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The chain will never be finished. Mining will (should) go on forever. This hardware will only become obsolete when Bitcoin's proof-of-work is changed from SHA-2
by mrb 13y ago
The chain will never be finished. Mining will (should) go on forever. This hardware will only become obsolete when Bitcoin's proof-of-work is changed from SHA-256(SHA-256(x)) to something else (which might happen in a few years/decades, but until then the hardware will have largely paid itself off).
- evolve2k 13y agoOh it was my understanding that at a certain date (2015?) the system would stop issuing new bitcoins. How are miners paid then?
- ck2 13y agoI don't think it stops issuing coins, I think the reward keeps halving until it reaches zero (beyond 8 decimals). The question is are people going to bother to use $10k gigahash machines with dollars/day in power to make 0.0000001 BTC
- zwily 13y agoIf the reward gets low enough that people stop mining, then the network adapts to make mining easier, keeping the mining rate constant. It's brilliant.
- gwern 13y agoTransaction fees.
- mrb 13y agoYear 2140 is when issuance will stop. So we have more than 100 years left: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply Beside that, transaction fees should make mining profitable for ever, in theory. Transaction fees, or transaction volume, only needs to grow by 10x in the next 10 years (from ~0.3 to 3 BTC per block), in order to make them generate more profits to miners than coin issuance.
- grecy 13y ago> This hardware will only become obsolete when Bitcoin's proof-of-work is changed from SHA-256(SHA-256(x)) to something else (which might happen in a few years/decades) Once they announce whatever comes after SHA-256, would it not be possible to immediately start building ASIC's for whatever that is, and put them to work as soon as the new proof-of-work is used?