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

[Chyton]

We'll be all dead when 21,000,000 bitcoin is mined, jokes aside  . Miners will get paid by transactions fees.
I reckon even before 21,000,000 bitcoin is mined, bitcoin difficulty is going to drop drastically assuming the price of bitcoin doesn't inflate too much. Bitcoin miners are going to switch to other more profitable coins.

[YTBitcoin]

For me. The price of Bitcoin will increase dramatically at that moment because if you want to buy Bitcoin you will surely have a lot of difficulties because Bitcoin will cost more than $ 100,000, so keeping Bitcoin at this moment is very important.

If I am not wrong, hitting 21 millions bitcoins mean there are no BTCs left to be mined out and now it becomes personal asset of people. It will totally depend on the owners whether they use satoshis in services (surely there will be more of them accepting BTCs by then) or keep it like gold.

[rb26]

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 there are no more block rewards for the miners. Regardless even if the last block of Bitcoin is already mined, miners will continue to mine for the purpose of processing Bitcoin transactions. So if we are going to look in the aspect of profitability, then miners will only rely on transaction fees. We won't be seeing this, it will happen after more than a hundred years from now (I do not know the exact digits ). That is if Bitcoin will still exist on that point, though.

[Casdinyard]

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 there are no more block rewards for the miners. Regardless even if the last block of Bitcoin is already mined, miners will continue to mine for the purpose of processing Bitcoin transactions. So if we are going to look in the aspect of profitability, then miners will only rely on transaction fees. We won't be seeing this, it will happen after more than a hundred years from now (I do not know the exact digits ). That is if Bitcoin will still exist on that point, though.

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.

[novaprime]

For me. It will take five years for new miners to exploit 21 million Bitcoins and if that happens the Cryptocurrency market will be volatile as everyone wants to own 1BTC and the price will go up and the Bitcoin market will surely will be the focus at that time

[BlockHazard]

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?

Still same... but the bitcoin that will be in the miner is not from the production of the specified bitcoin but from the fee incurred when we send bitcoin, just think, Bitcoin yesterday just did segwit. yup ... the increasing year Bitcoin might not like this course, would be much of an upgrade and will be a lot of innovation in Bitcoin to make Bitcoin as a finished product and ready to get into the mainstream in payment system like sathosi goal in making bitcoin. remember .. every problem there will be a solution.

[Kuchiyose]

For me. It will take five years for new miners to exploit 21 million Bitcoins and if that happens the Cryptocurrency market will be volatile as everyone wants to own 1BTC and the price will go up and the Bitcoin market will surely will be the focus at that time

It seems so, it took several years to get that much Bitcoin for a junior couldn't seem to do it in 1 year.

[Dhaaaw]

Well once we hit that milestone, miners won't have much to gain so probably we'll see a big bom on the transaction fee and that will probably make people leave bitcoin for other cryptocurrencies. But hey we still have a long way to go (probably +20 years) and I sure know that bitcoin is unpredicatable and it has always amazed me so let's hope for the best.

[8270thNinja]

Well based on previous actions, there will be a hard fork, and the limit will be raised to 50 million. Blocksize will be increased so that people can include the lord's prayer in their transactions.

I thought the limit will not be raised or changes, it will just be 21 million and no more actions will happen to it, does the developers already announced or does the developers already faced this concerns?

[Silberman]

I suppose that Bitcoin will become a kind of gold bullion for individuals with much higher price than now as well as the blockchain technology will transform into Fort Knox. If seriously, I think there are too many possible options and we cannot predict the exact one.

I actually hold with the new guy here Cryptos are now a feature, so I don't expect us to be using bitcoin like a Fiat into the far future. Something bigger and better will certainly come along, that encompasses the best of bitcoin and the best of fiat. What I see for long term BTC is; the trust in the protocol grows to a level where people equate bitcoin with 'digital gold'. When I say good, I am trying to evoke the trust that gold has garnered over the ages. For the trader, the liquidity of bitcoin is vastly superior to gold, I can see the 20k plus valuations actually making sense at that point. Bitcoin may even become a collector's item, given the scarcity.

But what can be better than what we have? What characteristics do you think fiat has that are better than bitcoin? The only one that comes to mind may be the fees and the speed of transaction but that is going to be solved with the current improvements on the network, after that the only thing that bitcoin will be missing will be the backing of countries as their local currency but even that could change in the future.

[Blamsud]

I suppose that Bitcoin will become a kind of gold bullion for individuals with much higher price than now as well as the blockchain technology will transform into Fort Knox. If seriously, I think there are too many possible options and we cannot predict the exact one.

I actually hold with the new guy here Cryptos are now a feature, so I don't expect us to be using bitcoin like a Fiat into the far future. Something bigger and better will certainly come along, that encompasses the best of bitcoin and the best of fiat. What I see for long term BTC is; the trust in the protocol grows to a level where people equate bitcoin with 'digital gold'. When I say good, I am trying to evoke the trust that gold has garnered over the ages. For the trader, the liquidity of bitcoin is vastly superior to gold, I can see the 20k plus valuations actually making sense at that point. Bitcoin may even become a collector's item, given the scarcity.

But what can be better than what we have? What characteristics do you think fiat has that are better than bitcoin? The only one that comes to mind may be the fees and the speed of transaction but that is going to be solved with the current improvements on the network, after that the only thing that bitcoin will be missing will be the backing of countries as their local currency but even that could change in the future.

I don't think there's a need to make it as a back-up for regular currencies. Btc alone have features that cn be a great help for us, it's not impossible that it will reach its total supply, maybe at time , btc features will fully accessible and accepted by many as a cryptocurrency.

[GreenBits]

Well once we hit that milestone, miners won't have much to gain so probably we'll see a big bom on the transaction fee and that will probably make people leave bitcoin for other cryptocurrencies. But hey we still have a long way to go (probably +20 years) and I sure know that bitcoin is unpredicatable and it has always amazed me so let's hope for the best.

Miners are the ones that get the fees. The assumption is, especially now with larger blocks, is that if the system actually lasts til this point, it should be a given that adoption scaled with it. The fees at this point should surpass the proportionate share of block rewards. We will also assume it should be much, much cheaper to mine in general, as the mining technology should be hyper efficient by this point as well.

[heitorlinks]

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?

Volatility will end and Bitcoin will begin to be used for its purpose.

[Silberman]

Well once we hit that milestone, miners won't have much to gain so probably we'll see a big bom on the transaction fee and that will probably make people leave bitcoin for other cryptocurrencies. But hey we still have a long way to go (probably +20 years) and I sure know that bitcoin is unpredicatable and it has always amazed me so let's hope for the best.

Miners are the ones that get the fees. The assumption is, especially now with larger blocks, is that if the system actually lasts til this point, it should be a given that adoption scaled with it. The fees at this point should surpass the proportionate share of block rewards. We will also assume it should be much, much cheaper to mine in general, as the mining technology should be hyper efficient by this point as well.

Correct by the time that scenario happens bitcoin will have twice its current age and by that time a larger segment of the population will use bitcoin with such a large market then the fees will be more than enough to keep the incentive for the miners to keep running their hardware and with the surge of competition that is coming from other countries like Japan and Russia then we can assume miners are here to stay for a long time.

[Wingo]

Mathematically, we cannot really reach 21 million bitcoins. But there will come a time when bitcoin mining would not be worth it because miners will just mine for the transactions.

[pokeronlinestatus]

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.

[tailwate07]

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?

When that happens then it means all the available bitcoins have been mined, then there would be no new one to mine, all transactions happening will just be involving exchange of bitcoin from users who already have bitcoins.

[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?

Volatility will end and Bitcoin will begin to be used for its purpose.

The volatility of bitcoin does not come from the bitcoins that are the reward from solving a block that the miners get, it comes from several factors, first bitcoin is too young so it is still growing and changing and it has not reached its definite form, two bitcoin is a completely new technology so people do not know how to react to it, and three the whales can manipulate the price as much as they like since they have huge amounts of bitcoin.

[josucoin]

It is a good question. But I do not know what will happen, but I know one thing, I will be following the news to always be updated, because this is very important.

[mevmike]

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?

There will be never 21 000 000 bitcoins. It will divide into infinity.
And when dividing will be to small - miners will start earn from fees of transactions.

For me this is the thing that will happen.
The whole bitcoin supply will be divided among owners...
Of course the price will really be going high.
And blockchain will be fueled by transaction fees
.
But it is still a very long way to go...