- what happens after 21 million bitcoins have been mined?
The amount of Bitcoins will be under 21 million coins people round up to 21 million coins in the real world we have much less Bitcoin in circulation because a unknown amount of coins have been lost but we have probably lost millions of coins from negligence.
- What will miners do after the total of 21 million bitcoins have been mined?
There will be less miners mining blocks because the incentive will be smaller atm miners get rewarded from block rewards and transaction fees when the block rewards stop because Bitcoin is not being generated anymore miners will only receive transaction fee. The difficulty will probably drop as the miners drop. We will always have miners though because there will always be a incentive to mine for transaction rewards.
- Will the total supply be increased because some bitcoin holders have died and others have lost their private keys?
Pls your suggestion will be highly appropriate and I believe will also help other members.
Bitcoin total will never be increased I think it is possible with a hard fork but you would have no support for it. Satoshi when he created Bitcoin knew that people would lose the coins and die. He probably worked out that 21 million coins is the best amount for inflation and value but he would have known that a lot of coins will be lost.
50 years from now, I would guess someone smarter than us starts figuring out a solution
One thought I had would be to use the current BTC protocol to start a new "sidechain" from 0. So the same security and features that have been built since Satoshi started the project, with a way to swap current bitcoin for the new blockchains bitcoin
Would everyone switch right away or 20-50 years down the road? Who knows
Im guessing someone smarter than us will have a lot better idea than that 20-30 years from now, so don't really worry about it
Why do you need a solution? What is the problem? Bitcoin was created like this everyone knows that this is going to happen eventually but by the time it happens it will be a new generation of people in Bitcoin because every one of us will be dead. A side chain would not work it would make Bitcoin worthless because you are creating more coins and putting them into circulation it would be no different then fiat then because governments always bringing in more fiat money in circulation. The only time a sidechain or a hard fork should happen is when most Bitcoin has been lost through generations because of negligence and death but that would not happen for a couple of generations I think probably around 2-5 generations after the total supply has been mined.