The 2140 end of new bitcoins.

[Mastergerund]

I still see 2140 given as the date for new bitcoins to run out, in all kinds of places.

Why is this date so prevalent and so stuck in people's heads?

Do people not understand the way difficulty readjustments work? Every difficulty increase happens because 2016 blocks were found in shorter time than projected. The timeline is based on 10 minute per block projection. Every difficulty increase moves forward the date when all new bitcoins have been minted, unless we have some future difficulty decreases that compensate for the difficulty increase.

So why do we keep saying 2140? Closer to 2100 is more accurate, IMHO.

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

Someone made a study that it's closer to 2050.

[r3wt]

Someone made a study that it's closer to 2050.

come the next generation of asics, it might be within the next 3-10 years imo. i'm curious to know what happens to the value once mining has ended. does it die because of lack of miners, or does the value increase?

[Mastergerund]

Someone made a study that it's closer to 2050.

come the next generation of asics, it might be within the next 3-10 years imo. i'm curious to know what happens to the value once mining has ended. does it die because of lack of miners, or does the value increase?

If >90% happens once within a block adjustment, difficulty will ratchet up, and move the end date forward 12 days. If it doesn't happen again the next adjustment, things will settle out and we're back on the slow march. I see 2050 as possible if we have constant ramp-up in hash power, but not 3-10 years. For it to be 3-10 years we would have to have CONSTANT increases in hash power of >90%. I just don't see that happening.

If we move forward 2 days every difficulty adjustment (average difficulty adjustment of ~15%) that moves the end date forward by about 18 years. 3 days each adjustment (average difficulty increase of ~21%) would move the end date forward by about 27 years.

[bbit]

2140 is right!

[Mastergerund]

2140 is right!

Oh, I know. I've seen the time-tables. My question is why do we keep insisting on that?

Is it because the unknown variable of new coins running out weighs heavy on everyone, so we keep the date of its occurrence as far away as conceivable?

[Ichthyo]

Is it because the unknown variable of new coins running out weighs heavy on everyone, so we keep the date of its occurrence as far away as conceivable?

This discussion is irrelevant.

What counts is at which point in time there are almost no new coins to be injected. That is, at which point is the influx of new coins no longer an economic factor. Unfortunately this is highly dependant on the development of the rates and the fraction of coins in circulation and thus pure speculation. And this explains why everyone concentrates on the irrelevant, yet more predictable end-of-new-coin date.

[Mastergerund]

I actually agree with you that the end of coin date is irrelevant. The point where transaction fees consistently exceed new coins in the block reward is much more important, and much harder to predict.

And I think you have a point that the difficulty of predicting that point is why people talk about the end of new coins date instead, but it still doesn't explain why we keep saying 2140 when everyone who understands difficulty adjustment knows it will be sooner than that.

[BitcoinBarrel]

The Mayans predicted all the Bitcoins would be produced on December 21, 2012

[Mastergerund]

The Mayans predicted all the Bitcoins would be produced on December 21, 2012

+1

[franky1]

I still see 2140 given as the date for new bitcoins to run out, in all kinds of places.

Why is this date so prevalent and so stuck in people's heads?

Do people not understand the way difficulty readjustments work? Every difficulty increase happens because 2016 blocks were found in shorter time than projected. The timeline is based on 10 minute per block projection. Every difficulty increase moves forward the date when all new bitcoins have been minted, unless we have some future difficulty decreases that compensate for the difficulty increase.

So why do we keep saying 2140? Closer to 2100 is more accurate, IMHO.

fail.
based on a 10 minute timeframe the total 21mill bitcoins will be found beyond 2200, but the dates at which the block reward decreases to such a small amount of satoshi's per block to even be worthy of mining, will come sooner

but before we get to that lets address the quoted fail..

lets say based on todays difficulty. a number of ASICS far surpass the estimate of the last difficulty increase and so blocks are now found in 9 minutes or less.. the next change will push the difficulty to a 12 minute rate per block solution to ensure that the solving of blocks stay on their 4 year half life cycle.
and lets say there was a period where miners never exceeded the estimate. then the difficulty would not increase. it would stay the same or decrease, ensuring that at the end of the 4 year the allotment of coins for that 4 year period were rewarded.

what you will find is that in 2037 each 10 minute reward would be worth 1 satoshi meaning unless extra decimals are added, the end would be 2141 for reward mining. even though there is still only 20,999,999 btc in existence (not quite finished).

alot of miners will think its time to end mining in 2029-2033 when the reward moves from just over 1.5btc to 0.7812500 per 10 minutes but thats because they are basing the profitability etc on todays value and hypertheticals

[numismatist]

The Mayans predicted all the Bitcoins would be produced on December 21, 2012

+1

Bullshit.

They did NOT. They don't even known about SHA256 algorithms.

[r3wt]

The Mayans predicted all the Bitcoins would be produced on December 21, 2012

+1

Bullshit.

They did NOT. They don't even known about SHA256 algorithms.

[Eri]

I still see 2140 given as the date for new bitcoins to run out, in all kinds of places.

Why is this date so prevalent and so stuck in people's heads?

Do people not understand the way difficulty readjustments work? Every difficulty increase happens because 2016 blocks were found in shorter time than projected. The timeline is based on 10 minute per block projection. Every difficulty increase moves forward the date when all new bitcoins have been minted, unless we have some future difficulty decreases that compensate for the difficulty increase.

So why do we keep saying 2140? Closer to 2100 is more accurate, IMHO.

fail.
based on a 10 minute timeframe the total 21mill bitcoins will be found beyond 2200, but the dates at which the block reward decreases to such a small amount of satoshi's per block to even be worthy of mining, will come sooner

but before we get to that lets address the quoted fail..

lets say based on todays difficulty. a number of ASICS far surpass the estimate of the last difficulty increase and so blocks are now found in 9 minutes or less.. the next change will push the difficulty to a 12 minute rate per block solution to ensure that the solving of blocks stay on their 4 year half life cycle.
and lets say there was a period where miners never exceeded the estimate. then the difficulty would not increase. it would stay the same or decrease, ensuring that at the end of the 4 year the allotment of coins for that 4 year period were rewarded.

what you will find is that in 2037 each 10 minute reward would be worth 1 satoshi meaning unless extra decimals are added, the end would be 2141 for reward mining. even though there is still only 20,999,999 btc in existence (not quite finished).

alot of miners will think its time to end mining in 2029-2033 when the reward moves from just over 1.5btc to 0.7812500 per 10 minutes but thats because they are basing the profitability etc on todays value and hypertheticals

What this guy said.

also

Error: CommonSense v1.1.5 was unable to execute. Sarcasm v1.1 module not found. Error Code: FxIng-Id10t "

Lol

[AliceWonder]

but the dates at which the block reward decreases to such a small amount of satoshi's per block to even be worthy of mining, will come sooner

Maybe not. You can buy more with the 25 reward today than you could with the 50 reward at the start.

[Eri]

but the dates at which the block reward decreases to such a small amount of satoshi's per block to even be worthy of mining, will come sooner

Maybe not. You can buy more with the 25 reward today than you could with the 50 reward at the start.

ding ding ding we a have a winner. Glad a few people get it

[oleganza]

Why is this date so prevalent and so stuck in people's heads?

I don't care when the last satoshi will be mined. What really matters is this:

90% of all coins will be minted by 2023 (in ten years).
98% of all coins will be minted by 2033 (in twenty years).

In 2023 the annual inflation rate will be around 2-3%.
In 2033 the annual inflation rate will be less than 1%.

So in just 10-20 years the inflation will be so insignificant, newly minted coins won't make any difference on the market. If fiat money happen to survive for the next 20 years, miners won't be able to produce 10-20% price volatility due to selling BTC to pay for equipment.

Illustration by Matt Whitlock:

[junglist.massive]

damn I'm kinda late :/

[kjj]

Nothing grows at 10%+ every 2 weeks for a century.  Run the numbers out for a decade or two if you don't believe me.

[Mastergerund]

I still see 2140 given as the date for new bitcoins to run out, in all kinds of places.

Why is this date so prevalent and so stuck in people's heads?

Do people not understand the way difficulty readjustments work? Every difficulty increase happens because 2016 blocks were found in shorter time than projected. The timeline is based on 10 minute per block projection. Every difficulty increase moves forward the date when all new bitcoins have been minted, unless we have some future difficulty decreases that compensate for the difficulty increase.

So why do we keep saying 2140? Closer to 2100 is more accurate, IMHO.

fail.
based on a 10 minute timeframe the total 21mill bitcoins will be found beyond 2200, but the dates at which the block reward decreases to such a small amount of satoshi's per block to even be worthy of mining, will come sooner

but before we get to that lets address the quoted fail..

lets say based on todays difficulty. a number of ASICS far surpass the estimate of the last difficulty increase and so blocks are now found in 9 minutes or less.. the next change will push the difficulty to a 12 minute rate per block solution to ensure that the solving of blocks stay on their 4 year half life cycle.
and lets say there was a period where miners never exceeded the estimate. then the difficulty would not increase. it would stay the same or decrease, ensuring that at the end of the 4 year the allotment of coins for that 4 year period were rewarded.

what you will find is that in 2037 each 10 minute reward would be worth 1 satoshi meaning unless extra decimals are added, the end would be 2141 for reward mining. even though there is still only 20,999,999 btc in existence (not quite finished).

alot of miners will think its time to end mining in 2029-2033 when the reward moves from just over 1.5btc to 0.7812500 per 10 minutes but thats because they are basing the profitability etc on todays value and hypertheticals

This is false. From the wiki:

Every 2016 blocks (which should take two weeks if this goal is kept perfectly), every Bitcoin client compares the actual time it took to generate these blocks with the two week goal and modifies the target by the percentage difference. This makes the proof-of-work problem more or less difficult. A single retarget never changes the target by more than a factor of 4 either way to prevent large changes in difficulty.

Following this explanation, time should be 1209600 seconds. if time is actually 1000000 seconds, retarget would be 1209600/1000000 = 1.2096 giving new difficulty of current_difficulty*1.2096 = new_difficulty.
That would project forward 1209600 seconds for the next 2016 blocks, based on the average finding time of the previous 2016 blocks.

If this is wrong, show me code-blocks, not extrapolation.

As for the 10% every 2 weeks for a century... agreed. Nothing grows at that rate forever. Mean reversion suggests we will stabilize between 5-10% annually at some point. The moving forward of the date which has already occurred, though, is unlikely to ever be reversed.