare bitcoin to diamonds, diamonds are not rare, remember that diamonds are just carbon arranged in a special way, the reason many people think that diamonds are rare is because there is a monopoly of them, a single company owns most of the diamond mines and the rest of the mines are in countries that are on war and that company has pushed for laws that make illegal to buy diamonds from those regions.