[Mitchhhs]

Can someone explain something to me:

So people mine bitcoin, which is really just validating the transactions on the network, and they get paid in bitcoin for doing so. However, they will receive fewer and fewer bitcoin over time because of the fixed supply. At some point doesn't mining become unprofitable, causing the network to crash. And if the price drops doesn't this exacerbate this problem? Would love some clarity here.

[nathan_f77]

> However, they will receive fewer and fewer bitcoin over time because of the fixed supply. At some point doesn't mining become unprofitable, causing the network to crash.

This would actually cause the price of Bitcoin to increase, so that it keeps up with the cost of mining it. The miners won't sell their Bitcoin for less than the cost of electricity.

At some point, large mining operations will run their own power stations, and they'll just run on solar / hydro / geothermal power. They might even sell any surplus energy. Other miners might start paying for their electricity with Bitcoin, so the price of electricity might become directly related to the cost of mining Bitcoin.

[gear54rus]

In addition to mining new bitcoin, miners confirm transactions of existing bitcoin in the network. They get paid to do that as well (tx fee).

[detaro]

They also get the transaction fees as reward, and the difficulty (and thus cost) of mining adjusts down if progress on the chain slows down

[UncleEntity]

I think once the 21 million (or whatever, too lazy to look up the actual number) coins are produced the mining fee will adjust to compensate for the utility of verifying blocks.

Probably won't be profitable to have a whole warehouse full of nodes but I'm sure there will still be folks willing to make a couple bucks to keep the network up and running.