Seeing the current fuss going on in the markets and the buzz that Bitcoin may lose its value down more to $1-2k levels (without any solid reasons except we may call this the biggest shake of investors' confidence), what do you really expect when the last Bitcoin gets mined?
I've got 2 things in my mind I'd like to share:
- Miners will push the fee higher and higher if the value drops (and even if it doesn't, they'll probably do the same because there won't be any rewards for the same and they'll not serve us for lower, maybe). So, after the hike in fee values, will there be the same clutter and people would sell BTC and choose some other alt for their money-making needs?
- Miners will completely stop mining BTC which would give us the chance to mine it with our PCs once again (maybe) and/or people might completely stop using BTC because there maybe a sudden drop in price (like we expected a price jump but it dropped like hell just because last BTC mined and mining fee hike as said in first scenario).
1. I fully expect all of us to be gone by then. It's 120 years into the future...
2. The fees will become an increasingly important part of the miner reward after each halving. Bitcoin has been designed with that in mind form day 1.
3. Miners will never completely stop all at once. Think of it this way. Lets say a particular highway has terrible traffic jams. And some drivers choose to avoid it. If everyone stopped using it, it would be empty, making it a super excellent choice. And drivers start using it again. But you never get to that extreme, because the system balances out way before that i.e. people stop avoiding the highway once the traffic is moderate. It's the same with mining. Miners who don't like the reward keep dropping out, the rewards are distributed among less people who now get more. This continues until everyone is happy with the situation. You never get to zero...