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).
I actually half thought that miners, or at least the huge firms we've come to know and hate (heh), would already have taken steps to move in temporarily as market makers in the current pricing, but instead they've chosen to shut down operations and hold out, while others have chosen to mine at a loss. There's some consequence of this I'll feel, as supply on markets thin (miners holding out), then the natural pressure from demand should kick in a little.
Bear in mind most miners will have already made their profits the entire of last year and this, so there's a healthy cushion for them to wait this out.
The latter scenario would be scary because if miners stop and move out, then the network loses its much-touted security. Too big too fail, too much to lose? Should hold true for a good number of years.