If I understood the system correctly, at that point mining would become much less profitable so a lot of miners would stop their operations. In that case, difficulty would automatically decrease at the same rate as miners quit, and at some point it would become somehow profitable for the remaining miners to subsist on transaction fees.
Re:It can all go to zero
by sillysaurus3 on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @03:23PM
(#16162064)
Note that difficulty adjustment happens every 2016 blocks. If the miners all decide to call it quits shortly after the previous difficulty change, the next 2016 blocks might take far longer than 10 minutes per block.
Which of course means the next difficulty adjustment would take far longer than two weeks to trigger.
The endgame seems completely untenable. No one is going to pay a huge amount per BTC transfer. So what do you think will happen to all those miners, with all their mining equipment?
We currently have a monstrous block reward every 10 minutes, and yet tx fees are already $10 to $20. Imagine how much the fees will be when there's no reward.