Topic: What if the fees aren't enough? (Read 687 times)

Early miners will still mine Bitcoin as they've got nothing to lose. But new ones will likely be scared off, due to the unprofitable nature of the cryptocurrency. That is assuming Bitcoin's price stalls or goes lower than what it is right now. Past market performances have shown us that Bitcoin always goes up, so it's likely Bitcoin will be extremely valuable by the time all of the coins have been mined. This means miners will be earning transaction fees at a very profitable rate. Both you and I won't live by that time (2100), so there's no reason to be worried about miners leaving off the Blockchain anytime soon. Just my opinion

this is actually simple and very easy to understand and yes it will round circle like that

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till this date, as far as i know there is never miner get less fee unless they are using unefficient miner hardware, the wallet always adjusted how much price you to pay to get the confirmed, if we pay less fee then offcoure less we can get the confirmed transaction

They won't turn off the machines because that's still profitable for them as they are mining since inception of bitcoin and some of them are mining since the middle age of bitcoin. They have already gotten their ROI so far and all they earning is huge loads of profits. If anything they are troubled with right now is to acquire new machines, new investments just to increase their income!

I believe they are not loosing anything as long as they are mining and keeping the coins as it is.

This is only troublesome to those who are going to do new set up. Their ROI's would be high period, may be more than double as compared to what it was last year.

Let's break it down really simple, ok?

Bitcoin halving takes place --> block rewards halve --> miners' block rewards decrease (BTC nominated), but their total rewards is computed from both block rewards and fees

If the total mining rewards do not cover operational expenses they are likely to cease operations --> less miners on the market --> lower difficulty --> more efficient miners enter the market leading to increased difficulty afterwards

The concern is whether mining rewards will become so low that decentralization will be affected or there will be no miners left on the network. The second concern is offset by the above logic (difficulty adjusts itself). Regarding the first concern, thank God we have active Bitcoin communities around the world who support this network. Moreover big mining farms do not have any incentive to become so big that they damage the security of the network. What would Bitcoin be worth without its security features?

I agree that if the value of the block reward drops, then the security against 51% attack will also be reduced because the block reward determines the level of security. The real question is what is the minimum necessary level of security.

However, because of the difficulty adjustment, mining will always be profitable for some miners and blocks will always be every ten minutes. There is no issue of mining stopping completely.

I do not mean that, I meant that if the reward is nowhere to be found, and people are making low amounts, then we won't have this miners, it will be a lot slower. What I mean by that is the fact that we have huge factories full of asic miners and so much hash rate right now, all those "even when rewards were under 50 bucks" happened when the hashrate was much lower, and not when we had huge factories of asic farms.

This means that we are at a level where it would not be really profitable for people to keep on mining if there is no profit for those farms, hence it will be like GPU miners for ETH and the hash rate will fall and we will not have the same hashrate and security, that's all.

So, how do you explain miners in 2010 when a bitcoin was worth less than $1, and the block reward was worth less than $50?

If the price drops then some miners will certainly stop, but the ones that remain will continue to mine at a profit because of the difficulty adjustment.

Of course. If market prices are too low, then you can bet miners will leave the network faster than you can imagine. Only a high-valued BTC, will sustain miners' operations for the long haul. With Bitcoin's past performance, it's likely it'll have a much higher price by the time all of the coins are mined. If that happens, miners will still be able to live off solely on network fees. No one can predict the future, so we can only hope for the best. At least, we don't need to worry about miners leaving the Blockchain during our lifetimes. Just my thoughts

"Stop" is a big word, it means like ALL miners would stop? Why would they, there would be plenty of profit to make at all times no matter when we are talking about, even after 21 million was mined. However, if we are talking about not having such a big sector? That could be true, maybe there will be a lot less people or a lot less business around this. So "stop" is a bit wrong, its more about "it will not be as profitable as it is, but there will still be some people" and I would agree with that. Same goes for many other things, whatever is hyped for a while, will always go down, will not be zero, but will be a lot less prefered.

Nothing will make miners to stop in cryptocurrency because and bitcoin in that matters because bitcoin always have it supporters and if miners of cryptocurrency is not active to miners cryptocurrency, that means Bitcoin will just die off without any way of rising.so minutes will never stop mining Bitcoin

I agree. The security against a 51% attack is basically determined by the value of the block reward.

OTOH, @jostorres is asserting that mining will stop altogether if the value of the block reward does not remain high, and I disagree.

The difference back then was that also the whole network was worth nothing. Now you have billions of dollars stored in the network, which makes an attack more likely. So we need enough miners to prevent such an attack.

People were mining bitcoins when the block reward was worth less than $50. There is no reason to believe that the price must increase in order for mining to continue.

The sad thing is, you or I may not see the last bitcoin mined technically speaking, but we have already seen majority of it mined already, and by the time we are old, there won't be many left. By this way, if we live to a point where only 200k left, or 20k left who knows? Then the price needs to be high for that to matter.

So, if the price is 20k even at that point, and there are only 20k left for the next 5 decades at some point, then it means that mining is already dead, people would mine only for the fee at that point. So that means price needs to go up insanely high in order to make it still valuable in the future, even 1 bitcoin needs to be 1+ million dollars to get them go on. Otherwise we will not see anyone mining anymore.

I am sure there will definitely always be a way out when the time comes, because over 99% Bitcoin has already been mined, and if mining will continue there will always be a way miners will be compensated for running a ring with electricity, because i know electricity bill in mosy countries are quite expensive. So it has to be profitable to get people into it

Miners will keep mining until they stop finding bitcoins and this will, in turn, never let the bitcoin’s price stabilise. And because bitcoin’s price will keep fluctuating, traders will keep finding reasons to trade and make money.

Neither you and I will live to the point where all of the Bitcoins have been mined. By that time, it's expected Bitcoin's price relative to Fiat to be much higher than what it is right now. It'll probably be in the millions of dollars (USD), allowing miners to profit solely from network fees. That is if we base ourselves in the rules of supply and demand. Considering that Bitcoin is a deflationary cryptocurrency, it has a higher chance of reaching astronomical prices in the future than any other coin being traded on the market today.

If network fees won't be enough to sustain miners' operations, the community can simply create a new fork with a higher supply and a new block reward or modifying the existing blockchain's parameters. No one knows what will happen in the future, so we can only hope for the best. Just my thoughts

They choose to become a miner as they believe crypto mining is a good and profitable business. Too sad to say that some weren't able to survive because of the competition while the others are getting their business growing.

What IF fees aren't enough?
Well, the reality is that mining fees really matter to them, there is no way they would survive in a situation where only they receive rewards that are enough to cover their expenses. Of course, I don't push myself to such a thing, I'd rather quit and make way to find another job.

The BTC network will be fine. 10000 miners at one location or 1 miner each at 10000 locations accomplishes the same thing.
People will mine for fun, people will mine because they believe in BTC, business will keep miners running if they have cheap enough power and so on.
The only people 'worrying' about it are people looking to spread FUD.

I have a small pool (very very very small) that has 2 altcoins on it.
Neither is tradable. Neither is well known. Both have miners at my pool, at least one other pool and a bunch of solo miners.
Remember, no cash value, people are doing this for fun. Imagine what people can and would do if they could make a few dollars.

-Dave

I wouldn't really call it a prediction that requires us to be a time traveler. I mean the price is out there, without the mining of bitcoin we won't be having 900+ million dollars worth of bitcoin, but that was double and now in half after the 2020 may halving and it's still quite secure. No matter what happens, the price of bitcoin makes sure that the miners do end up with a profit, and that's the only thing that matters.

So this means, we do not need to calculate anything, the question of "will transaction fees be enough" is simple, if it is profitable then it will be, if not then it will become profitable because difficulty will drop.

To be precise, miners will benefit from transaction fees that persist over time. As the rewards per block decrease, it's clear that miners will expect an incentive from transaction fees, so it doesn't matter if the rewards are smaller because they're still profitable too.

Whoever the miners are will not be forced to stay as miners as long as they are no longer profitable, but every time they leave there is always a replacement who will do it.

This is why it is rarely ever unprofitable to mine, if it ever becomes unprofitable then people stop and difficulty drop and it becomes profitable yet again. It is a system that arranges itself and makes sure that people profit.

It would be very hard for it to be unprofitable though, considering how much transaction fees are spent every single day. We need to realize that the volume is huge on bitcoin, this may not work for some other coins which doesn't have this kind of transaction fees or volume but it definitely works amazingly for bitcoin. As long as people end up using bitcoin then they will spend fees and that will be more than enough for sure.

What a head shaking comment from you hehehe. It should be something that this community should start being aware on. However, similar to what @LongTimeAgo said when he started this thread, it might be heresy. Why is it heresy? Is it because the question will threaten to stop bitcoin from pumping? I am very skeptical on the attitude of such people.

In any case, there is an increasing number of people who are beginning to be familiar on this question. The answer might be something they might not like.

The miners depend exclusively on the price of bitcoin, the more demand there is for this currency, the more production profits these industries would have, so the concern they bring is understandable, although as they well know, especially those who have been in this job for a long time, the bitcoin will never have stable values, so in a moment it can reach extremely low levels as well as rise and surprise with a quite significant value. Supply and demand is the key for everything to work together and as I have observed, bitcoin this year is breaking its barriers and is reaching more people, which it seems to me at some point will begin its rise and cryptominers will be able to overcome the losses caused in your past. So you could wait or start looking for more advanced technologies, I recently viewed and commented on a news story providing alternatives to overcome this stage of low profit, which explained that the moment more bitcoin miners will upgrade to the new inventions, would have more opportunity to deal with this type of events since these are being presented in an accessible and economical way, which would reduce the costs per team.

What you said is true in the case if bitcoin price was stable but since the bitcoin price is in an upward movement since its creation then the miners will always be profitable.

That wont happen. Do you realise the final year of mining? 2140? So many things will happen during this much period and who knows bitcoin may or may not exist and moreover new tech could be injected by that time. Let's assume if nothing happens and we have bitcoin only option then imagine the value per bitcoin that will be during this period? Could be hundred to five hundred thousand a bitcoin which will easily compensate the mining profitability. Moreover, this is the main reason why we see increased prices of bitcoin after halving process is compensated.

The only way I see it, if miners are to be turned of forever, bitcoin will need to switch from PoW to PoS that too after 2140 since it would be impossible to switch to another tech at this time.

This is bitcoin discussion which is one of the bitcoin boards on this forum, not altcoin board. Ether, Litecoin and other cryptocurrencies that are not bitcoin are altcoins. Altcoins are not perfectly decentralized like bitcoin. If we should talk about adoption, it would be better to talk about bitcoin adoption.

It would become profitable again but the mining hashrate reduce which means bitcoin blockchain will become less stronger and more susceptible to 51% attack. The hashrate may not be reduced to the extent 51% attack will be possible, but I want to indicate the disadvantage of a reducing mining hashrates.

If the miners shut down,because the fees are unprofitable,the hashrate/mining difficulty will get adjusted,which means that mining will become easier,which means that it will become profitable again.
On the other hand,most of the miners are hoarding Bitcoins,which means that they are expecting more ATH prices in the future,which means that even if BTC mining isn't profitable all the time,a future BTC price above 100K USD might make it extremely profitable.
Even if BTC mining is unprofitable for a long period of time,many miners could switch of altcoin mining,by choosing altcoins that have profitable mining.  

It's silly trying to predict what will happen after so long since it's very difficult to predict stuff that will happen in the next hour. We shouldn't really be worrying about fees and miners for now since they are in a good place at the moment.

Instead, we should focus on more pressing matters like mainstream adoption of popular cryptocurrencies like BTC, ETH, LTC etc at present.

We are talking about a century later and we can't expect what prices btc will be at or even survive that time or not so we can't make any assumptions for that much time period.I would say miners will be willing to keep it safe due to normal rewards only as it would be scarce and prices will be high enough for them to accumulate whatever they can which I think but can't say exactly what will happen.

However, for how long can they continue? Will they loan some money to use for their cashflow? It will certainly not be sustainable if there are no assurances of a stable reward at every block mined. Asic manufacturers might also begin to think twice about their own business because of the insufficient assurances on the profitability of their customers.

Small miners are weak hands and they capitulate in bear market? Why would they continue if they make no profit? Makes no sense at all. Instead they could just bitcoin and hold it. Make more profit. I don't think there is anything such as weak hand or strong hand in mining. No one is going to maintain the network if there is no profit from it.

So the two possibilities favor the miners only. No more cheap fees. Wasn't bitcoin supposed to be better because it offers the cheapest fee for cross border transaction? Small transaction will no longer be feasible. People will start using it as a store of value (like they already do right now).

Satoshi left the solution to the free markets, if bitcoin reaches a massive level of adoption relatively quickly then this is not going to be too much of a problem and the miners will be able to depend almost exclusively on the fees they get from each block they mine.

Now if adoption is slower than that then miners will have to either shutdown their equipment, mine other coins or become more efficient, and if I am perfectly honest I do not see what is the problem with this scenario.

Increase in the block vitual size or decrease in the block  virtual size? There can be better ways than to increase the block size, this may only lead to hard fork.

Do you think Schnorr signature can not go to the extent of making 2 or 3 or more inputs and outputs to counts as 1 but not included because of it can not help miners make money more on transaction. But there are ways transaction virtual size can be reduced.

Lightning network is helping but I wonder why exchanges like Binance, Coinbase, FTX and many top exchanges are not supporting it yet. See how people using lightning network increased just when Paxful, CashApp and few exchanges support it.

If the fees users pay aren't enough to incentivize miners to secure the network, then this may indicate that the network has gone the wrong path, and it is time to change something in what determines the fee market. Generally, the fee rate depends on how strong users' desire is to get into the next block. In other words, the higher demand for a block space is, the higher the fees. To address the problem of not-enough fees, we should artificially increase the demand for a block space either by increasing the number of active users who would want to place their transaction into a block or by decreasing the size of a block. If we assume that bitcoin has grown to such an extent that there is no way to find new active users, then we should make bitcoin blocks smaller. Make it 256 kByte or lower? But wait, how can bitcoin blocks be empty if almost everyone uses bitcoin? Maybe bitcoin is used only for rare final settlements, and all the activity occurs on second layer chains like Lightning Network? If yes, then we should change a second layer in such a way that all users will have an incentive to settle their payments more frequently so that the demand for a block space can be relatively stable and miners can be profitable. Shut down Lightning Network completely to save the base layer?

They won't get block rewards in terms of new Bitcoin being introduced into the circulation, at least eventually, which I do believe is the question of this discussion. Fees probably won't always remain low, unless the volume of transactions is high enough to justify low fees, which probably means that there will be less competition than there's today in mining.

Although, like I touched upon above the answer isn't actually straight forward, since we're too far away to know where Bitcoin will be at in terms of adoption, and the amount of people actually using it as a every day currency, rather than a reserve currency. That's if Bitcoin will still be alive, and kicking that far in the future.

Well, it is simple if you use an extremely low fee it can result in an unconfirmed transaction, and mining in this era is a highly profitable venture, and as long as their get rewarded for every block mined so low fee transactions will definitely get mined but it may just be got a little delayed because of the fees.

Aye, but currently we are operating on block rewards, eventually (a long bloody time) block rewards won't be around, and therefore they will be operating on the fees that the users include. Unfortunately the only answer that seems plausible is that fees either increase so much that it justifies mining or the amount of miners drops massively, and therefore the difficulty. So, only a few miners would be needed to process the transactions. Obviously, this is all so hard to predict, because by the time this becomes a reality, we don't know how popular Bitcoin is going to become. If Bitcoin becomes one of the mainstream currencies, being used every day by millions or dare I say it; billions of people then I don't think miner incentive is going to be a problem, we'll likely have far more greater problems though.

Not so much a case of heresy but a convenient ignorance of reality. Block rewards themselves are enough incentive for miners at the moment, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable 3 or 4 halvings (provided Bitcoin value also follows trends).

Fees per block, just looking over the last 20 or so are 2-6k, and that's at most txs using minimum fee.

The frequency of not-full blocks are also proof of this (sample) and just over 7 hours ago we had a near empty block when there certainly were mempool txs waiting.

@nullama, great share too and I also believe this will be more of the case during the next couple of halvings.

Miners will keep mining as long as the market exists.
The continuous increase in hash rates will tell how hard to mine this time it takes longer to complete the transaction, and it accumulates more fees. I would think this is because of the low market supply or tough competition. Together with the massive increase in crypto adoption, miners have been also growing fast.

https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2021/02/05/what-does-hashrate-mean-and-why-does-it-matter/

I might be wrong but suspected having huge TRX fees in the future.

First, it is not miners that mine Bitcoin for the benefit that come from it because some are into the tech. I believe we have experienced a situation when mining is not profitable and it's only the solo miners that shut down their equipment because they can keep up.
We are also going to see the same event if the transaction fee isn't enough to incentivize the miners but most miners these days don't mine a single coin in other to prevent themselves from losing.

When btc mining started, you know how huge btc miners that solve the block will go home with?
The journey continued and the amount keeps reducing and till today.
How many pools do you think solves the block.
How many solo miners can solve a block?
Yet, miners are not reducing and transaction fees are not on the roof.
So, it can be said that miners are already living on transaction fees and bitcoin is still here.

Now there are two types of miners in the industry:
1. Miners who are reliant on individual mining equipment
2. Mining Companies who do it for profit and their margins are quite high.

Now if the fee is not enough the individualized miners would off sell out their systems and would lose hash which would be gained by the big mining companies as well. This ultimately would lead to mining being a centralized activity, which the government is aiming for by participating in the whole thing and delaying the license up to 2 years in many countries.

It's likely miner with less efficient ASIC or more expensive operational cost (e.g. cooling and electricity fee) will shutdown their activity. And after next difficulty adjustment, other miner (who have more  efficient ASIC and cheaper expensive operational cost) could continue mining not at loss. It's also possible some miner continue mining at loss (at current exchange rate), but speculating BTC price will rise so they can turn loss into profit.

We can speculate, but we don't know. Unless you know a time traveler from the future, we don't have a definite answer.
However, getting to rely solely on tx fees happens gradually, which each new halving, so we can try to get an idea. On the other hand, the final step will be far in the future, hence you should not be that much concerned.

For now the things go well, so there's nothing to fix/mitigate. I hope that you agree on that.
Then yes, if it gets unprofitable, some miners will be stopped. It has happened before. The network does adjust in such cases and the mining will be more profitable for the rest.
Keep in mind that there are already miners that run using electricity they produce. This (after all the equipment is paid for) means pure profit, something that may work just fine even if the tx fees remain small. Then the others will turn off, these businesses will prevail, keeping Bitcoin network running.
Then, as already said, I expect that some entities that use Bitcoin as reserve asset (now big companies, in the future maybe countries too) will also mine Bitcoin, not for profit, instead simply to do their part in securing the network.

I will end with the price. Its evolution is hard to predict on short term, but on long term, with increased adoption, it should get much higher. Of course, the profitability for the miners also depends on how many they are (how big the difficulty is), but until now, in most cases, the price kept staying high enough to cover the mining costs.

So, at least in theory, the things don't look bad. And since the real problems (if they will exist) will probably not happen during my (or your) lifetime... let's just chill  

Yet mining hashrate as been increasing even in the recent bearish market, bitcoin mining hashrate still continue to increase and have reach ATH many times this year alone. Bitcoin mining hashrates reach ATH even recently like 3 days ago.



If miners are not having profit, they would have shot down operation and never mine but the hashrate rate continue to increase which means either more miners are joining and old miners are buying more mining equipments.

About the issue of if the transaction fee is never enough, this can happen if the mempool is congested, that is why it is good to use RBF in case of such time so that you can be able to increase the fee if such situation happen.

@Kakmakr. Are you implying a possibility that bitcoin might return to the hashrate levels before 2014? This should be a concern because would the institutional investors have a similar level of confidence in holding billions of dollars in bitcoin if that would happen? If the level of confidence in bitcoin drops, it might also have a negative effect on the price. Also, I might be mistaken, however, it was 2014 that the popularity of Asics began, wasn't it?

Luckily for us, Satoshi built in the difficulty adjustment into the protocol so that it will make it easier for smaller miners to enter the scene, if the hashrate drop too much. So you will find that the large Bitcoin miners will shutdown their operations or some of their ASIC miners and the smaller "Home" miners will start their miners to cash in on the lower hashrate.

So there will always be someone wanting to feast on the bread crumbs, because their operational cost might be lower and the lower difficulty will make it ideal for them to mine with a profit.     (Some people mine illegal with stolen electricity, so they have virtually zero overheads)  

However, wouldn't a change in bitcoin's monetary policy be a much more realistic solution than hoping for Nic Carter's take to occur in or is talking about this a heresy also? The developers and the community should begin to open their minds to any type of technical solution in case the fees might really not be enougn for miners to secure the network.

Grin's developers have been addressing this problem of bitcoin already.

https://docs.grin.mw/wiki/extra-documents/monetary-policy/

There’s this interesting take by Nic Carter(if I remember correctly) — whereas he said that if it’s the case that the fees wouldn’t be enough, it’s likely that entities (including governments) would be running their own miners even at a loss simply because they need the network to be running well.

^I’m paraphrasing but yea. Haven’t thought about it really well but it’s no doubt interesting.

Are you a time traveller from the past?

Mining BTC became more difficult so the only option is GPU with powerful hashrates then only the miners can able to make profits apart from electricity bills, etc. As of now we didn't see anyone who is mining complaining about their decline in profits so these all are just common speculation.

The difficulty adjustment is designed so that mining is always profitable for the most efficient miners, regardless of the value of the block reward.

The real question is whether or not the block reward is high enough to make a 51% attack economically infeasible. One consideration is that if it is not, then perhaps it is because Bitcoin has failed and so it is not worth saving anyway.


There is nothing to support that belief. The halving does not halve the supply.

You misunderstood a key point. Bitcoin network created by Satoshi Nakamoto and the income of miners is mainly from their transaction confirmation, not from block rewards, by design.

Miners have two classes: big miners and small miners. Small miners are mostly weak hands and they will capitulate in bear market. It has happened in the past before last 3 halvings. It will repeat in future in my opinion.

In theory, with each halving, block reward halved and as consequence of it, Bitcoin price should increase (should double its price at least). How about miner transaction fee?

If the transaction fee (in satoshi) for each block remains the same, what do you think about income for miners (only take into account the part from transaction fee, not block reward)?

Let's see two possibilities

• Total transaction fee in satoshi value: remains the same >> income should increase because BTC increases in value
• Total transaction fee in satoshi value increases. Why? In future, I believe there will be more demand on Bitcoin transaction on the network, so people might join fee rate race that give miners better chances to confirm transactions paid by higher fee rate/ vbyte. Then, it will be multiplied by the increase of BTC price. Consequently, we should see a double-effect (positively) on miner income

That won't happen anytime soon though, soon as number of miners decrease the difficulty will decrease as well like every miners would like for lesser competition. Soon as it happen many people will enter again mining and this will be a cycle.
So it's easy to say that we will not experience like what others did that you can run mining even only on your PC.

It won't be until around the year 2140 when Bitcoin miners would only be rewarded solely with transaction fees. Until that time, Bitcoin miners would be rewarded mostly with newly minted coins. At least 99% of their income is coming from new coins. So I guess it wouldn't be much of a problem in the next decade or so. Whatever happens in the year 2140 and beyond, we can only guess. For now, it has been shown that despite the starting 50BTC reward per block mined decreasing into 25BTC and then into 12.5BTC and then 6.25BTC right now, miners are still increasing in numbers and difficulty is still registering new ATHs.

We are starting to see a new wave of miners that are designed to be run at home.

These are quiet miners that are not expensive to run.

Two examples of these are the GekkoScience Compac F, and the FutureBit Apollo BTC. Both can be run at home with minimal or no noise, and are very efficient.

Sure, each one of these devices contributes a tiny fraction of the hash power, but they do work, and are starting to get more and more popular. The overall distributed "home mining" hashrate has been increasing, and will continue to do so in the future.

And these home miners are as good as any industrial miner to find blocks! Proof of this is our own Sledge0001 who found a block with a USB miner, a Compac F. His total hash rate was around 3.65TH when he found it. That's similar to what the Apollo BTC can generate for example.

And if you look into the future, the new Intel Blockscale ASICS will provide a new generation of home miners, built by companies like Jack Dorsey's Block for example.

I can see that in the next few years more and more people will be running a quiet, efficient miner at home. My guess is that when the rewards are not worth any more for the industrial operators, then we will already have a massive distributed network of home miners running efficiently.

If mining isn't profitable then miners won't be running the miners but as far as I know the memepool is empty all the time because more miners are working which keeps the Bitcoin network from clogs and this is not happening only now, the situation remains same over a year so yes the fees are enough even with 1sat/byte and in the next halving the price of 1BTC may reach 100K so it can compensate the loss of rewards due to having and keep going on.

This is a topic that has been discussed several times on the forum and the general outcome is that no one can predict how the scenario would pan out.

Over 99% of Bitcoin have been mined already and we can already catch a glimpse of how the network would pan out over the next two halvings where about an extra 5% would be added to the total supply.
The response to this situation cannot be determined now.

Miners regularly shut down their rigs or equipments due to unprofitability, although not at a scale when there's a global situation, but if the current market is any indication, there would always be miners who would replace those who left.

I know its heresy but I'd really like to entertain a discussion on both sides regarding a concern of mine. What if transaction fees aren't enough to incentivize the miners to secure the bitcoin network? I think this is a potential problem we may see in the next few decades as the halving continues on. My hope is that we will have enough people using the bitcoin network to have a healthy fee market, but if we have weak periods like now where there are several unfilled blocks, wont miners just turn off their equipment as they are unprofitable? What options or solutions are being discussed to help mitigate this?