Who will mine the last Bitcoin?

[sgbett]

transaction fees take over as block reward long before block reward becomes marginal.

thats the kind of thing people should be worried about, whether that assumption plays out, adjusting their risk/reward accordingly

seriously all this stuff is bitcoin 101, even *I* know it !

Well I never knew that. I do now, and all that I had to do was subject myself to a mild dose of English condescension in order to find out.

So what we can deduce from that, is that Bitcoin transaction fees are one day, set to become fucking humongous? Totally ill suited to everyday transactions?

It's in the wiki article, which people would do well to read before investing thousands http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Overview

Subjecting yourself to condescension to find stuff like this out is optional as far as I know!

You raise a good point though, I've thought about the implications of that a lot, I've thought of side chains, prioritisation, off chain transactions as all being potential reasons why that might not be the case, but in the end it keeps coming back up as a fairly difficult 'problem' to get around.

The only thing keeping me going is that something that nobody has thought of will happen, and that from a perfectly selfish point of view 140 years is a long way off. The chance this is a precursor to another system is high. Whether that means we won't have BTTM (bitcoin to the moon) in the meantime is still anyone's guess. I think its still worth a punt. Or rather, that I need to be insured against the risk of it happening. FOMO powered 'investing'

[sgbett]

More thinking.

this kind of thing http://diginomica.com/2014/06/16/internets-disruptive-hold-tight-blockchain/ reminds me that the block chain encodes all sorts of data.

i can see a future where it is *expensive* to use the block chain for transactions, because the block chain is a very valuable resource. its a worldwide collaborative repository of information, and its extensible such that those transactions can encode all sorts of other information. that kind of authoritative repository is valuable, its a limited resource (think block size) and as such competition to use that resource will drive transaction fees.

bitcoin banks will use it for settlement. intra bank transfers will generate revenue for them, which they can use to pay for actual transaction fees on the block chain and pocket the difference. the more customers you have the more you can drive down fees. bitcoin banks can (and must) prove reserves. i expect some won't, i expect some customers might not care, i expect this is a legitimate strategy in a free market, risk is known, but you might get cheaper fees. maybe insurers will create services that cover this. all of the things that currently exist in our economy can potentially exist with bitcoin *except* inflation. a paper market for bitcoin may very well spring up, much like for gold, and people may very well speculate that all the same things are happening!

in the end though, a bitcoin will always be a bitcoin, you might keep a whole bunch under the mattress for a rainy day, but it may be that transaction fees do become so expensive as to prohibit micro transactions directly on the block chain, and so in the end we will be force to use some kind of banking service.

other solution(s) may exist, i haven't thought of anything yet, but perhaps others already have and are building them as we speak!

[sgk]

CHUCK NORRIS

[Neotox]

ask nostradamus
or check his predictions
may be you will find the answer

[picolo]

ask nostradamus
or check his predictions
may be you will find the answer

I will look in The Prophecies but I don't think he went that far ahead

[Asrael999]

CHUCK NORRIS

+1

[JimboToronto]

Silly thread, but with a simple answer: nobody, it won't be worth mining.

It actually will be worth mining, but only because it will be accompanied by a nice bunch of transaction fees.

[picolo]

Silly thread, but with a simple answer: nobody, it won't be worth mining.

It actually will be worth mining, but only because it will be accompanied by a nice bunch of transaction fees.

It will be in 2140, who knows how much will a satoshi be worth by then

[Tzupy]

Silly thread, but with a simple answer: nobody, it won't be worth mining.

It actually will be worth mining, but only because it will be accompanied by a nice bunch of transaction fees.

Bitcoin is the dinosaur of cryptos, and it took just a few years for alternative cryptos to develop.
These better cryptos will challenge bitcoin during the next years, bitcoin only has inertia and a cult following to delay the inevitable.
Eventually bitcoin will be replaced, and believing that bitcoin will still have a significant position in 2040, let alone in 2140, is wishful thinking.

[okthen]

Tom Bombadil.
He's always existed, he'll always exist. He'll mine that last coin for sure.

[picolo]

The last Satoshi may be mine by a computer lab for research purposes about Bitcoin after the value in the currency was moved to an other form

[El Emperador]

satoshi mined the first one, he will mine the last 

Mega - LOL 

[picolo]

satoshi mined the first one, he will mine the last 

Mega - LOL 

The correct answer would be that the last Bitcoin will be mined by many different people through a pool and many blocks since the last block reward will be a satoshi

[Soros Shorts]

Silly thread, but with a simple answer: nobody, it won't be worth mining.

It actually will be worth mining, but only because it will be accompanied by a nice bunch of transaction fees.

Bitcoin is the dinosaur of cryptos, and it took just a few years for alternative cryptos to develop.
These better cryptos will challenge bitcoin during the next years, bitcoin only has inertia and a cult following to delay the inevitable.
Eventually bitcoin will be replaced, and believing that bitcoin will still have a significant position in 2040, let alone in 2140, is wishful thinking.

It is likely that Bitcoin will be replaced, but I don't believe it will happen in a way that current holders will be completely screwed over without having plenty of time to migrate over to the new technology.

Even if everybody abandoned Bitcoin, somebody will probably still leave a mining node running till 2140 in some crypto museum hosted on a server somewhere.

[Wandererfromthenorth]

Silly thread, but with a simple answer: nobody, it won't be worth mining.

It actually will be worth mining, but only because it will be accompanied by a nice bunch of transaction fees.

Bitcoin is the dinosaur of cryptos, and it took just a few years for alternative cryptos to develop.
These better cryptos will challenge bitcoin during the next years, bitcoin only has inertia and a cult following to delay the inevitable.
Eventually bitcoin will be replaced, and believing that bitcoin will still have a significant position in 2040, let alone in 2140, is wishful thinking.

Couldn't have said it better myself.
Amen to every single word.

[Wilhelm]

People will no longer be interested in mining.
Some grey old fart will start up his mining desktop after a century to find out the difficulty dropped to near zero.
Last coin will be mined with CPU mining

[bitcon]

when the last coin is mined in 2140, then all the miners will shut down and the network will die.

[picolo]

when the last coin is mined in 2140, then all the miners will shut down and the network will die.

Bitcoin will still be used and will generate transactions fees. Hobby miners would still keep some equipment connected even without any reward.

[homo homini lupus]

nobody will mine the last bitcoin because it will have become insignificant and close to worthless within a couple of months or years at the current rate of decay.

We'll rally the V 2.0 and people like you can then ask who's mining the last 2.0-coin and the answer will be roughly the same.

[Parazyd]

when the last coin is mined in 2140, then all the miners will shut down and the network will die.

Bitcoin will still be used and will generate transactions fees. Hobby miners would still keep some equipment connected even without any reward.

Plus, the transaction fees get distributed with the mined block too. And if Bitcoin catches on, there will be MANY transactions.