Is Bitcoin viable?

[Shin Na]

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?

[Hydrogen]

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?

Thanks to moore's law, performance of mining hardware improves over time. While power consumption decreases. The value of bitcoin also increases.

These factors coupled together can translate to greater net dollar rewards, even if BTC rewards halve every 3 years.

Everything miners are able to earn past their break even point is free money. Long term, electricity consumption and hash rate difficulty, become the main factors.

[Obito]

Thanks to moore's law, performance of mining hardware improves over time. While power consumption decreases. The value of bitcoin also increases.

These factors coupled together can translate to greater net dollar rewards, even if BTC rewards halve every 3 years.

Everything miners are able to earn past their break even point is free money. Long term, electricity consumption and hash rate difficulty, become the main factors.

I hate to disagree but we are reaching the current computational speed meaning that the microchips are reaching the limit of their size to make a faster standard computer and our only hope of not going to a flat line in computational speed is to develop quantum computers. Not to mention our battle with renewable energy is just getting started, we have a lot of new start ups that promises to create but the problem is not creating a generator but creating an energy storage. I have to agree with you though about the profit, no matter the amount, profit is profit.

[Twentyonepaylots]

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.

[odolvlobo]

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?

Miners don't have to maintain the entire ledger, just a block at a time. The cost of mining is not affected by the size of the block chain.

Miners will mine Bitcoin as long as it is profitable, and Bitcoin is designed such that mining is always profitable for some miners.

[Charles-Tim]

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?

The thing is as time goes on, mining difficulty will increase for certain as more people join to mine, so the reward will reduce as all or most miners as already joined mining pool, also the mining reward do halve in every 210,000 blocks that are mined which take approximately 4 years, this will also reduce mining reward. But, this is reflecting directly on bitcoin not on bitcoin price as bitcoin valuate and increase in price when compared to fiat, people will still use fiat like dollar to calculate the price of bitcoin. As the bitcoin price is increasing, this makes mining still profitable. If bitcoin can continue to increase in price, it will help miners to still gain.

[hatshepsut93]

You need to understand the difficulty adjustment algorithm. If it takes longer to produce blocks because miners are switching off, the difficulty will drop, which means the profitability will increase. With the lowest possible difficulty it's possible for just one person to mine on their CPU, which is what Satoshi did in early days. If mining becomes unprofitable, then the difficulty will drop until it becomes profitable, simple as that.

[Conley]

Yes, bitcoin is a currency, but we cannot know if it will remain so in the future. It does, however, have many properties that might make it viable in the long run. Bitcoins are used online as a medium of exchange for thousands of people around the globe.

[Hydrogen]

I hate to disagree but we are reaching the current computational speed meaning that the microchips are reaching the limit of their size to make a faster standard computer and our only hope of not going to a flat line in computational speed is to develop quantum computers. Not to mention our battle with renewable energy is just getting started, we have a lot of new start ups that promises to create but the problem is not creating a generator but creating an energy storage. I have to agree with you though about the profit, no matter the amount, profit is profit.

Many have said we're reaching upper theoretical limits for electron tunneling and other variables. This is a common theme for the last 10+ years. I remember people repeating word for word what you're saying there in like 2007. That argument hasn't completely killed innovation and advancement. But it has slowed its pace.

Initially moore's law predicted transistors on an area would double every year. This was accurate for a time through the 1970s and 1980s. Due to theoretical limits and developmental difficulty increasing, the pace slowed to doubling every 2 years. In the future it could slow further to every 2.5 years or higher.

If limits are someday reached, I think performance increases could continue by focusing on other aspects and areas. Faster memory & alternatives to hard disks like SCSI drives can dramatically improve performance. As we've seen with SSDs. The architecture could improve. As could organizational proficiency through AI assisted design. There are many areas with potential for improvement no one is working on atm.

[Dutchyyy]

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?

...

Thanks to moore's law, performance of mining hardware improves over time. While power consumption decreases. The value of bitcoin also increases.

These factors coupled together can translate to greater net dollar rewards, even if BTC rewards halve every 3 years.

Everything miners are able to earn past their break even point is free money. Long term, electricity consumption and hash rate difficulty, become the main factors.

Don't forget that the ASICs are specially designed to solve specific problems (in this case, bitcoin hashes) and show even more immense performance potential.

I think bitcoin is viable and will remain viable in the next ten or more years.

[sunsilk]

If many miners stop mining, you'll see a newer batch of miners taking the advantage by that time. As you see the rate of mined btc per block gets lower due to halving, the price of bitcoin increases in return.

The difficulty will be lesser if the idea you had which will make no miners left. But that would open up an opportunity for another players to come in and get to mine bitcoin. Don't you worry, it is highly unlikely that miners would stop mining.

[GeorgeJohn]

Yes, bitcoin is a currency, but we cannot know if it will remain so in the future. It does, however, have many properties that might make it viable in the long run. Bitcoins are used online as a medium of exchange for thousands of people around the globe.

Is obvious that no one can concludes on bitcoin now, emphasising if it will remain in future, basically bitcoin can remain in future because it's a decentralized currency which everyone is aware so far, except government across the world will raise against bitcoin and introduce their coin that will be higher than bitcoin, and if such happened the coin management by worldwide government shall be centralized coins like banking system of fiat currency, so anything centralized coins can't be compare with Btc, so I believe btc will exist more than our expectations.

[so98nn]

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?

[...]

Thanks to moore's law, performance of mining hardware improves over time. While power consumption decreases. The value of bitcoin also increases.

These factors coupled together can translate to greater net dollar rewards, even if BTC rewards halve every 3 years.

Everything miners are able to earn past their break even point is free money. Long term, electricity consumption and hash rate difficulty, become the main factors.

Wow this analysis is very helpful. Loved the way you represented Moore Law here. This makes me comfortable and confident about my mining. Though I am not mining bitcoin primarily but this calculation is surely applicable to all the types of mining. Over the time I know electricity costs and energy that was spent will be paid back. The prime factor is change in the prices. Just imagine who ever was mining at the rate of 150 USD per ETH or 7K USD per BTC are now in complete profit and all their expenses are already paid off with extra profits tbh.

Moreover we are at the stage where 88% of supply is already mined and the lesser the supply, more is the demand.

So yeah with the above support statement I do believe bitcoin is completely viable.

[oliviarobert]

Because of its features and fundamentals, it is viable, you have interest growing globally, thus driving volume on exchanges such as Binance/Kraken up and institutions that are involved and bitcoin services are being built.

[Fesatmas]

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? 

Not only from the perspective of their small payment, in this case, with the smaller supply, the miners are competing to occupy the seats that have been determined in number. the rest will be laid off and return to unemployment by having a number of bitcoin. on the side of the line technology takes precedence over miners. then the quality of the miners will be tested, but the payment fee will not be increased.

after all, where are they going? Will Bitcoin be recycled, or will it be added to a supply that has recently been buried on wasted hard drives? I am not sure

[Lucius]

Moreover we are at the stage where 88% of supply is already mined and the lesser the supply, more is the demand.

Only 12% of BTC is left for mining which doesn't seem like much, although the total figure is just under 2.5 million BTC which doesn't seem like an insignificant amount at all. Currently, it is a profitable business for those who have enough money for the initial investment, and above all have cheap electricity.

The fact is that in some 10 years 99% of the total supply will be mined, and that 1% will remain for the next hundred years. Compared to today, only 210 000 BTC will remain - and it will be really interesting to see how the whole thing will be set up then, and whether the mining will be profitable as today. Given the reward per block of just over 1.5 BTC after halving 2028, the price would have to be many times higher than it is today to justify the costs - can it even be calculated in advance at least approximately what numbers we are talking about?

[orions.belt19]

People look at bitcoin as "digital gold" so long as it has value, it will remain viable. As mentioned by others, miners will mine less and less bitcoin after every halving but the price shoots up consequently. With better adoption in the future, who knows where the price can go. Its still pretty early on the crypto space. IMO, miners won't stop even in the long run because it stands to be profitable despite the costs.

Not unless quantum computers take over? 

[mindrust]

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?

If the price stays same or goes lower, then yes. Miners would go bankrupt and the system would collapse. As long as the price climbs up, they will be happy.

There will always some people who'll mine btc with whatever device they got (cpu, gpu, asic whatever) without checking the prices though and there will also some people who get their electricity for free (thieves) and as long as btc is become complete dog poo, it will keep attracingt these people.  

[NeverSop]

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?

You should know that bitcoin's usefulness and user base are growing in popularity. Bitcoin mining farms have two main sources of income, block rewards and network transaction fees. Even if, Bitcoin halving - it always creates value for miners. After each halving cycle, the value of bitcoin is always high. At the same time, high gas also gives the miners a source of life.

[Smartprofit]

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?

We can see that the price of Bitcoin continues to rise. 

Hence, mining is still a profitable business.  The cause of all economic crises under capitalism is the fall in energy consumption.  Bitcoin solves this problem. 

In my opinion, in the future, Bitcoin will become a guarantee of the stability of the global economy.  The main holders of full nodes will not be individuals or even corporations, but individual countries. 

At the same time, Bitcoin will be the official world reserve currency.