What will happen when all the bitcoins are mined?

[zpply]

What is everyone going to do with these rigs and companies building rigs? Will another virtual currency just come along and bitcoin will quietly become a second life comparison?

[Kluge]

en.bitcoin.it

[ajw7989]

What is everyone going to do with these rigs and companies building rigs? Will another virtual currency just come along and bitcoin will quietly become a second life comparison?

dont worry about it you most likely will not be around when that does indeed happen (2140)

[zpply]

Do you really think it will take that long considering how fast computing power is getting to mine bitcoins and large startups are taking millions in funding.

[ajw7989]

Do you really think it will take that long considering how fast computing power is getting to mine bitcoins and large startups are taking millions in funding.

the difficulty increases along with the increased hash power. Bitcoin blocks are found once every 10 minutes regardless of the power

[jjmicmic]

there are other alt coins, and something else probably come along

[Birdy]

Do you really think it will take that long considering how fast computing power is getting to mine bitcoins and large startups are taking millions in funding.

the difficulty increases along with the increased hash power. Bitcoin blocks are found once every 10 minutes regardless of the power

Actually they are found a bit faster, because the difficulty adjustment isn't immediately.
But mining will still ne needed when all bounties are gone (at least if Bitcoin is still around at that time), so transaction fees have to cover the costs instead.

[murraypaul]

Controversial: It will never happen.
Ultimately, the people who control things like miner rewards are ... the miners.
If 51% of the hashing power decides to change the rewards, the other 49% has the choice of either going along with it, or forking to their own chain, and having two competing Bitcoins, with theirs being less powerful. 51% means the owners of the 2-4 largest pools.
There will be too many people who have invested too much money in mining equipment, and who have no philosophical attachment to a deflationary currency, to simply accept seeing their income vanish. At the moment, there are still probably too many people with ideological reasons to oppose this for it to work, they would simply switch to different pools. In 10/20/50 years time, that will no longer be the case.
They will find some way to rationalise the decision as being in everyone's best interests, but ultimately turkeys won't vote for Christmas.

[Akka]

Controversial: It will never happen.
Ultimately, the people who control things like miner rewards are ... the miners.
If 51% of the hashing power decides to change the rewards, the other 49% has the choice of either going along with it, or forking to their own chain, and having two competing Bitcoins, with theirs being less powerful. 51% means the owners of the 2-4 largest pools.
There will be too many people who have invested too much money in mining equipment, and who have no philosophical attachment to a deflationary currency, to simply accept seeing their income vanish. At the moment, there are still probably too many people with ideological reasons to oppose this for it to work, they would simply switch to different pools. In 10/20/50 years time, that will no longer be the case.
They will find some way to rationalise the decision as being in everyone's best interests, but ultimately turkeys won't vote for Christmas.

Miners don't have so much say in this.

If all the BTC Users don't switch to their fork they would simply mine a new coin that nobody uses.Worth = 0. While the miners that staid on the old chain would get a nice chunk in transaction fees due to reduced competition.

[Mooshire]

Controversial: It will never happen.
Ultimately, the people who control things like miner rewards are ... the miners.
If 51% of the hashing power decides to change the rewards, the other 49% has the choice of either going along with it, or forking to their own chain, and having two competing Bitcoins, with theirs being less powerful. 51% means the owners of the 2-4 largest pools.
There will be too many people who have invested too much money in mining equipment, and who have no philosophical attachment to a deflationary currency, to simply accept seeing their income vanish. At the moment, there are still probably too many people with ideological reasons to oppose this for it to work, they would simply switch to different pools. In 10/20/50 years time, that will no longer be the case.
They will find some way to rationalise the decision as being in everyone's best interests, but ultimately turkeys won't vote for Christmas.

Also, not only the operators of these mining pools but allow the miners would have to go along with this ridiculous plan as well.

[Peter Lambert]

What is everyone going to do with these rigs and companies building rigs? Will another virtual currency just come along and bitcoin will quietly become a second life comparison?

One word: Transaction fees.

Controversial: It will never happen.
Ultimately, the people who control things like miner rewards are ... the miners.
If 51% of the hashing power decides to change the rewards, the other 49% has the choice of either going along with it, or forking to their own chain, and having two competing Bitcoins, with theirs being less powerful. 51% means the owners of the 2-4 largest pools.
There will be too many people who have invested too much money in mining equipment, and who have no philosophical attachment to a deflationary currency, to simply accept seeing their income vanish. At the moment, there are still probably too many people with ideological reasons to oppose this for it to work, they would simply switch to different pools. In 10/20/50 years time, that will no longer be the case.
They will find some way to rationalise the decision as being in everyone's best interests, but ultimately turkeys won't vote for Christmas.

Miners don't have so much say in this.

If all the BTC Users don't switch to their fork they would simply mine a new coin that nobody uses.Worth = 0. While the miners that staid on the old chain would get a nice chunk in transaction fees due to limited competition.

+1

The mining reward dropped by half last November, I don't remember seeing anybody trying to mine 50 btc blocks afterward.

If anybody tries to mine a block with too high of a reward, then that block is just ignored by the rest of the network.

[murraypaul]

If all the BTC Users don't switch to their fork they would simply mine a new coin that nobody uses.Worth = 0. While the miners that staid on the old chain would get a nice chunk in transaction fees due to limited competition.

The users wouldn't have to switch.
They would have their transactions confirmed (most of the time) by the 51%, because they have more hash power.
Miner rewards are simply an extra transaction included by miners in each mined block.
Currently everyone agrees to use the same formula for calculating them (current 25 BTC per block).
I could decide to mine for myself, and pay myself 100 BTC per block instead, but noone else would accept my blocks, so there wouldn't be much point.
But if over half of the network decide to accept those blocks, those blocks get built into the blockchain, and the new reward structure works.

[murraypaul]

If anybody tries to mine a block with too high of a reward, then that block is just ignored by the rest of the network.

Exactly. That wouldn't happen if 51% decided to accept them instead.

Think of it from the other point of view, look ahead to the mining reward dropping from 12.5 to 6.25.
There could be hundred of millions of dollars invested in mining equipment by that point.
Difficulty will be so massively high that only huge pools would have any real chance of finding blocks at a consistent rate.
Why wouldn't people vote to pay themselves more money?

[Peter Lambert]

If anybody tries to mine a block with too high of a reward, then that block is just ignored by the rest of the network.

Exactly. That wouldn't happen if 51% decided to accept them instead.

Think of it from the other point of view, look ahead to the mining reward dropping from 12.5 to 6.25.
There could be hundred of millions of dollars invested in mining equipment by that point.
Difficulty will be so massively high that only huge pools would have any real chance of finding blocks at a consistent rate.
Why wouldn't people vote to pay themselves more money?

You would have to make a fork with a higher block reward. Anybody using the old fork will not accept your bitcoins. The people paying for bitcoins will of course choose the old fork with the lower number of coins.

If you could have 12.5 btc worth 1000 usd each or 25 btc worth 0 usd each, which would you pick?

[DeathAndTaxes]

If all the BTC Users don't switch to their fork they would simply mine a new coin that nobody uses.Worth = 0. While the miners that staid on the old chain would get a nice chunk in transaction fees due to limited competition.

The users wouldn't have to switch.w reward structure works.
I could decide to mine for myself, and pay myself 100 BTC per block instead, but noone else would accept my blocks, so there wouldn't be much point.
But if over half of the network decide to accept those blocks, those blocks get built into the blockchain, and the new reward structure works.

No that is not correct.  Some miners could make the reward 100 BTC and it would be rejected by the nodes of every non-miner who doesn't switch.  A 100 BTC block right now is INVALID.  It doesn't how many people are mining them.  Hashpower can't change the rules.  51% has no relevence.  1% of miners could mine 100 BTC blocks but they would be INVALID on existing nodes as would 99% of miners mining them.

The only way a 100 BTC block becomes VALID is if users upgrade.  Of course you will never get 100% of users to agree on anything so if some upgrade and some don't you would have a permanent split a fork.  In essence two Bitcoins one which has a decreasing subsidy and rising value and one which has a bloated subsidy and crashing value.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one will remain popular.  The miners which switch to inflat-a-coin will receive lots of coins, the coins will just be worthless.   Likewise the miners who remain on the genuine Bitcoin chain will see their difficulty fall and thus their profits rise.

[Akka]

murraypaul luckily you made this in Newbies, otherwise you would now get a bad commend from me.  

If all the BTC Users don't switch to their fork they would simply mine a new coin that nobody uses.Worth = 0. While the miners that staid on the old chain would get a nice chunk in transaction fees due to limited competition.

The users wouldn't have to switch.
They would have their transactions confirmed (most of the time) by the 51%, because they have more hash power.
Miner rewards are simply an extra transaction included by miners in each mined block.
Currently everyone agrees to use the same formula for calculating them (current 25 BTC per block).
I could decide to mine for myself, and pay myself 100 BTC per block instead, but noone else would accept my blocks, so there wouldn't be much point.
But if over half of the network decide to accept those blocks, those blocks get built into the blockchain, and the new reward structure works.

No, Bitcoin doesn't work that way. Miners aren't all powerful and dictate my Node which Blocks to accept and not to accept. My (and every Node) works by a protocol that says that the current reward is 25BTC per block. If you would credit yourself more, my Node (and every Node acting by the same Protocol) would simply reject it as invalid and not relay it to other Nodes. Even if you had 99% of the hashing power.

[DeathAndTaxes]

If anybody tries to mine a block with too high of a reward, then that block is just ignored by the rest of the network.

Exactly. That wouldn't happen if 51% decided to accept them instead.

False.  1%, 51%, 99% it doesn't matter you can't change Bitcoin you can only fork it.  When you do there will be two incompatible forks.

a) Original Bitcoin with falling subsidy high user support, and broad merchant acceptance
b) Inflat-a-coin with massive subsidy, negligible user support, and non-existent merchant acceptance

Nobody but miners win from switching to b so nobody will.  B will simply die off and the miners foolish enough to switch will mine lots of worthless coins leaving the "loyal" miners who remain on the original chain richer.

[Peter Lambert]

I seem to remember seeing this question in every single bitcoin FAQ that has ever been made, why are we having this discussion again?

[murraypaul]

No that is not correct.  Some miners could make the reward 100 BTC and it would be rejected by the nodes of every non-miner who doesn't switch.  A 100 BTC block right now is INVALID.  It doesn't how many people are mining them.  Hashpower can't change the rules.  51% has no relevence.  1% of miners could mine 100 BTC blocks but they would be INVALID on existing nodes as would 99% of miners mining them.

Is that also true of SPV nodes?
I doubt there will be many, if at all, full nodes running that are not connected to mining operations in 10/20/50 years time.
Most people will have online wallets, all that needs to happen is that the wallet provider upgrades, the users don't get a choice.

[DeathAndTaxes]

I seem to remember seeing this question in every single bitcoin FAQ that has ever been made, why are we having this discussion again?

At least it is on the noob forum.