I know I know. You might think that this is just another article by another skeptic. And I know some of you literally just came here to say this:
Just bear with me for a few moments and you'll understand what I'm trying to say here.
Now before I jump into my reasons, I want to come clean: I am a newbie to the crypto world (2 months old actually) so I don't know a lot about crypto currency but I have been doing my research and I've been reading up A LOT about how everything works. This has led me to a conclusion (which could very well be wrong) that in the long run, Bitcoin WILL FAIL
I was just reading an article the other day about how miners currently have an incentive to mine blocks as each block they mine rewards them with a certain amount of BTC. This PLUS the transaction fees is divided between all miners if they are in a pool. I was just reading this when it hit me: What happens when the blocks become impossible to mine/take forever?
See at the moment, a certain number of confirmations are required for each transaction to be legitimized. When miners mine blocks, they approve the transactions by adding more confirmations (assuming that the transaction fees was good enough to be included in the block). But this is all because at the moment mining is relatively easier than it will be in the future. What will happen when each block takes 2-3 hours to be found due to the difficulty increase? What happens when lots of miners stop mining because the difficulty has increased to such an extent that it's just not feasible to mine anymore due to electricity costs? At this point transactions will cost more and more to be included in each block and when people stop paying high transaction fees, transactions won't confirm anymore and Bitcoin will become a rare commodity (sort of like gold) that you can't really spend on a day-to-day basis for example at shops.
Alright just bear with me for a few more moments here.
Lets assume in a hypothetical situation that ALL the bitcoins have been mined in the future. What will happen then? The miners will just point their farms to a different alt coin and bitcoin payments will stop being confirmed and nobody will be able to transact with bitcoin efficiently. Because once all the bitcoins have been mined, the miners will rely on solely the transaction fees in each block and that won't be enough assuming that the electricity would end up being far more expensive than the profit that mining will generate. If this is all true, 5-10 years from now, this will be us:
Therefore, it is my opinion that in the near future, bitcoin will surely fail. But like I said, this is purely my own opinion and this could all be a wrong assumption (And I really hope that it is). But if it's not then I guess we should all jump into panic mode now
If you like what my posts, don't forget to hit the follow button so that you don't miss out on any of my future posts.
Let me know what you think in the comments below and I'd love to get back to you.
Take care and God bless you all
- A. I. Eva
This post received a 2.2% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @arthestically! For more information, click here!
Interesting Post, but you did miss one thing, When all bitcoins are mined, the miners will rely on transaction fees to continue mining and verifying transactions. This could still be an issue, as many people are worried that Bitcoin will cost too much to send (For example if bitcoin hit $1,000,000, people are worried the fee to send those bitcoins would be like $250,000.) But there is still plenty of bitcoins to mine, and with the increasing difficulty, and technology becoming faster and more efficient, that is not necessarily in the near future. For me, I just Ride the money train while I can.
Haha nooo. I did mention this point too. At some point, the transaction fees just won't be enough to keep the miners afloat and they might just get fed up and leave which would leave the Bitcoin open to 51% attacks as hash powers decrease and some random company decides to buy up more power and control BTC.
Not to mention Bitcoin transactions wont get confirmed OR they would be too expensive to have any practical use and that would lead to failure as well :/
seeing as you didn't specify a date.. you are right!
I predict bitcoin will fail in around 2300.. which is when over time most of the coins will have been lost in wallets and exchanges and rotten paper secret keys!
;-)
Haha I really hope you're right!
But I predict this to happen any time within the next 10 years actually :P
Thank you for this. I'm keeping an eye and ear out for skeptics to balance all of the enthusiasm. The concept of the secure and decentralized ledger is wholesome, but how many iteration will pass before we actually arrive at a viable solution? (Skeptic chin strokes)
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by arthestically from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, and someguy123. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you like what we're doing please upvote this comment so we can continue to build the community account that's supporting all members.