3 ms·

Coin generation will never be complete, it will slow down infinitely.

• Dumbdo 9y ago
  This is true, but you can view it as effectively stopped if you get only a very small reward. This is especially interesting because the number of generated coins is not totally depended on the value (in USD) of bitcoin. This means that you could get a converted reward of just a few dollars in a few decades. Either fees have to rise or Bitcoin will be much unsafer by then.
  • TomMarius 9y ago
    You forgot to add mining difficulty in the mix. If you'll get just a few dollars, you also spent just a few dollars on mining the block.
• noggin 9y ago
  This would only be true if bitcoin were infinitely divisible. In actuality the block reward will eventually be one 'satoshi' (one hundred-millionth of a bitcoin); then, when it's next due to be halved, dividing by 2 with a fixed precision of 8 decimal places will take the reward down to a value of zero.
  • chrismorgan 9y ago
    See https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply#Projected_Bitcoins_Long_Term https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply#Projected_Bitco... for a table of rewards. Note that it is possible, by consensus, for the satoshi to become divisible, though I can’t see it becoming infinitely divisible. (From that page: “The total number of bitcoins, as mentioned earlier, has an asymptote at 21 million, due to a technical limitation in the data structure of the blockchain - specifically the integer storage type of the transaction output, this exact value would have been 20,999,999.9769 bitcoin. Should this technical limitation be adjusted by changing the width of the field, the total number will still only approach or be a maximum of 21 million.”)