Will last bitcoin mined

What Will Happen After The Last Bitcoin Is Mined?

Jesse

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Jesse

The total number of Bitcoins that will ever exist is capped at 21 million by design. This decision was made by Satoshi Nakamoto to ensure that the cryptocurrency maintained a deflationary nature. Each 4 years, or 210,000 blocks, the network undergoes a halving where block rewards for miners are reduced resulting in fewer Bitcoins entering circulation. So what will happen after the last Bitcoin is mined?

Understanding The Monetary Policy Behind Bitcoin

Unlike fiat currencies, which are controlled and printed by a government’s treasury department, Bitcoin has a dynamically opposite approach where the supply of new coins in the market is ever decreasing.

Bitcoin mining involves the process of verifying transactions by solving complex mathematical puzzles (requiring heavy-duty computing infrastructure) and in turn minting new coins. Each time a new block is added to the blockchain, new Bitcoins enter circulation through payments received by the miners.

In order to keep the currency deflationary, Satoshi Nakamoto designed the halving mechanism, which controls the number of new coins entering circulation. In May 2020 Bitcoin underwent its third halving reducing the number of BTC per block reward from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC. Below shows the previous halvings as well as what percentage of coins had been mined at that particular halving.

Halving	Date	Block No.	Block Reward	Mined Since Last Halving	% BTC Mined
BTC launch	3 January 2009	0	50	10,500,00	50
Halving 1	28 November 2012	210,000	25	5,250,000	75
Halving 2	9 July 2016	420,000	12.5	2,625,000	87.5
Halving 3	11 May 2020	630,000	6.25	1,312,500	93.75

When Will The Last Bitcoin Be Mined?

Based on the original design of Bitcoin, we know that the halvings take place every 210,000 blocks. If we use this information we can put together an estimate of when the next halvings will take place, and through the percentage of mined BTC at that time we can establish when the last BTC will be mined. Spoiler alert: it’s not going to be in our lifetime.

Halving	Date	Block No.	Block Reward	Mined Since Last Halving	% BTC Mined
Halving 4	Expected 2024	840,000	3.125	656,250	96.875
Halving 5	Expected 2028	1,050,000	1.5625	328,125	98.4375
Halving 6	Expected 2032	1,260,000	0.78125	164,062.5	99.21875

Based on the information above, in 2032, 99.21875 BTC will be mined with a block reward of 0.78125. It is believed that it will take many more years to mine the very last of the 21 million BTC, putting estimations at 2140.

Why The 21 Million Figure?

There are many theories out there however we will touch on the one that seems most likely. When Satoshi Nakamoto was creating Bitcoin, the global M1 money supply at the time stood at approximately $21 trillion (this refers to all money in circulation around the entire world). With 100 cents in a dollar, that number came to 2,100 trillion “pieces” of money.

Satoshis are the smallest units of Bitcoin accounting for 100th million of the coin. If Bitcoin was to become a universal currency as Nakamoto intended, the 2,100 trillion pieces of money would equate to 2,100 trillion satoshis, or 21 million Bitcoin.

“I wanted to pick something that would make prices similar to existing currencies, but without knowing the future, that’s very hard. I ended up picking something in the middle. If Bitcoin remains a small niche, it’ll be worth less per unit than existing currencies. If you imagine it being used for some fraction of world commerce, then there’s only going to be 21 million coins for the whole world, so it would be worth much more per unit.” – Satoshi Nakamoto, from email correspondence with Bitcoin developer (and former senior software engineer at Google), Mike Hearn.

When All The Digital Gold Is Mined

So, what will happen after the last Bitcoin is mined? When the supply of new coins into the system comes to an end the miners will still have an incentive to keep carrying on their operations as the fee they receive for processing transactions is expected to grow in line with the price of Bitcoin. The Bitcoin whitepaper states:

“Once a predetermined number of coins have entered circulation, the incentive can transition entirely to transaction fees and be completely inflation free.“

Miners are central to the efficient operation of a blockchain-based cryptocurrency. After all the Bitcoins are mined, miners will still need the support of users in the form of a transaction fee to sustain operations. However, some miners may exit the Bitcoin ecosystem as they may not be able to sustain the costs of operations.

Why You Should Invest In Bitcoin Today

Bitcoin will continue to exist even after the last coin is mined, however even that is still far, far away. In the meanwhile, in the last decade since it came into existence, the cryptocurrency has emerged as the preferred and penultimate digital currency all over the world. The supply of this asset is limited, it is not inflationary in nature and offers a valuable alternative investment for many, especially people who suffer from political uncertainty.

The easiest way to acquire Bitcoin is through Oobit, all you need is a debit or credit card and five minutes of your time to go through one of the easiest KYC procedures that exists in the industry. There is really no need to wait or wonder about what will happen after the last Bitcoin is mined when you can get your Bitcoin today in just a few clicks.

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What Happens to Bitcoin After All 21 Million Are Mined?

Bitcoin is like digital gold in many ways. Like gold, bitcoin cannot simply be created arbitrarily; it requires work to «extract.» While gold must be extracted from the physical earth, bitcoin must be «mined» via computational means.

Bitcoin also has a stipulation—set forth in its source code—that it must have a limited and finite supply. For this reason, there will only ever be 21 million bitcoins ever produced. On average, these bitcoins are introduced to the Bitcoin supply at a fixed rate of one block every ten minutes. In addition, the number of bitcoins released in each of these aforementioned blocks is reduced by 50% every four years.

Key Takeaways

• There are only 21 million bitcoins that can be mined in total.
• Once bitcoin miners have unlocked all the bitcoins, the planet’s supply will essentially be tapped out.
• As of February 24, 2021, 18.638 million bitcoins have been mined, which leaves 2.362 million yet to be introduced into circulation.
• Once all Bitcoin has been mined the miners will still be incentivized to process transactions with fees.

The Supply of Bitcoin Is Limited to 21 Million

In fact, there are only 21 million bitcoins that can be mined in total. Once miners have unlocked this number of bitcoins, the supply will be exhausted. However, it’s possible that bitcoin’s protocol will be changed to allow for a larger supply. What will happen when the global supply of bitcoin reaches its limit? This is the subject of much debate among fans of cryptocurrency.

Currently, around 18.5 million bitcoins have been mined. This leaves less than three million that have yet to be introduced into circulation.

While there can only ever be a maximum of 21 million bitcoins, because people have lost their private keys or have died without leaving their private key instructions to anybody, the actual amount of available bitcoins in circulation could actually be millions less.

Bitcoin Mining Rewards

The first 18.5 million bitcoins have been mined in the ten years since the initial launch of the Bitcoin network. With only three million more coins to go, it might appear like we are in the final stages of bitcoin mining. This is true but in a limited sense. While it is true that the large majority of bitcoins have already been mined, the timeline is more complicated than that.

The Bitcoin mining process rewards miners with a chunk of bitcoin upon successful verification of a block. This process adapts over time. When bitcoin first launched, the reward was 50 bitcoins. In 2012, it halved to 25 bitcoins. In 2016, it halved again to 12.5 bitcoins. As of February 2021, miners gain 6.25 bitcoins for every new block mined—equal to about $294,168.75 based on February 24, 2021, value. This effectively lowers Bitcoin’s inflation rate in half every four years.

The reward will continue to halve every four years until the final bitcoin has been mined. In actuality, the final bitcoin is unlikely to be mined until around the year 2140. However, it’s possible that the Bitcoin network protocol will be changed between now and then.

The Bitcoin mining process provides Bitcoin rewards to miners, but the reward size is decreased periodically to control the circulation of new tokens.

Impacts of Finite Bitcoin Supply on Bitcoin Miners

It may seem that the group of individuals most directly affected by the limit of the bitcoin supply will be the Bitcoin miners themselves. Some detractors of the protocol claim that miners will be forced away from the block rewards they receive for their work once the bitcoin supply has reached 21 million in circulation.

But even when the last bitcoin has been produced, miners will likely continue to actively and competitively participate and validate new transactions. The reason is that every Bitcoin transaction has a transaction fee attached to it.

These fees, while today representing a few hundred dollars per block, could potentially rise to many thousands of dollars per block, especially as the number of transactions on the blockchain grows and as the price of a bitcoin rises. Ultimately, it will function like a closed economy, where transaction fees are assessed much like taxes.

El Salvador made Bitcoin legal tender on June 9, 2021. It is the first country to do so. The cryptocurrency can be used for any transaction where the business can accept it. The U.S. dollar continues to be El Salvador’s primary currency.

Special Considerations

It’s worth noting that it is projected to take more than 100 years before the Bitcoin network mines its very last token. In actuality, as the year 2140 approaches, miners will likely spend years receiving rewards that are actually just tiny portions of the final bitcoin to be mined. The dramatic decrease in reward size may mean that the mining process will shift entirely well before the 2140 deadline.

It’s also important to keep in mind that the bitcoin network itself is likely to change significantly between now and then. Considering how much has happened to Bitcoin in just a decade, new protocols, new methods of recording and processing transactions, and any number of other factors may impact the mining process.

The latest significant events are the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) letter in January 2021 authorizing the use of crypto as a method of payment, Paypal’s introduction of Bitcoin, and Tesla’s acceptance of Bitcoin to purchase Tesla cars and solar roofs. Tesla reversed course on accepting Bitcoin in May 2021, citing environmental concerns around the resources required to mine Bitcoin.

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When will the last Bitcoin be mined?

Estimates have been thrown around a lot recently as to the year in which the last Bitcoin will be mined- where are these estimates coming from? Could someone send me to the relevant code?

2 Answers 2

The estimate is 2140 based on the block reward halving frequency of four years. According to math and knowledge that there are 32 halving events, in 2136, the block reward will yield 0.00000168 BTC per day, which is 0.00000042 BTC per block. That’s 42 satoshis.

It’s arguable that there could be one additional halving, to a block reward of 0.00000021 BTC, but that would require a major protocol modification since the number of Bitcoin would then exceed 21 million. Additionally, to go past that, there’d have to be a protocol modification to extend divisibility past eight decimal places. It is far, far to early to worry about either of these, because we’re more than a century away from this problem.

Bitcoin’s reward schedule is implemented in eras of 210,000 blocks. The block subsidy gets halved with the first block of each new era. The 33rd «halving» at block 6,930,000 will reduce the block subsidy limit from 1 satoshi per block to 0 satoshi per block¹ and therefore the last block creating new bitcoins will be block 6,929,999.

At block intervals of 10 minutes, 210,000 blocks translate to about 3.99 years, although blocks have been a found faster in average in the past. Under the simplifying assumption that the halvings will occur about every four years, the final block that creates new bitcoins would occur approximately in 2140.

You can find a table with the respective calculations here: Bitcoin Reward Schedule

Really, the mining reward will get minuscule much earlier already. In 2036 99% of the bitcoins will be in circulation, in 2048 it will be 99.9%.

¹Actually, the limit is 0.58207661 satoshi per block at that point, but since only whole satoshis can be paid out, none may be collected by miners.

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What Will Happen to Bitcoin After All 21 Million are Mined?

If Bitcoin sticks with its current consensus algorithm, miners will need to subsist on transaction fees as an incentive. That might be a major problem.

In brief

• There is a hard cap of 21 million Bitcoin that can be mined, with the final coins being minted in around 2140.
• Once the circulating supply reaches its maximum, Bitcoin miners will no longer receive block rewards.
• They will instead be rewarded with transaction fees, assuming there are no major protocol changes to Bitcoin between now and then.

There will only ever be 21 million Bitcoins . That’s it. Once they’re all mined, which should occur in around 2140 , no new Bitcoins will enter circulation.

The Bitcoin blockchain was designed around the principle of controlled supply, which means only a fixed number of newly minted Bitcoin can be mined each year until a total of 21 million coins have been minted.

Once all 21 million BTC have been mined, the network will largely operate the same as it does now, but with one crucial difference for miners.

Approximately every ten minutes, Bitcoin miners ‘discover’ a new block, solving a cryptographic puzzle that allows the successful miner to add the newly discovered block to the blockchain . Each block comprises a bundle of transaction records that were previously waiting in the Bitcoin memory pool, usually chosen based on the size of the transaction fee they provide to miners.

In return for discovering a block, the miner receives a fixed number of Bitcoins for their work, called the «block reward.» When Bitcoin first launched, the reward was set at 50 BTC—but the reward halves every 210,000 new blocks, which ends up being roughly every four years.

Thus over time, the block reward has been cut to 25 BTC, 12.5 BTC, and 6.25 BTC. Three halvings have been completed so far; the most recent Bitcoin halving occurred in May 2020, cutting the block reward to 6.25 BTC. The next halving is expected to occur in 2024.

Bitcoin miners will be able to continue earning block rewards until a total of 21 million BTC has been minted, after which no new Bitcoin will enter circulation. Currently, just over 18.5 million BTC has been produced, equivalent to 88.3% of the maximum supply, minted in just over a decade. But it will take another 120 years before the last Bitcoin is minted, due to the gradual reduction of new Bitcoin creation caused by the halving process.

What will miners do when all the Bitcoin has been mined?

Once all 21 million Bitcoin have been minted, Bitcoin miners will still be able to participate in the block discovery process, but they won’t be incentivized in the form of a Bitcoin block reward. That’s not to say they won’t be rewarded at all, though.

As well as block rewards, Bitcoin miners also receive all the fees spent on the transactions included in each newly discovered block. Currently, transaction fees make up a small proportion of a miner’s revenues, since miners currently mint around 900 BTC (

$39.8 million) a day, but earn between 60 and 100 BTC ($2.6 million to $4.4 million) in transaction fees each day. That means transaction fees currently make up as little as 6.5% of a miner’s revenue—but in 2140, that’ll shoot up to 100%.

Losing the block reward won’t disincentivize miners, according to Simon Kim, CEO of VC fund #Hashed. “Changes to the Bitcoin ecosystem and its place as a key currency in the virtual world could drive significant changes in miner adoption even after the block rewards stop,” Kim told Decrypt .

Transaction fees broke their 2017 peak in April 2021

It’s true that switching to a reward structure based purely on transaction fees would almost certainly decimate the mining network now, since few Bitcoin miners would be able to profitably mine Bitcoin if they received just 6.5% of their typical rewards.

However, if the usage of the Bitcoin network were to explode, then competition for block space could increase dramatically. According to ByBit CEO Ben Zhou, that would likely lead to increased transaction fee rewards for miners—similar to what was seen during Bitcoin’s 2017 bull run.

«As rewards for mining decrease upon each halving, and long before the last bitcoin is mined, transaction fees will play a more and more prominent role,» said Zhou. «Transaction fees will likely grow in an inverse correlation to, and as a compensation for, the diminishing mining returns.»

Moreover, Crypto.com COO Eric Anziani suspects that Bitcoin’s price growth and gradually reducing energy costs could mean that mining will remain a profitable endeavor.

«In our view, as the adoption of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies grows, its price should also increase considerably, which will more than make up for the lower rewards per block,» he said. «Furthermore, as the mining process becomes more efficient and renewable energy becomes ubiquitous, miners’ electricity costs will fall, allowing them to stay in business and continue to secure the network.”

In December 2017—the transaction fee peak until mid-April 2021— the total transaction fees paid per day spiked to 1,495 BTC at a time when Bitcoin was valued at $14,000. As a result, miners earned a total of $21 million in transaction fees that day—which is currently around half of what they earn from the block reward today. The average cost of sending Bitcoin at the 2017 peak was $55.17. On April 21, 2021 , that figure hit a new all-time high of $59.87. Just ten days before that, it was only $14.86; the average transaction fee had soared more than 300%. Put simply, this happened because the Bitcoin network was in demand. More people using the network typically means higher transaction fees.

Another possibility is that the reward mechanism for Bitcoin could change some time before the final block is mined. Luka Boškin, CMO of crypto trading platform NewsCrypto , argues that as the number of BTC produced by mining shrinks, Bitcoin will undergo “significant changes” to its protocol. “That could eventually include a switch to a more environmentally-friendly consensus mechanism like proof of stake or another successor to proof of work ,” he told Decrypt .

This is a view shared by Niklas Nikolajsen, the founder of Swiss crypto broker Bitcoin Suisse. In an interview originally shot for German TV show Galileo, Nikolajsen was quoted as saying «I’m sure, once [proof of stake] technology is proven, that Bitcoin will adapt to it as well.»

However, as of February 2021, work is not underway to bring proof of stake to Bitcoin, and there are no Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs) tabling the change either.

On the other hand, Skrill’s head of crypto Jordan Stoev believes that the Bitcoin blockchain will likely be reserved for significant value transfers, and that layer 2 solutions or alternate blockchains will be used for the bulk of transfers. «Only transactions of very significant value will remain to be performed on-chain and they will pay very big transaction fees that will constitute the income to the miners,» Stoev told Decrypt .

But there’s another potential outcome for Bitcoin. Since switching to a reward structure solely based on transaction fees would be a huge blow to miners—they would only earn just 6.5% of the rewards they earn today—what if Bitcoin miners stop mining Bitcoin altogether?

What happens if miners stop mining Bitcoin?

While there is a school of thought that suggests transaction fees will still sufficiently incentivize miners in the future, not everybody agrees.

Obviously, if a majority of miners—or even all miners—stopped mining Bitcoin, then the Bitcoin network would, in many ways, change forever. You would still be able to view which wallet addresses hold Bitcoin, and how much,, and you would also still be able to view the entire history of every single Bitcoin transaction ever made.

But confirming new transactions requires mining. If miners stop producing new blocks, it would effectively become impossible to spend any Bitcoin in the future.

That’s quite the doomsday warning for the Bitcoin network, but many believe miners will stay the course, even once transaction fees are their only reward. And as #Hashed CEO Simon Kim told Decrypt , there may be changes down the line that can incentivize miners even if block rewards stop, but not everybody agrees.

A 2016 Princeton University study concludes that transaction fees alone will not be sufficient incentive, and that relying on transaction fees alone will cause “troubling consequences” for Bitcoin’s future security.

The threat of the ‘selfish miner’

The study cites “deviant” mining techniques that would undercut Bitcoin’s security. Of particular concern is the “selfish miner,” one who chooses not to release blocks immediately upon them being found, and instead withholds their blocks in the hope of tricking the network into wasting additional resources mining additional blocks that will never make it onto the blockchain.

That form of “selfish” mining, the study finds, “performs even better in the transaction-fee regime than in the block-reward regime” because with the current block-reward model, all blocks are worth the same, but in the transaction fees model, a selfish miner would earn more money by holding the block for longer. In other words, if transaction fees were the only incentive available to miners in the future, this kind of selfish miner would earn more for mining than a miner that worked for the good of the network.

The study admits there’s no a priori reason to be sure the selfish behavior would prevail, but bases its conclusion on “simulation results, along with some intuition and a theoretical analysis.”

Then there’s the concept of undercutting, which is where a deviant miner—let’s call him Alan—convinces another miner—we’ll call him Steve—to extend Alan’s own block, even if an older block of equivalent height was discovered earlier.

In a network that only rewards miners on transaction fees, Alan can convince Steve to extend Alan’s block’s direct predecessor and include slightly fewer transaction fees. If the level of unauthorized transaction fees are substantially fewer than those included in the other block, it would be in Steve’s interest to replace that block with a new block. This is what the study refers to as “undercutting.”

If undercutting became prevalent in the Bitcoin network—precisely because transaction fee incentives allowed it to become prevalent—then the dreaded “ 51% attack ” on Bitcoin’s network suddenly becomes more feasible. Per the Princeton study, “In a blockchain with constant forks caused by undercutting, an attacker’s effective hash power is magnified because he will always mine to extend his own blocks whereas other miners are not unified. This would make a 51% attack possible with much less than 51% of the hash power.”

However, there’s a key caveat to the Princeton study that dampens the alarm around undercutting. At the time of the study, in 2016, it was correct to assume that blocks were only half full, and that miners had enough power to fork a block. Elias Strehle, CTO of CircularTree , a blockchain-powered ecosystem that allows organizations to share compliance information, told Decrypt that today it is “hard to imagine” blocks only being half full.

“Of course,” Strehle acknowledges, “the one argument still prevails: transaction fees might not be enough to give enough incentive for a secure hash rate for the network, which then increases the likelihood of a 51% attack.”

Not that anyone reading this piece right now will be alive in 2140 to see it.

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