Re: 19M Bitcoins are mined but did you know about the last Bitcoin mined?
I was just thinking about the time when all BTC will be mined. I know we all won't live at that time but I'm wondering... If the fees should cover the cost of mining, won't they be too high? I'm not sure how many transactions fit in one block, but if today a block reward (6.25 BTC) is around $270.000 in fiat, won't fees cost too much once all BTC is mined? I mean, that means fees of all transactions in one block should cost around $270.000.
It's still a long time, even if we would say it could be critical 25 years from now, when Block rewards will start to get very low compared to now. But we had already phases, where fees made up 20-25% of block rewards. Yes, maybe on-chain fees will be a bit higher than today and for very cheap fees, lightning will be used. It's possible. I expect, it'll be a constant process, where Bitcoin gets more valuable but even on-chain fees won't explode.
Remember SegWit, where Bitcoin's TPS was increased and more TX were fitted into a block without downside. TX costs and network congestion went down because of SegWit.
Maybe we will see some more similar updates to improve Bitcoin and maintain the affordability of on-chain transactions.
Yeah, I remember how SegWit dropped the transaction prices and I guess something similar will have to be created so that more transactions fits into one block. Then maybe the block reward payed only by a transaction fee will be enough.
I was just thinking about the time when all BTC will be mined. I know we all won't live at that time but I'm wondering... If the fees should cover the cost of mining, won't they be too high?
Too high for buying cup of coffee? Maybe. But you need to think also how worthless everything will be in 2140 in fiat money. 120 years of more endless inflation IF the fiat even survives that long.
But to answer your question: Smaller purchases will be made in Layer 2 tech like Lightning network and those payments will be "saved" in the Layer 1 blockchain only at the end of a day or a week. So it is not a problem.
I didn't think that fiat will be worth anything in 120 years. I just made an example how would that look today in fiat value. But I guess one of the solutions is layer2 for small transactions. I'd write "we will see" but I guess we won't. Maybe our kids will see
