I will Mine Last Bitcoin

[nagoarif]

According to Investopedia less than three million Bitcoin have yet to be introduced into circulation. We know that 18.5 bitcoins are mined till now. If I start mining bitcoin today, can I mine the last bitcoin? and what will happen when the last bitcoin mined? What miners will do after mining all coins?

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[NeuroticFish]

If I start mining bitcoin today, can I mine the last bitcoin?

I don't know how old are you and I don't know how will the science advance, but year 2149 is a bit far though, so the answer is no.
All in all, every ~4 years the block reward is reduced to half, so the miners receive less coins from the mined block. But you should keep in mind that they do receive all the transaction fees too.

and what will happen when the last bitcoin mined? What miners will do after mining all coins?

Normally the things should continue as they do now. Just the miners, while now they get XBTC (from block reward) + YBTC (from tx fees), ... X will be 0, but Y may be bigger than now, at least as US dollars.


Maybe you want to read a little into https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply

[philipma1957]

I theorize in 2049 or 2059

protocol will be changed to allow for emptying dead stagnant wallets.

So this would keep coins at 21,000,000 but allow awards to still be somewhat okay.

I theorize we may go to 10 digits or 1/100 of a satoshi to keep fees quasi okay if coins go to 1,000,000

[os2sam]

protocol will be changed to allow for emptying dead stagnant wallets.

I should hope NOT.  There is now way to tell if a coin is lost or a wallet is in cold storage for ones future children or grandchildren.

[philipma1957]

protocol will be changed to allow for emptying dead stagnant wallets.

I should hope NOT.  There is now way to tell if a coin is lost or a wallet is in cold storage for ones future children or grandchildren.

They simply need move it to a new address .  They do not have to reveal the owner .

It is common practice with assets in long term storage.

If they are smart enough to have a wallet sit still for more than 20 or 30 years they know how to shift it without revealing their kyc.

I would be stunned if this proposal for stale accounts does not get put in down the road.

[Wormery]

According to Investopedia less than three million Bitcoin have yet to be introduced into circulation. We know that 18.5 bitcoins are mined till now. If I start mining bitcoin today, can I mine the last bitcoin? and what will happen when the last bitcoin mined? What miners will do after mining all coins?

This is a question I think impossible to answer! We will see at that moment, but maybe we'll be too old for this, when the last bitcoin waits to be mined by someone!
And in a couple of years, I strongly believe that we gonna get rid of paper money, bitcoind and other cryptos are used day by day, this type of question, what if....will be history.
I guess......

[philipma1957]

According to Investopedia less than three million Bitcoin have yet to be introduced into circulation. We know that 18.5 bitcoins are mined till now. If I start mining bitcoin today, can I mine the last bitcoin? and what will happen when the last bitcoin mined? What miners will do after mining all coins?

While some say we run out in 2149 due to the multiple 1/2s slowing down the issuance of the remaining 3million coins.  I suspect a push to close out stale wallets will occur at some time after 2059.

Many banks grab your money if you never touch an account.

So the idea of grabbing a stale wallet that has never had any coin removed from it will gain momentum down the road.

To those that say what happens if I want to let it sit and not cash it.  Well duh go to the wallet you let sit for 49 years and mover the coins to a new address.  You are still anonymous  no tax issue as it is only a transfer from 2 addresses you both control.

I most likely will be dead in 2059 but I would be very surprised that grabbing stale/abandoned wallets does not happen.

If it happens and say 1 or 2 million coin are put back into the rewards we could last way past 2149.

So -mining the last bitcoin is at least 128 years away but I suspect it won't be happening  until more than 200 or 250 years.

[kano]

Fortunately Bitcoin is not controlled by anyone.
Not by the banks, who make an absolute fortune out of everyone, nor by governments, nor by businesses.

No, I doubt Bitcoin will ever start throwing away people's bitcoins because they haven't transferred them during some period of time.
The only effect this would have would be to increase the size of the blockchain.
"To keep your coins, you must create another transaction in the blockchain" - who would be silly enough to implement this?

I've put 1BTC in 2 addresses for my kids back when BTC was ... about US$60
Now they're worth about 1000 times that.
Saying that someone will decide that those bitcoins will disappear if they aren't moved, is simply trying to apply the corruption of centrally controlled banks to the world of Bitcoin.
Not gonna happen.

The only reason I could think of why anyone would want to do this would be if they don't understand how the block reward works and thinks that mining will no longer be worthwhile when the halving gets to zero.
Since the block reward includes the txn fees paid to mine each transaction included, the fact that the base block reward will eventually be zero doesn't matter.
Already there have been periods where the average fees per block have been around 1BTC or more, so when the halving drops to less than 1BTC base reward in 12 years, the fees could often be more than the base block reward already by then.

[NameBaby]

In the Banking world, when some money holds in an accounts some specific time without any transaction, We say it is a Dormant Account & It will be moved to banks profit or central authority. Sometimes, Bank just charge a fee every year or month as Administration fee untill the balance reaches zero. So your money is controlled by the banking system.

But Satoshi Nakamotos vision is to decentralized the financial system. Not to implement banking systems rules to the crypto world. So I don't think emptying the stale wallets will ever happen.  Is for some reason, large amount of coin holders decide it is the solution, then we will see a fork to settle the issue.

Just my opinion

[FP91G]

I theorize in 2049 or 2059

protocol will be changed to allow for emptying dead stagnant wallets.

So this would keep coins at 21,000,000 but allow awards to still be somewhat okay.

I theorize we may go to 10 digits or 1/100 of a satoshi to keep fees quasi okay if coins go to 1,000,000

I would suggest that anyone who proposes to change the consensus in the blockchain be sentenced to death.  :)If they do this, then all the ideas that Satoshi fought for will be destroyed and bitcoin will become a centralized coin.
But I agree with you that if the price of coins rises a lot, then there will be many hunters to manage the blockchain.