What happens if bitcoin mining stops or becomes too expensive? Is that within the realm of possibility? Are there mitigating factors, probably the adoption of renewable energy?
Bitcoin mining can never stop, the idea that Bitcoin mining would stop is vague.
Some of these ideas comes from the fact that, the block rewards are always reducing by half after every halving, a 4 year circle of Bitcoin.
Well, the block rewards isn’t the only activity that mining does. Mining helps in protection of Bitcoin network and transactions by recording these data into blocks and the nodes ensure its integrity and authenticity. Miners gain transaction fees from handling these kind of transactions. These fees have been known to go up over time and it would continue to operate this way.
In such a time when block rewards aren’t so valued which I doubt because, the value of Bitcoin would always ensure even the least say is valued in the future, hence, its relevance would still be in place, the fees as well would compensate for more.