While Bitcoin continues to dominate the news headlines thanks to Elon Musk and his back and forth with if Bitcoin is good or not I thought about an issue that will not arise anytime soon but eventually will.
What happens when all 21 million Bitcoins are mined?
Before I decided to start looking into this idea I tried to brainstorm what could support the blockchain. The one thing I could think of is processing fees like how Ethereum has gas fees so miners would be rewarded in those right? To me, it made the most sense so thinking about that I began to jump in and honestly just searching that question his you with a ton of articles to read.
Current Bitcoin Situation
This issue, the last coins being mined, won't happen in my lifetime, to say the least as it is expected to occur in or around 2140 so another 119 years give or take. Now when I looked into it more I was actually surprised with the total amount that has been mined and what percent that is of the total supply. I knew that The rewards started off large and halvings occur slowing down the distribution. So far over 18.5 million have been mined out of the 21 million! That is over 88% of the total supply of Bitcoin! This last 12% though will take 119 YEARS to mine which was really mind-boggling to me!
Bitcoin miners do not just get Bitcoin though from their mining power. They also get the process traction fee however with the reward of Bitcoin and the price of Bitcoin that makes up a vast amount of the money made. Over time as the halving continue the processing fee the miners get will be an increasing percentage of the amount that miners make. Most people believe that this will continue to work and even once all the Bitcoins are mined enough adaptation will have taken place that miners will continue to find it profitable to run the new transactions.
There are in theory alternatives that could also happen and that includes moving away from the Proof of Work concept and either to another version of PoW or moving over even to a Proof of Stake concept like Ethereum is in the process of moving to. Now right now there is no talk or work being done on this and there may never be but it is in theory an option for developers and miners! Also with the idea far into the future thus not pressing it makes sense that a crazy change up like moving from PoW to PoS is not being discussed.
It would make sense especially if you use the idea of Bitcoin being a store of value that Bitcoin will maintain its value and thus be able to have higher processing fees to keep miners mining. If miners were to stop mining then individuals would be able to look at wallets and see how much Bitcoin is in there but not be able to do anything about it. The Bitcoin would be stuck without miners to approve or deny transactions. This is super unlikely though especially anytime soon!
This was something that was really cool to read about and look into as people have a huge array of opinions on what could change or not when these block rewards finally run out!
