What to expect from Bitcoin after the last BTC gets mined?

[Stedsm]

Seeing the current fuss going on in the markets and the buzz that Bitcoin may lose its value down more to $1-2k levels (without any solid reasons except we may call this the biggest shake of investors' confidence), what do you really expect when the last Bitcoin gets mined?

I've got 2 things in my mind I'd like to share:

- Miners will push the fee higher and higher if the value drops (and even if it doesn't, they'll probably do the same because there won't be any rewards for the same and they'll not serve us for lower, maybe). So, after the hike in fee values, will there be the same clutter and people would sell BTC and choose some other alt for their money-making needs?

- Miners will completely stop mining BTC which would give us the chance to mine it with our PCs once again (maybe) and/or people might completely stop using BTC because there maybe a sudden drop in price (like we expected a price jump but it dropped like hell just because last BTC mined and mining fee hike as said in first scenario).

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[KingZee]

At the end of the day, miners only really care about fiat value. Thats why they're still mining even after the rewards have been halved a lot more since bitcoin first started, and that's why they'll keep doing so in the future.

By the time the last bitcoin is mined, the price would have "slowly" adjusted to keep it interesting for them, just like it did after the last two halvenings. If it keeps increasing at the same pace then it's completely plausible that a fee only network, will provide the same, and maybe even a lot more miner incentive than today, IN FIAT.

[Wilhelm]

Good discussion. I understand a lot about Bitcoin but how the system will work after all Bitcoins have been mined is vague at best.

It is my understanding that....
The difficulty adjusts after 2016 blocks making it easier or harder depending on the hashrate of miners.
Mining will be done for the fees.
At each block someone gets the fees.

I would believe that the system will wither down to a balance between miners and transactions.
Mining pools are the only way to get your piece of the fees.

The only problematic thing is the blockchain getting longer and longer making it impracticle to run a full node.



Anyhow it would be great for a specialist to provide us with a view on the OP's question

[Totscha]

Seeing the current fuss going on in the markets and the buzz that Bitcoin may lose its value down more to $1-2k levels (without any solid reasons except we may call this the biggest shake of investors' confidence), what do you really expect when the last Bitcoin gets mined?

I've got 2 things in my mind I'd like to share:

- Miners will push the fee higher and higher if the value drops (and even if it doesn't, they'll probably do the same because there won't be any rewards for the same and they'll not serve us for lower, maybe). So, after the hike in fee values, will there be the same clutter and people would sell BTC and choose some other alt for their money-making needs?

- Miners will completely stop mining BTC which would give us the chance to mine it with our PCs once again (maybe) and/or people might completely stop using BTC because there maybe a sudden drop in price (like we expected a price jump but it dropped like hell just because last BTC mined and mining fee hike as said in first scenario).

1. I fully expect all of us to be gone by then. It's 120 years into the future...

2. The fees will become an increasingly important part of the miner reward after each halving. Bitcoin has been designed with that in mind form day 1.

3. Miners will never completely stop all at once. Think of it this way. Lets say a particular highway has terrible traffic jams. And some drivers choose to avoid it. If everyone stopped using it, it would be empty, making it a super excellent choice. And drivers start using it again. But you never get to that extreme, because the system balances out way before that i.e. people stop avoiding the highway once the traffic is moderate. It's the same with mining. Miners who don't like the reward keep dropping out, the rewards are distributed among less people who now get more. This continues until everyone is happy with the situation. You never get to zero...

[cindygirl]

A really important thing to consider in your thinking is how efficient mining will likely be at that point. There will be much higher hash power and potentially a renewable and cheap energy source.

It's hard to fully predict what will happen because for the first time, bitcoin mining difficulty and cost won't be tied to the price of bitcoin via supply. But it will somewhat be linked still due to the (currently) limited number of transactions that can fit in to one block. Again however, that's subject to change, I don't see how bitcoin can still be used in 100+ years with the current scalibility issues still existing.

[hisslyness]

I don't believe we will have to wait to 2140 to see the impact of zero block rewards.

The Reward per Block becomes irrelevant after 6th or 7th halving or in the Year 2032 or 2036 (Approx) and more irrelevant thereafter. In fact, the fees generated will be more than the block rewards.

Miners are not the ones who are pushing fees higher. It is the demand for BTC confirmations that determines the fees. More transactions on the network, the more fees you will have to pay to be included in the next block. We recently witness this during the last half of 2017.

Will the fees be enough to sustain the mining activity? We will find out in Year 2032.

Either block sizes will be keep small to ensure higher transaction fees and Layer 2 Scaling will be the norm and BTC onchain will be used as a settlement layer.

Or Block sizes are increase to allow more transactions to be included in a block, hence a larger transaction fee.

Currently the average transaction fee per bock is about 0.25BTC per block and average block size is about 80%. Guestimate the value of BTC in 20 years from now and do the calculations. It will be worth it for miners!

Also, i don't believe we will ever be mining with our PC's ever again! I'll just fire up my S1's and dominate the hashrate

[Stedsm]

At the end of the day, miners only really care about fiat value. Thats why they're still mining even after the rewards have been halved a lot more since bitcoin first started, and that's why they'll keep doing so in the future.

By the time the last bitcoin is mined, the price would have "slowly" adjusted to keep it interesting for them, just like it did after the last two halvenings. If it keeps increasing at the same pace then it's completely plausible that a fee only network, will provide the same, and maybe even a lot more miner incentive than today, IN FIAT.

I believe that Bitcoin had been an all time favorite for the past 2 halvenings due to the fact that there were less miners and profit used to be more in less difficulty, the value was low but it was profitable even when they were mining during the sub 250s. It is still profitable if we see it in terms of fiat, but not if we calculate based on what we need to pay for an equipment as well as the difficulty that's rising day by day.

Good discussion. I understand a lot about Bitcoin but how the system will work after all Bitcoins have been mined is vague at best.

It is my understanding that....
The difficulty adjusts after 2016 blocks making it easier or harder depending on the hashrate of miners.
Mining will be done for the fees.
At each block someone gets the fees.

I would believe that the system will wither down to a balance between miners and transactions.
Mining pools are the only way to get your piece of the fees.

--snip--

I believe there will again be two things possible:

Either miners will keep up with their job and support the blockchain system without eliminating their hash power as if the value of BTC rises based on the confidence of both investors and miners, it'll then be highly profitable to both the ends.

OR Big miners may decide to go on for a 51% attack (the only thing possible if low-level miners stop mining and hash rate drops to some unexpected levels) and harm the network. This is the least possiblity as there won't be any advantage to them if they try to manipulate the chain by mining empty blocks.

[buwaytress]

Seeing the current fuss going on in the markets and the buzz that Bitcoin may lose its value down more to $1-2k levels (without any solid reasons except we may call this the biggest shake of investors' confidence), what do you really expect when the last Bitcoin gets mined?

I've got 2 things in my mind I'd like to share:

- Miners will push the fee higher and higher if the value drops (and even if it doesn't, they'll probably do the same because there won't be any rewards for the same and they'll not serve us for lower, maybe). So, after the hike in fee values, will there be the same clutter and people would sell BTC and choose some other alt for their money-making needs?

- Miners will completely stop mining BTC which would give us the chance to mine it with our PCs once again (maybe) and/or people might completely stop using BTC because there maybe a sudden drop in price (like we expected a price jump but it dropped like hell just because last BTC mined and mining fee hike as said in first scenario).

I actually half thought that miners, or at least the huge firms we've come to know and hate (heh), would already have taken steps to move in temporarily as market makers in the current pricing, but instead they've chosen to shut down operations and hold out, while others have chosen to mine at a loss. There's some consequence of this I'll feel, as supply on markets thin (miners holding out), then the natural pressure from demand should kick in a little.

Bear in mind most miners will have already made their profits the entire of last year and this, so there's a healthy cushion for them to wait this out.

The latter scenario would be scary because if miners stop and move out, then the network loses its much-touted security. Too big too fail, too much to lose? Should hold true for a good number of years.

[KingZee]

I actually half thought that miners, or at least the huge firms we've come to know and hate (heh), would already have taken steps to move in temporarily as market makers in the current pricing, but instead they've chosen to shut down operations and hold out, while others have chosen to mine at a loss. There's some consequence of this I'll feel, as supply on markets thin (miners holding out), then the natural pressure from demand should kick in a little.

It's only logical honestly. As a miner, if you decide to turn them off, I figure the next step is one of two things : You're going to cash out in fear of further losses, or you're going to hodl waiting for the profit to go back up and mine again to get your ROI in whatever time you calculated when the price was high. Miners are the last people to rely on to pump the price, because price pumps only happen when massive fiat money enters the market, which leads to FOMO and massive pumps.

Bear in mind

 

[Lucius]

I don't believe we will have to wait to 2140 to see the impact of zero block rewards.

The Reward per Block becomes irrelevant after 6th or 7th halving or in the Year 2032 or 2036 (Approx) and more irrelevant thereafter. In fact, the fees generated will be more than the block rewards.

We can argue about something what will maybe happen around year 2140 ( if BTC still exist then ), but it is a distant future that we will not experience so that is not our problem. Almost 99% of all BTC will be mined around the year 2032, and that 1% which will remain for next 100 years in fact will not be too important.

Miners will mine as long as there is profit in it, they are not charitable institutions and will never behave like that. When rewards per block become lower miners will need to find other ways to generate income, and besides rewards from blocks only mining fees remain as solution.

If in the next 10-15 years the number of transactions increases significantly, then miners should get some profit from that. It is also necessary to consider the price of electricity, development of the mining devices - respectively total costs of mining compared to earnings.

[Totscha]

I don't believe we will have to wait to 2140 to see the impact of zero block rewards.

The Reward per Block becomes irrelevant after 6th or 7th halving or in the Year 2032 or 2036 (Approx) and more irrelevant thereafter. In fact, the fees generated will be more than the block rewards.

We can argue about something what will maybe happen around year 2140 ( if BTC still exist then ), but it is a distant future that we will not experience so that is not our problem. Almost 99% of all BTC will be mined around the year 2032, and that 1% which will remain for next 100 years in fact will not be too important.

Miners will mine as long as there is profit in it, they are not charitable institutions and will never behave like that. When rewards per block become lower miners will need to find other ways to generate income, and besides rewards from blocks only mining fees remain as solution.

If in the next 10-15 years the number of transactions increases significantly, then miners should get some profit from that. It is also necessary to consider the price of electricity, development of the mining devices - respectively total costs of mining compared to earnings.

If the transaction volumes stays the same, miners will get more from fees than the block reward in 10-15 years...

[hugeblack]

I do not know why when a small shake occurs, all start to panic like this. The miners will decide to stop mining when BTC falls to zero.
When we talk about the fixed assets of the "mining machinery", the change in activity takes a long time and the miners have plans in the event of price collapse. "Those plans do not include abandoning mining."
This decline occurred about 10 days ago so panic and thinking that way is funny as the price did not drop to cumbersome levels.

Remember those miners get lots of free forked coins.

[Stedsm]

I do not know why when a small shake occurs, all start to panic like this.

Oversmart, eh?
I've tried to adjoin this situation with possible future outcome when the last BTC gets mined, I've never said anything like I'm posting this under the panic effect, all I've done here is taken this dip as an example as it sits fit for the debate I wanted to discuss here.

The miners will decide to stop mining when BTC falls to zero.

False. Miners will stop mining when BTC becomes less profitable / unprofitable, they'll look for other options.

When we talk about the fixed assets of the "mining machinery", the change in activity takes a long time and the miners have plans in the event of price collapse. "Those plans do not include abandoning mining."

May this be true to some extent, but what about those influencing personalities over the web who're trying to trash off BTC's value by saying they would dump their stash? People really get panicked with all such FUD by these people and I believe it doesn't really suit their credibility to bark off such ^personal^ things in public.

This decline occurred about 10 days ago so panic and thinking that way is funny as the price did not drop to cumbersome levels.

Once again, it's about the "last Bitcoin mined" thing and we're not discussing the current decline here, I guess you gave your comment under the panic attack.  

Remember those miners get lots of free forked coins.

The only thing I agree upon.

[Wind_FURY]

OP, this is a very touchy topic for the Maximalists, and to suggest something like a hard fork to inflate the monetary supply is blasphemy.

But my theory is someone, a "Bitcoin OG", will campaign for a hard fork to increase inflation without increasing the monetary supply, if the price remains low and the block rewards halve to 3.125 on 2024.

It starts there, and it will not be the end of it.

[KingZee]

OP, this is a very touchy topic for the Maximalists, and to suggest something like a hard fork to inflate the monetary supply is blasphemy.

But my theory is someone, a "Bitcoin OG", will campaign for a hard fork to increase inflation without increasing the monetary supply, if the price remains low and the block rewards halve to 3.125 on 2024.

It starts there, and it will not be the end of it.

He never promoted intentional forking. BCH and BCHSV don't exist in the intention of pleasing miners, but when those forks DID happen, miners instantly had their coins doubled. Would they continue mining blocks for either chain is on them, but it still doesn't deny it's free money overnight.

While I'm skeptical about your "theory", and your "bitcoin OG" (Is the real satoshi going to rise from his cybergrave? lol), I can't say I'm not excited about the future. It's because bitcoin has immense value in the experience it has. Every other coin out there hasn't nearly had as many problems as bitcoin, mainly because of the sheer scale it's reached. We've seen dozens of forks, many hard ones, we have tx scaling, performance issues we're trying to solve through lightning... there's just so much trial and error that happened with bitcoin, and that's STILL going to happen in the future that -compared to other new coins who haven't gotten to that point yet- makes it one of the most valuable coins.

[cellard]

If there is a demand for bitcoin, there will be transactions on the mempool ready to be mined. If you are not doing it, then I will do it an get the rewards, and if it's not economically viable for me, then someone else on the planet will find profit. Bitcoin is a global phenomenon, there's 7 billion people out there. Some of them will always find themselves in a position where they find profit by getting the job done of mining these transactions. Hashrate may go up and down as price fluctuates but I don't see how it can collapse, since as I said someone will always find profit.

As far as the end of rewards, i've seen something proposed that satoshi's bitcoins are re-introduced into the economy by adding them in the next million blocks, so that's 1 extra bitcoin from satoshi's coins for the next million blocks, so you get rid of the "satoshi is moving coins" FUD.

Of course there will be heavy resistance to such a proposal, since the main point of bitcoin is that coins never move unless owner wants to. It's a tricky situation.

[exstasie]

Seeing the current fuss going on in the markets and the buzz that Bitcoin may lose its value down more to $1-2k levels (without any solid reasons except we may call this the biggest shake of investors' confidence), what do you really expect when the last Bitcoin gets mined?

I've got 2 things in my mind I'd like to share:

- Miners will push the fee higher and higher if the value drops (and even if it doesn't, they'll probably do the same because there won't be any rewards for the same and they'll not serve us for lower, maybe). So, after the hike in fee values, will there be the same clutter and people would sell BTC and choose some other alt for their money-making needs?

- Miners will completely stop mining BTC which would give us the chance to mine it with our PCs once again (maybe) and/or people might completely stop using BTC because there maybe a sudden drop in price (like we expected a price jump but it dropped like hell just because last BTC mined and mining fee hike as said in first scenario).

Miners can't unilaterally push fees higher unless they agree to restrict block size with a soft fork. That seems unlikely at this point, given what happened last year. The only way it would happen is if one entity controlled a majority of the hash rate and implemented the soft limit themselves.

However, if the long term uptrend holds and adoption continues, we can also expect fees to rise with no action from miners. In a situation of scarce block space and increasing demand for that block space, rising fees should compensate miners for the falling mining subsidy. Or it should at least soften the blow and prevent difficulty from plummeting.

[Ganbound]

Seeing the current fuss going on in the markets and the buzz that Bitcoin may lose its value down more to $1-2k levels (without any solid reasons except we may call this the biggest shake of investors' confidence), what do you really expect when the last Bitcoin gets mined?

I've got 2 things in my mind I'd like to share:

- Miners will push the fee higher and higher if the value drops (and even if it doesn't, they'll probably do the same because there won't be any rewards for the same and they'll not serve us for lower, maybe). So, after the hike in fee values, will there be the same clutter and people would sell BTC and choose some other alt for their money-making needs?

- Miners will completely stop mining BTC which would give us the chance to mine it with our PCs once again (maybe) and/or people might completely stop using BTC because there maybe a sudden drop in price (like we expected a price jump but it dropped like hell just because last BTC mined and mining fee hike as said in first scenario).

At that time Bitcoin will be a global currency and the value of Bitcoin will be increased much more than we can expect so in that time even the mining fees will work better for the miners and the crypto community will be the rich community and they will be able to afford the fees and a smaller fraction of fees will be a bigger amount for the miners.

[Wind_FURY]

OP, this is a very touchy topic for the Maximalists, and to suggest something like a hard fork to inflate the monetary supply is blasphemy.

But my theory is someone, a "Bitcoin OG", will campaign for a hard fork to increase inflation without increasing the monetary supply, if the price remains low and the block rewards halve to 3.125 on 2024.

It starts there, and it will not be the end of it.

While I'm skeptical about your "theory", and your "bitcoin OG" (Is the real satoshi going to rise from his cybergrave? lol), I can't say I'm not excited about the future.

The "OG" might be a developer, a miner, or a whale-cumulator like Barry Silbert.

By 2024 on the halving to 3.125 rewards per block, and on the condition that Bitcoin's price has not increased high enough to support the miners' operating costs, someone will campaign for a fork to increase inflation, but without increasing the monetary supply to "save Bitcoin".

It will be another big drama same as the scalability debate.

I hope you understood my point this time.

[justspare]

Theoretically speaking the last bitcoin will not be mined forever, it will be taking a lot longer compared to your life expectancy. Hence, you should not worry about it.

However if you are worrying about the transactions and the miners and what will happen to network when the reward gets smaller, the possibility we have right now is the transaction fee's are getting more frequent instead of more expensive. Hence miners are making more money thanks to more volume in each block and they are getting a lot of reward for it.

They may need to increase the price of bitcoin in order to make it better but honestly we already have a lot of bitcoin miners and transactions are getting a lot faster with lightning network thing coming up. Hence everyone will live happily ever after without a worry.