Bitcoin is not an infinte resource. There is only a
Bitcoin is not an infinte resource. There is only a limited amount of it.
The creators of Bitcoin decided that there should be a finite supply of it. The cap is at 21 million.
So what happens when all these 21 million Bitcoins are mined by the miners? What happens to the future of Bitcoin? This article will hopefully answer all the questions you may have.
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What Lies Beyond 21 Million?
Currently, there are only 4 million Bitcoins left to be mined.
Additionally, the community has not signalled towards any protocol changes, that would allow for a larger supply of Bitcoins to be mined.
This effectively means Bitcoin miners will be greatly impacted by the exhaustion of bitcoins to be mined. They will stop receiving their block rewards, and instead have to rely on transaction fee to for profits.
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Consequences
Most people from the industry believe that once 21 million bitcoins are mined, the industry will see a decline in the number of operational miners.
They also argue that the industry will become largely centralized once the cap is reached, leading to problems in the community.
It is also believed that once the finite supply is reached, there will be a price hike in the price of Bitcoin. Along with that, transaction fess might see an increase in price as well, which will help keep the miners operational.
Once needs to consider that fiat currency does not work like that. It is being constantly printed and circulated amongst people and there’s no cap on the number of fiat currencies that can be in use.
By putting a cap on Bitcoin, the developers have to an extent set a control mechanism on the number of bitcoins that can be mined. This will definitely drive up the prices of the cryptocurrency as it nears its upper limit.
Miners will have to increasingly depend on transaction fees, which will also likely see an astronomical hike, to keep the operations afloat.
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