Am I missing something here

Hey, feel free to set me straight if I’m off base. Someone asked me what’ll happen to Bitcoin miners once all the Bitcoin is mined and there’s no halving every four years anymore. Will they just shut down? This is what I was told and I kinda think that miners are crucial for processing transactions, right? But I could be wrong. Even after all 21 million coins are out there, I think Bitcoin miners will stick around because they keep the transactions flowing. Or am I just not getting it?

yes, they'll be here. they will collect the tx fees for their services.

There are so many similar topics that discuss this sample this one How will Bitcoin survive after all 21M coins have been mined? Or this one 21.000.000 Bitcoin! It would be better to read each post from these threads so that other questions in your mind are also answered Miners are one of the Bitcoin transaction life cycles including nodes without them Bitcoin transactions will never be confirmed.

Every 4 years (approximately) there is a halving and the block reward for miners is reduced. Soon we should see that the block reward will be less than the transaction fees in the block. There will always be miners, if the algorithm does not change, but their number will be regulated by the profit from mining. The more miners, the more secure the blockchain.

Sure, miners will still be there, blocks need to be found for the transactions to be confirmed. Otherwise, transactions would be stucked in the mempool forever. But I think it is not going to happen before the year 2136 (or 2140, not sure of the exact date) After this date, as IIrik11 said, they will no longer receive block rewards, but only transaction fees. The fees are not negligible for the miners, even if the price doesn't go up much more. It's more the adoption and usage of the blockchain that counts, recently we saw blocks with a reward (block reward + fees) that went from 8 to 11 BTC. Huge reward per block, even with fees only. Imagine the same reward with a BTC at 60 or 100k However, the real question is, will BTC still be needed and useful in 2140? And for the time being, I don't think anyone will be able to answer that question with any guarantee.

Even after the 9th halving in 2043, the block reward will be 0.09765625 BTC. This is already significantly small, and then 0.04882813 then 0.02441406. The rewards are no longer significant and miners will receive the main income from commission fees. In 2122, the block reward is 0.00000009, but I don't think we'll live that long.

You are right, and bitcoin miners make money through block rewards, transaction fees, profitability and costs, remember this.        Just always remember that bitcoin miners are responsible for adding and verifying transactions on the bitcoin blockchain. And the purpose why they do this is because they solve complex math problems. so in return for what they do they are rewarded with bitcoin. [1] Job of the Bitcoin Miners

This is cool, it means the excitement will always be here, I knew this before but I just wanted to confirm again, because someone threw this question to my face, and thanks for your answers, everyone. I believe Bitcoin is here to stay, miners will always have something to make from transaction fee at least which is a very good thing. The only thing miners need to keep doing is upgrading their mining equipment, and the profit will be lower unless transaction fee increases, I hope this gets to new bitcoin miners that are worried about the uncertainty of mining in the future.

At the end of the day, those who find mining unprofitable will quit. I don't think things will change that much even after block rewards are gone. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a drop in hash rate or something similar though. You can't force people to mine just for the sake of keeping the network secure since most people are here for profit. Will this going to be a problem? I do see the possibility of some problems happening, but it is definitely not unsolvable. CMIIW.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to support the bitcoin network if you start mining on a computer. And ASICs in the apartment are also difficult to use. Therefore, I do not know now any owner of an asic who supports the bitcoin network for the sake of the idea. All my acquaintances miners consider only profit and want to recoup their ASICs as quickly as possible.

Thank you, @Z390, for this thread. It was just about creating a similar thread for clarification about the mining reward for the last Bitcoin halving and possibly all Bitcoin mined. I don't know how long they will be, but out of curiosity, I always wanted to ask about it. I still have one of my curiosity questions unanswered. To some point, I always think that there might be a greater reward for miners since they will only be earning from transaction fees. Can't they be tempted to increase the amount they can charge per transaction? In order to earn high fees from those that want their transaction to be confirmed and don't run a node of their own.

Miners do not set transaction fees. In addition to large mining pools, small mining pools also work, which will confirm transactions. Mining pools do not own all the equipment, and any action by the pools that will mess up the network with the cost of transactions will result in an outflow of miners from such pools.

That's not the miner's duty, they existed to only make transactions from one to another block successful, there is no way miners can give senders fee they should pay, this would have cause a disrupt in Bitcoin since the beginning. Bitcoin miners will be fine with the fees only, the reward may be lower but I doubt, if Bitcoin survives to the very end it means there will be over 10 million users already using Bitcoin so the higher the number of Bitcoin users the more transactions will be needed to transact per day and that's more rewards for miners. It's no doubt, Bitcoin miners will be in safe hands.

It depends on how bitcoin is used. Cryptocurrency trading does not require transaction confirmation. If custodial services become popular, then bitcoin may live for a long time. And a large number of users will make small payments unprofitable.

I am really not sure if you have read the question correctly or not but they are asking about the future of miners when they are done mining 21 million bitcoins which is the limited number of bitcoin we could have. In reality, miners do have the job of confirming our transactions and the confirmation is unlimited times, from one peer to another peer, the cycle goes on and that is why we keep seeing old transactions with thousands of confirmation done already. Thats because they were confirmed by that many times with high confidence level. Miners will still continue to confirm the transactions because of the PoW algorithm of the bitcoin. If in theory bitcoin turns into PoS then miners will be done forever other wise they would still exist.

Why bother with tomorrow's problems while you can live the moment? Like the other guy above me said, when that time comes it will be year 2140 or smth... Nearly 20 years... In 20 years lots of stuff may change. Maybe there will be some other crypto that's better than bitcoin... Who knows? See this guy? This guy gets it. We don't even know if we will be alive by then.

1000% Agree  We all be dead when the bitcoin reached its limit unless we have some of potion from alien to watch this moment hehehe. The simplest answer I think Miner will be there but they will have efficient mining and big farms might cease to exist only small miners who will get from the transaction fees. and the price of bitcoin might be crazy at that time or the community has new consensus system I don't no like move to PoS but without adding more coin but this is high unlike to happen

The 21 millions bitcoin can not be mined at once and will be exhausted because people are buying and others are selling so there a transaction always in the mining field. If people stopped buying and selling of bitcoin then mining will also stopped. And before those bitcoin will be exhausted we will not live to see that day. It will become a story in another world. Bitcoin has come to stay and as a currency it will live forever.

The reward to fee ratio has changed bigly. 50 reward .02 fees 25 reward .04 fees 12.5 reward .08 fees 6.25 reward .15 fees those are average fee numbers. I think by 2056 we will have issues with very low rewards and fees will not cover the miners

I used to think the opposite, which is that bitcoin transaction fee per byte in the early days are expernsive because everyone was not know how bitcoin works, low currency value, bad software, which sometimes causes someone to send 50 bitcoins as fees. today, they have become more aware of the value of bitcoin, and we do not pay a lot of fee per byte, or to be precise, fee per vbyte, but on the other hand, the number of transactions in each block has increased, and it has become rare to mine several empty blocks. After the last Satoshi is mined, the blocks will inevitably be very full, and the average in dollars may be the same as the current average in currencies, because according to historical data, it is not affected by the price. https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees.html#alltime