What happens when all 21 million Bitcoins are mined?

It's going to take a while, with all 21 million Bitcoins expected to be mined by 2140. Still, what happens then? How can miners still make money?

- The total supply of Bitcoin is limited to 21 million.

- The total number of BTC tokens may never reach 21 million due to the rounding operators that are used in the Bitcoin codebase.

- Once the Bitcoin supply reaches its upper limit, no additional bitcoins will be generated.

_{How Bitcoin mining works.}

New Bitcoins enter circulation via a process known as mining. This involves users operating computers to solve cryptographic puzzles in order to add blocks of transactions onto the blockchain. In return, they earn block rewards for their efforts.

When Bitcoin was just created, each block added would earn miners 50 Bitcoin.

After every 210,000 blocks, or roughly every four years, a Bitcoin halving occurs, which slashes rewards by half.

So far, there have been three halvings, so each block added now earns miners 6.25 bitcoins.

The next halving is set for some time in April 2024, where the block reward will drop further to 3.125 bitcoins.

https://x.com/NealinNFT/status/1691042076870266880?s=20

Unlike gold, which could still continue to be traded without miners, Bitcoin miners are essential as they are the ones who validate transactions and secure the network.

This is where fees come in.💸💸

Aside from just the block reward, miners also receive all the fees from transactions included in a block, paid by the sender.

The idea is that when block rewards eventually run out, ideally adoption of Bitcoin is widespread enough, or its price is high enough that fees become a big enough reward for miners to continue to mine blocks.

However, some have questioned the viability of fees alone to act as a sufficient incentive for miners to stay, since aside from spikes during bull markets, fees have only made up a small percentage of total miner revenue.

Ordinals

In recent months in 2023, you saw development emerge called Ordinals. These ordinals have caused miners to receive huge fees. But it remains to be seen whether this will remain so in the indefinite future.

There are probably a huge number of other opportunities for miners and many more will be added in the coming years.

Think of inventions that reduce power consumption and miners make more money as a result.
What else would be interesting developments for miners?

Thanks for reading!