The Bitcoin Halving, Explained

Re:The Bitcoin Halving, Explained by nrclark on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @05:42PM (#23012465)

Doesn't Bitcoin need miners in order to continue to exist? Why would it possibly make sense to drive the reward for mining down to 0 asymptotically? At the end of that curve, doesn't Bitcoin cease to exist because it can't be spent?

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Re:The Bitcoin Halving, Explained by xur17 on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @05:43PM (#23012471)

Miners also receive transaction fees.

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Re:The Bitcoin Halving, Explained by abstractbarista on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @05:48PM (#23012535)

This is a crucial point. The idea with BTC is that as the block reward decreases over time, transaction volume (and therefore fee collection) would increase. This requires the network to be used more over time, which does appear to be happening.

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Re:The Bitcoin Halving, Explained by wmf on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @05:55PM (#23012606)

Given that transaction volume is capped, fees may be very very high in the future.

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Re:The Bitcoin Halving, Explained by xur17 on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @06:10PM (#23012745)

There are several systems that would allow users to essentially batch settle (ex: lightning network), at which point fees could presumably rise significantly.

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