What about when all the coins are mined and the hashing is done?

[favelle75]

What happens to the network? Is it not the mining itself that "secures" Bitcoin? When that mining is done, how does Bitcoin stay secure?

[eternaluniverse]

at this point it will be 2140 and I assume if its still around that there will be so much invested that it will be "too big to fail" (satoshi may be rolling in his grave). Also in the year 2140 I don't think anyone of us can begin to fathom what life will be like then.

[mskryxz]

The computers "hash" to maintain the volume of transactions occurring around the world.

Also, we could turn that world wide computing power to do processes in computing for genome, dna, ai, weather modeling, etc. help run programs that would otherwise be to intense to do work on with a single computer. Someone correct me if I'm wrong in that part.

[Trupik]

The incentives to mine are: newly created coins and the transaction fees. Even when all coins are mined, the transaction fees still belong to the miner.

mskryxz: the algorithm behind Bitcoin (SHA256) is useless for "genome, dna, ai, weather modeling". ASICs are not reprogrammable, the algorithm in them cannot be changed.

[mskryxz]

The incentives to mine are: newly created coins and the transaction fees. Even when all coins are mined, the transaction fees still belong to the miner.

mskryxz: the algorithm behind Bitcoin (SHA256) is useless for "genome, dna, ai, weather modeling". ASICs are not reprogrammable, the algorithm in them cannot be changed.

What about the other alt coins that still use cpu or gpu to mine like litecoins?

[mskryxz]

The incentives to mine are: newly created coins and the transaction fees. Even when all coins are mined, the transaction fees still belong to the miner.

mskryxz: the algorithm behind Bitcoin (SHA256) is useless for "genome, dna, ai, weather modeling". ASICs are not reprogrammable, the algorithm in them cannot be changed.

Also forgot to say, thank you for the insight. I learn something new every day haha.

[coreli]

The incentives to mine are: newly created coins and the transaction fees. Even when all coins are mined, the transaction fees still belong to the miner.

mskryxz: the algorithm behind Bitcoin (SHA256) is useless for "genome, dna, ai, weather modeling". ASICs are not reprogrammable, the algorithm in them cannot be changed.

What about the other alt coins that still use cpu or gpu to mine like litecoins?

People have already moved hashing power around a lot, shared pools etc.

[AnonyMint]

at this point it will be 2140 and I assume if its still around that there will be so much invested that it will be "too big to fail" (satoshi may be rolling in his grave). Also in the year 2140 I don't think anyone of us can begin to fathom what life will be like then.

2040ish will already be down to 0.2% per year from the 12.5% currently. 2140 is nonsense as that is just where the asymptotic limit reaches 1 Satoshi per block perhaps (I didn't bother to calculate it).

The incentives to mine are: newly created coins and the transaction fees. Even when all coins are mined, the transaction fees still belong to the miner.

Refuted that as being viable:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=349869.msg3755466#msg3755466

[favelle75]

The incentives to mine are: newly created coins and the transaction fees. Even when all coins are mined, the transaction fees still belong to the miner.

mskryxz: the algorithm behind Bitcoin (SHA256) is useless for "genome, dna, ai, weather modeling". ASICs are not reprogrammable, the algorithm in them cannot be changed.

I am asking when all 21 million coins are found though....who's going to mine then?

[eternaluniverse]

The incentives to mine are: newly created coins and the transaction fees. Even when all coins are mined, the transaction fees still belong to the miner.

mskryxz: the algorithm behind Bitcoin (SHA256) is useless for "genome, dna, ai, weather modeling". ASICs are not reprogrammable, the algorithm in them cannot be changed.

I am asking when all 21 million coins are found though....who's going to mine then?

the people who own those 21 million coins will probably keep some hardware or pay for hardware to run to keep the system alive


ah i was not aware of the exact of the year by year block decrease value just the end value

[Trupik]

The incentives to mine are: newly created coins and the transaction fees. Even when all coins are mined, the transaction fees still belong to the miner.

mskryxz: the algorithm behind Bitcoin (SHA256) is useless for "genome, dna, ai, weather modeling". ASICs are not reprogrammable, the algorithm in them cannot be changed.

I am asking when all 21 million coins are found though....who's going to mine then?

Blockchain is a distributed ledger book. The blocks created by miners are pages written to that ledger. Every block contains number of transactions and that transaction may include fee. There is a special transaction in every block, that sends newly minted coins AND the fees to the miner who found the block. The newly minted coins are now 25.0 BTC and will gradually diminish until 2040. The fees on the other hand used to be zero, but are gradually rising as more and more transactions are included in the blocks. Now the average fees per block are about 0.1 BTC. So the incentive to mine for new coins will be declining, but the incentive to mine for fees will rise. That is what miners will mine for - they will continue confirming transactions and securing the Bitcoin network for a fee built in the Bitcoin protocol.