Topic: When 21 million coins have been mined. - page 2. (Read 4385 times)

Mining would continue to confirm transactions and miners would be rewarded by transaction fees.

actually  i don't think it will change much after 20M coins will be mined which isn't too far away, so better to wait for that phase, instead of wasting time about clueless speculation

the market after 2024 need to absorbs a very few amount of coin, so the price will be already settled, i'm not expecting a major rise only because 1M are still to be mined...

We don't know what will be happened. It's still a long time until 21 million coins will be mined. In my speculation, there are no new coins, transaction fees will be the mining reward.

yeah, i know.
i meant that in order for the difficulty to drop a considerable amount that can let individuals with their mining rigs start mining bitcoin and the process becomes profitable, is the price to fall that low and a great number of miners turn their equipment off.

Although Bitcoin has its transaction fees go to miners, what you're describing is true for some altcoins like Peercoin (PPC) where transaction fees aren't earned by miners but are instead destroyed. For PPC, this is done to offset the inflation caused by proof-of-stake minting:


Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peercoin#Transaction_fees

Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you for the clarification. Previously, I was under the impression that transaction fees were basically destroyed, as a way of deflation. It appears as if that is not the case, thanks again.

Wow, yeah, it will take a long time before the 21 million coins are mined. I believe that will happen somewhere around or even in the year 2140? The last reward will be 1 satoshi as well. I did not know that before, hopefully by the year 2140, there will be many transactions taking place to make it worth while for the miners to keep mining.

Technically This's not gonna happen.

20,999,839.77085749 is the upper limit.

Yup. For instance, here is an example:

http://blockchain.info/tx/6d2a6bb38baeed1772b3d9b46fa6f3144c9a4d1a2f63f823904d9eeae4b5d407

Notice that the miner recieved 25.10083013 BTC rather than a nice round 25 BTC. That extra 0.10083013 BTC is the sum of all the transaction fees included in that block.

that's very confusing yes. Apparently the fee is to give incentive to the miners to include your transaction within the next block that is solved.

However when 21 million coins have been mined the price of btc would be quite big. That won't happen until a hundred years or so from now though.

After all 21 million coins are mined then the miners will be getting transaction fees instead of block rewards... Interesting, does that mean currently the transaction fees are also being sent to the miners, even though they are also receiving block rewards?

Mining will always exist. Even after Bitcoin is fully mined, new blocks will continue to be added to the blockchain roughly every 10 minutes or so by miners. However, their income would come from transaction fees instead of new coins. Just like today though, miners who have more hashpower will solve more blocks than miners with less hashpower.

Currently, the block reward is 25 BTC plus a few extra BTC from transaction fees. Not too long ago it was 50 BTC plus fees. Sometime in 2016, this will be reduced to 12.5 BTC plus fees. Then it will be 6.25 BTC plus fees, then 3.125 BTC plus fees, and so on.





Long before Bitcoin is fully mined out, the rewards from newly generated coins will become irrelevant due to the effect of successive block halvings. By 2040, the block reward will be less than 0.2 BTC plus fees. By 2070, it will be less than 0.001 BTC plus fees:

http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply


Or Premine (PMC). Premine was an experiment to see what the Bitcoin economy might look like in the future after successive block halvings result in no more new coins being mined and to see whether or not the model of mining for transaction fees instead is sustainable:


Unfortunately, the results of that experiment were pretty disappointing.


Actually the difficulty has dropped several times in the past and especially from December 2014 onwards - although usually not by a lot. Looking at the chart below, it seems to have been going nearly sideways for the past four months:

http://blockchain.info/charts/difficulty

The only possible scenario for difficulty to come down is if BTC price drops to <$10 again and as the reult most miners walk away and get real jobs.

and right now, since that price range is impossible and most probably it is going to go higher, miners are going to continue mining.

all is only supposition.
Let's work the market and basta.

if the miners activity drop too much, there is a non return point, that can be matched and maybe even if bitcoin will survive, it will be so damaged that can only serve a tiny market

remember that the network hash cannot drop too much, otherwise various attack could be performed much more easily

I wish people will turn off and the difficulty will fall greatly right now that way i could make some btc to pay off my rigs and power. Right now btc ain't worth mining.

Miners will never stop to mine...because the fees are divided among the miners...and if less miners mine...then the interest grows.
It is exactly the principle of my faucet...it can never collapse or die because it is regulated by the market.
Of course my faucet can die for other reasons,but bitcoin system cannot so long few users fixe fees.
They are not the miners who fix the fees,but the senders...

i suggest you check iX coin out - all 21 million have been mined

they will continue to mine for the fee, that hopefully will have a good value, otherwise miners will not keep mining, and the network will die

so the point isn't to have more coins, but to have a better value on those few that we already have

if all coins are mined than nothing will happen...why should something change?