This question puzzles me.

[Juggy777]

I read today that 80% of bitcoins are mined already. If we assume 3 years max it all mined what happens then. Will it yet be tradable. Will people yet pay a premium to own it. Or it just becomes a collectible and you can sell it to highest bidder. What should we do move from bitcoins and go to alts? I have never been so puzzled so need your opinion

[Abdussamad]

They will continue to be mined until 2140: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply

[uttoransen]

Bitcoins will be mined for another 120 years but the difficulty will go crazy that the returns will likely become less profitable - to a stage where it will become almost pointless to keep mining.

But even if that happens, there's plenty of bitcoins around which will continue to be used for trading and life will go normal in the bitcoin universe.

Besides, do we really need to be worry about what will happen 120+ years from now on?

[gentlemand]

The bitcoin white paper describes it as deflationary. To deflate then inflation has to stop. The current outpouring of coins is an anomaly compared to its eventual status.

There've already been two halvings of the block reward. That continues until it's an infinitesimal amount every day. Then it ends completely.

[btcgreen63]

As the block reward goes down miners will make more from transaction fees. And BTC is divisible down to 8 decimal places so effectively there are much more than 21 million units available.

[HeRetiK]

If Bitcoin is still around in 120 years, society will most likely use it as store of value, assuming economics haven't changed in a way that makes the need for inflation a thing of the past. Bitcoin will continue to be tradable as long as people are willing to pay for it and consequently pay the miners that will live off transaction fees.

Bitcoins will be mined for another 120 years but the difficulty will go crazy that the returns will likely become less profitable - to a stage where it will become almost pointless to keep mining.

[...]

Assuming Bitcoin prices reach a plateau and stop growing in any meaningful way, difficulty is likely to drop as the focus shifts from block rewards to transaction fees. Not accounting for improvements in mining hardware, of course. Point being, short of external subsidies there will always be an equilibrium of difficulty and mining profitability, making it by definition always profitable for some.

[GimmeMyBitcoin]

As the block reward goes down miners will make more from transaction fees. And BTC is divisible down to 8 decimal places so effectively there are much more than 21 million units available.

So in other words, the fees we see today are CHEAP compared to what we can anticipate in the future.

That's the problem with proof of work:  if it takes $50 worth of energy to process a transaction, somewhere, somebody's going to have to pay for it. There's no getting around that economic reality.

[BTCforJoe]

As the block reward goes down miners will make more from transaction fees. And BTC is divisible down to 8 decimal places so effectively there are much more than 21 million units available.

You can split it up into however many units you want, but at the end of the day, there will only ever be 21 million BTC available. That’s only if miners continue to mine to the last coin.

I read today that 80% of bitcoins are mined already. If we assume 3 years max it all mined what happens then. Will it yet be tradable. Will people yet pay a premium to own it. Or it just becomes a collectible and you can sell it to highest bidder. What should we do move from bitcoins and go to alts? I have never been so puzzled so need your opinion

Regardless of your fallacy in stating that all bitcoins will be mined in three years, the value is all dependent on the usage once all of them are mined. Because of the nature of having a limited supply, bitcoin’s value will only retain itself if the supply and demand is active. Nobody knows what the future of Bitcoin is, so take everything that is said here with a grain of salt. There are incredible issues with scalability at the moment, so I wouldn’t put focus on what happens when all bitcoins are mined; we won’t be alive to see that day.

[fusepay]

There will always be Bitcoin in the ecosystem, even old wallet dats wiil become valuable due to the forks on bitcoin, Gold, Cash, Platinum and the rest.. so even thought Bitcoin is deflationary there will be quite a supply for quite a while!

[Abdussamad]

Bitcoins will be mined for another 120 years but the difficulty will go crazy that the returns will likely become less profitable - to a stage where it will become almost pointless to keep mining.

This is not correct. Difficulty adjusts to network hash rate. If it becomes unprofitable less efficient miners stop mining and difficulty adjusts downwards. Mining becomes profitable again and the miners that left start mining again.

And FYI if there are no miners bitcoin becomes unusable since we need miners to incorporate transactions in blocks and extend the chain.

[nioctiB#1]

I read today that 80% of bitcoins are mined already. If we assume 3 years max it all mined what happens then. Will it yet be tradable. Will people yet pay a premium to own it. Or it just becomes a collectible and you can sell it to highest bidder. What should we do move from bitcoins and go to alts? I have never been so puzzled so need your opinion

Those 20% supply available to be mine is not going to be mined in just 3 years because block rewards will be halve every 4 years and difficulties are increasing that is why mining the last bitcoin will take a century, but when all bitcoins are already in circulation mining will still continue because the only purpose it will do is to confirm all transactions but I dont think it will be profitable for those bitcoin miners if they will only gets rewarded by tranaaction fees. I dont think about this because maybe im out of this world before that last bitcoin gets out on circulation.

[jundel]

That would be the problem if the people only buy BTC and collect it alone. Do you think BTC price will continue increase if there will be no more BTC be mined? That time the price might fall and the people would sell their coins and it will go back to the cycling system.

[odolvlobo]

Bitcoins will be mined for another 120 years but the difficulty will go crazy that the returns will likely become less profitable - to a stage where it will become almost pointless to keep mining.

This is not correct. Difficulty adjusts to network hash rate. If it becomes unprofitable less efficient miners stop mining and difficulty adjusts downwards. Mining becomes profitable again and the miners that left start mining again.

And FYI if there are no miners bitcoin becomes unusable since we need miners to incorporate transactions in blocks and extend the chain.

Yes. The purpose of the difficulty is to ensure that blocks are produced every 10 minutes on average. It has no other purpose.