Is Bitcoin viable?

[Congyang]

This might have been answered elsewhere but couldn't find it, if it has.

The miners get paid less and less as time goes on. 
With the ledger also growing bigger and bigger, wouldn't the cost of mining start to exceed the profitability of mining?  If no one would mine bitcoins anymore, wouldn't it shut the whole system down?

mining right now is not a good way to make a profit, almost half of the miners choose to leave and switch to trading. for me mining bitcoin has a big fee and a big risk, the best way is to trade and it can happen in a short time to get profit

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[josgandosbro]

Bitcoin is valuable one. So trading the bitcoin. If price will be low. That time is wring time to buy a bitcoin. Now bitcoin prices is increase. So check the bitcoin prices day by day. It good opportunity for future saving. Mining is not easy to mining the bitcoin. Trading is best option for the invest the bitcoin.

[exstasie]

The miners get paid less and less as time goes on.

This is the wrong way to think about it.

Bitcoin is intended to be deflationary. At the outset (and still today) inflation is quite high. This inflation is bootstrapping the system by increasing the incentives for strong mining security.

High inflation is not the natural state of the system, long term.

The block reward should probably be expected to drop from here. At the same time, limited block size should facilitate increased fee income for miners over time because increasing adoption = increased demand for limited block space.

It's very possible that hash rate and block rewards eventually find relatively stable equilibrium ranges once the inflation rate significantly drops.

[amishmanish]

There are no easy answers to this question. While everyone loves to quote Moore's law, they forget that Moore's law was enabled by a decreasing transistor size and lithography techniques. Already at 7nm, industry is finding it hard to justify the increased costs of producing the chips compared to the incremental speed benefit from them.

The power consumption and transistor sizes are reaching fundamental limits. Although research is still ongoing, even if we find miners that are faster and infinitely low power consumption, then bitcoin will have at one point evolve usage volumes and fees to such a level that the fee market can remain attractive to the miners.

The mining industry has to be seen similar to other industries that evolved over time like Railways, Power plants, Smelting etc. Continuous returns and a desire to squeeze more profits ensured that these industries continued to evolve along with more money poured into developing technologies for them. Right now, that revenue is the healthy block subsidy. When it reduces to very low levels, the industry will have to find a way to continue the profits. This is why growth of L2 solutions and then applications/ services on top of them are important.

[marcbitcoins]

If no one would mine bitcoins anymore, wouldn't it shut the whole system down?

It's highly unlikely that mining would shut down completely because mining isn't centralized. In addition, mining difficulty is recalculated every two weeks / 2016 blocks. So, even if no one else was mining, and it was just you, it still would be really difficult to mine, until the difficulty was recalculated. Once difficulty was recalculated, and it became easier to mine, there would be an incentive for people to mine again because it would become easier. So, what would it do to the price, I don't know. It's a hypothetical that won't occur. However, it does demonstrate the genius of dynamic mining difficulty.

[slapper]

It is a supply and demand math. If miners feel that mining profit is very low, some of them might quit doing that until the profit is affordable for miners to keep up with.

Moreover, bitcoin prices seem to increase every four years, and even though bitcoin rewards can be halved, with a good resource of mining equipment, you can have a stable income with it. In China, there are likely more than 100 bitcoin mining farms, including bitmain. Sounds like a fascinating industry,right?

[Inspiron14]

If the price of Bitcoin is getting more expensive, and the mining reward we know is decreasing because of the halving,
I don't think it is a problem, because compared to before the halving the price of Bitcoin is still under $ 10k, and now it's more than $ 30k,
how about it? I think bitcoin is still very feasible to use and used by new miners.

[20kevin20]

This is scary but is totally happening now. Mining pools wouldn't be a thing if Bitcoin is forgiving in the mining department but as more amd more people start to mine for coins, those who took advantage of the technology earlier than others will always earn a much bigger and vonsiderable amount compared to those who didn't. In a few years from now, Mining wouldn't be profitable at all because of the people's demand overcoming the supply.

I don't think it ever was about purchasing a significant amount of equipment that is specifically created to mine cryptocurrencies. It was all about "1 CPU = 1 vote", which in theory sounds quite fair. The mining part of the network will probably "centralize" upon a few mining pools soon, I can agree with that, but there will likely be a solution coming soon for that too. But speaking about technology early investment and advantages, early birds will obviously always be ahead of the game no matter how much you change the system..

[passwordnow]

If the price of Bitcoin is getting more expensive, and the mining reward we know is decreasing because of the halving,
I don't think it is a problem, because compared to before the halving the price of Bitcoin is still under $ 10k, and now it's more than $ 30k,
how about it? I think bitcoin is still very feasible to use and used by new miners.

That is the logical sequence of the decreased mining rewards per block and the price of bitcoin correlates. I watched a Youtube video from China miners 5 years ago and it's said that they're mining 20-25 bitcoins per day. But think of it 5 years ago how much the price of bitcoin by that time. And if we'll think of it how much they're getting today, it's totally lesser than 5 years ago but if it's still profitable for them because the price has increased a lot, they are on a continuous operation.

[TheGreatPython]

This might have been answered elsewhere but couldn't find it, if it has.

The miners get paid less and less as time goes on. 
With the ledger also growing bigger and bigger, wouldn't the cost of mining start to exceed the profitability of mining?  If no one would mine bitcoins anymore, wouldn't it shut the whole system down?

I don’t really know about this, although they say that things got really tough for miners, but I think it only got tough for those who are individual miners. At first, anyone can mine Bitcoin, as long as you have your computer and a miner you can mine Bitcoin anywhere, but this time around you can’t mine it yourself, you will have to join a pool to be able to profit from it.

It is no longer as easy as it used to be from the start for individual miners, but there are still big companies that mine it and they have everything that’s needed to mine Bitcoin and they are profiting from it I believe. And though the reward is being halved, the worth still increases, which means they are definitely gaining from it.

[el kaka22]

It is a supply and demand math. If miners feel that mining profit is very low, some of them might quit doing that until the profit is affordable for miners to keep up with.

Moreover, bitcoin prices seem to increase every four years, and even though bitcoin rewards can be halved, with a good resource of mining equipment, you can have a stable income with it. In China, there are likely more than 100 bitcoin mining farms, including bitmain. Sounds like a fascinating industry,right?

It is also about the new tech as well, miners who have the most elite equipment with very low electricity (and even maybe free) could make a profit from bitcoin very very easily even on the most bottom prices, while people who have very old equipment and high electricity can't make a profit even at 40k per bitcoin prices.

I know some people who stopped their GPU mining very recently because they weren't making a profit, can you imagine not making a profit during this period? Dude said he had been mining for three years and his machines broke down too frequently to make it worthwhile, I suppose he didn't took care of them very well but in the end if you are not good at it, you will lose and if you are spending for the latest tech and take care of it and smart investment, you could make a lot of profit. It is all about your situation and if it is profitable or not.

[sapnu]

With all that is going on with the miners at the moment, bitcoin's future might unsecured. As time passes by, there's a possibility that mining would get more and more difficult. Even with the advancement of technology, miners might get tired of receiving low profits from what they are doing and it is quite understandable. Everyone wants progress in their lives even them. They play a vital role on keeping the system running so I think they should receive what they deserve.

[kramat]

Bitcoin is valuable one. Bitcoin price is any time to up and down. So most of the people wait for the bitcoin price increase. If price will be low people will be invest on time. Then wait for the price up. Then people will be sell the bitcoin. Most of the people hold the bitcoin for future purpose.

[coolcoinz]

Of course it is viable and with time it actually becomes more profitable for miners willing to hold. If you'd start mining in 2016, you'd be told everywhere that mining is for people with a lot of money. They'd tell you to stop dreaming about making money with mining because the market is dominated by China and that you'll barely make ROI, but if you mined and held, you'd make so much money that you'd be able to mine for another 50 years without taking any profit. Literally, miners who did that 5 years ago could keep on mining and paying their electricity bills for another 50 years using the coins they mined in 2016. It can look grim from a newcomer's perspective, but veterans of this industry have so much money that they could keep it going all by themselves if they wanted to, without any new miners joining in.

Bitcoin is valuable one. So trading the bitcoin. If price will be low. That time is wring time to buy a bitcoin. Now bitcoin prices is increase. So check the bitcoin prices day by day. It good opportunity for future saving. Mining is not easy to mining the bitcoin. Trading is best option for the invest the bitcoin.

Bitcoin good. Trading good. Posting good. Making money. Prices low. All fine. Mom made dinner. Me eat now. Bye bye.

[fiulpro]

This might have been answered elsewhere but couldn't find it, if it has.

The miners get paid less and less as time goes on. 
With the ledger also growing bigger and bigger, wouldn't the cost of mining start to exceed the profitability of mining?  If no one would mine bitcoins anymore, wouldn't it shut the whole system down?

That is why the individual miners are shutting down their businesses since it's more or less more profitable for the big mining companies. In a recent news I read how nvidia is thinking of coming into the mining market again. At the same time the price of bitcoins is rising too.

1. Price is increasing
2. Big companies generally keep the cost balanced

I do think it's profitable for the individual miners only when :
1. They have their own cheap renewable source of electricity
2. For countries where the electrical power is free and the people are allowed to mine bitcoins.

We cannot say this statement as a universal guide and tell people how mining is not profitable anymore plus they get the coins not just from mining but at the same time from transactions etc.

So this actually depends. If it had been so unprofitable then Nvidia would not think of coming in the business again.

[kezinaur14]

This might have been answered elsewhere but couldn't find it, if it has.

The miners get paid less and less as time goes on. 
With the ledger also growing bigger and bigger, wouldn't the cost of mining start to exceed the profitability of mining?  If no one would mine bitcoins anymore, wouldn't it shut the whole system down?

THis is exactly part of what drives price up. If profitability of mining is too little, miners would drop. There's increasing concerns about the effect of BTC due to its carbon footprint, this way there's a balance between viability and power consumption. Currently there might be more miners than necessary, but eventually even that will level off as well.

[Hippocrypto]

Bitcoin is very feasible if used for digital currency transactions on the internet between countries that have a long distance it will be very easy to use, but currently bitcoin is still difficult to use for purchasing goods transactions in a country depending on the seller accepting payments using bitcoin or not and not all countries give permission to use bitcoin.

The adoption of bitcoin doesn't become global acceptance, that's why it's impossible to promote this to everyone who wanted financial independence. But, on several countries who've been using it already like in Philippines as part of Asia; more people is now benefited by its advantages. Right now we're able to use bitcoin on basic needs like mobile loads, bills payments and other online payment related stuff.