Latest / Simply Bitcoin / What Happens When ALL 21 Million Bitcoin are Mined? | Beyond Bitcoin
Transcript
- 0:00What happens after the last Bitcoin is mined?
- 0:02It's not 2140 that you actually have to worry about, it might be
- 0:05much earlier than that, 2032. If miners walk away and adoption
- 0:09stalls, Bitcoin can crash to 000 dollars.
- 0:15But if nation states pile in, it could hit $1 million, and some
- 0:20people think that'll be as early as next week.
- 0:22This isn't a future fantasy. This is a fork in the road that
- 0:25we're speeding towards Now. Let's imagine tonight the faucet
- 0:28shuts off. No new Bitcoin, no minor
- 0:31paycheck. If block space is auction only,
- 0:34what's the opening bid, $30 or 30,000?
- 0:38And if no one is willing to pay, does Bitcoin flatline before
- 0:41breakfast? Strap in.
- 0:44We're rewinding 130 years of monetary engineering to find out
- 0:48exactly what you and whole nations will cough up for a
- 0:52single on chain transaction when the last satoshi is mine.
- 0:57I said strap in, but also buckle up.
- 0:59Don't. Forget to buckle up out there in
- 1:01Radioland. My motions.
- 1:02This is beyond Bitcoin. Let's dive in. 1st we should
- 1:12start with what is Bitcoin mining?
- 1:13And to explain, here's the CEO of SAS Mining, Kent Halliburton.
- 1:17Bitcoin mining is the only way that new Bitcoin are generated.
- 1:20They're generated through the consumption of electricity.
- 1:24Now why do they do that is a separate question.
- 1:27But in essence, Bitcoin is a decentralized Ledger.
- 1:30There's 10s of thousands of nodes that keep a copy of this
- 1:33digital Ledger. And that digital Ledger is a
- 1:36blockchain. It's made-up of blocks of
- 1:39transactions every 10 minutes. The protocol regulates it so
- 1:43that a new block is found by the miners.
- 1:47And how that specifically works is that a random number has to
- 1:53be guessed by crunching all the data in that block of
- 1:57transactions and I guess has to be perfect and is very difficult
- 2:03to be perfect. And so we have trillions and
- 2:06trillions of guesses that occur, and those guesses take
- 2:09computational power and that consumes electricity.
- 2:12So that process is what mining actually is.
- 2:15How many sets are left on the clock?
- 2:18Bitcoin miners are paid what's called a block reward.
- 2:21That block reward consists of two things.
- 2:23It consists of the block subsidy, which is 6.25 Bitcoin.
- 2:27As I'm recording this, this block subsidy started at 50
- 2:31Bitcoin and then whenever you have a halving, it was halved.
- 2:34So the first halving it was halved to 25.
- 2:37The next halving it was halved to 12 1/2 and now as we said,
- 2:41it's at 6.25. So this is what's intended to be
- 2:44a temporary subsidy. That's why Satoshi used the word
- 2:47subsidy, even though the subsidy will of course last for over 100
- 2:52years. 99% of all Bitcoin will be in circulation by 2032.
- 2:56You know, between 2009 and, you know, and 2035, we will have
- 3:02mined 99% of the Bitcoin. So the subsidy Cliff isn't a
- 3:062140 problem at all, it's actually in the next decade.
- 3:10Yeah, the one you're in. Fingers crossed.
- 3:12Block space is scarce, about 30,000 transactions per hour.
- 3:16In April of 2024. Ordinals and rooms spanned the
- 3:20memple, right? I mean, I don't know, I'm just
- 3:23reading off of a script, so maybe you can let me know in the
- 3:25comments. Fees briefly outran the
- 3:28subsidies. 12 to 1. Proof that the auction works and
- 3:32stings. How high can fees climb?
- 3:34Sailor builds the staircase in this clip, so.
- 3:37They'll be commissions and fees to trade.
- 3:39There's a very limited amount of transaction space.
- 3:42The the fee will go from a few dollars a transaction to $30 a
- 3:47transaction to $300 a transaction to 3000 to 30,000 to
- 3:51300,000. Security budget migrates from
- 3:54block reward to fees if enough people keep bidding.
- 3:58What if they don't? When the price of Bitcoin
- 4:00sometimes falls, they will they will turn off their machines.
- 4:04This causes the Bitcoin network hash rate to fall because you
- 4:07have fewer computers on the network.
- 4:09As a result, blocks get produced more slowly.
- 4:12Maybe you'll get a a new Bitcoin block every 11 minutes instead
- 4:15of every 10 minutes. And so you might have to wait 11
- 4:18minutes to get that 6.26.25 new Bitcoin put into the system.
- 4:23But what happens is there's this difficulty adjustment that we've
- 4:25spoken about or alluded to a few times after about two weeks.
- 4:29In other words, 2016 blocks, the difficulty required, the
- 4:35processing difficulty or the calculation difficulty or the
- 4:38hash difficulty required to mine a new block will fall and and
- 4:43make it easier to mine a new block.
- 4:45So that way, even though there are fewer computers, the
- 4:47difficulty will fall and so blocks will will continue to be
- 4:50produced every 10 minutes on average.
- 4:52The difficulty dial turns down, costs fall, yet the hardware
- 4:58keeps hashing because it has nowhere else to earn.
- 5:00Everybody that gets into Bitcoin mining does a one way trade.
- 5:04You take a billion dollars you invested in Bitcoin mining, you
- 5:07can't get your money out, you can go bankrupt.
- 5:10The equity holder can go bankrupt.
- 5:12Then the creditor gets the Bitcoin mining the credit.
- 5:15The debt holder can go bankrupt. Then the electricity company,
- 5:19the power company gets the mind, the power company can go
- 5:22bankrupt. The nation state, the sovereign
- 5:24that owns the power company will own it.
- 5:26If you notice, electricity companies never go bankrupt.
- 5:29Maybe they're owned by the state or they're owned by the country,
- 5:32but people decide they want electricity and they'll keep
- 5:35running them. There's no way to turn them off.
- 5:38And that's why even in a crypto winner or bear market, the hash
- 5:42rate just keeps going up. It's a it's a one way silicon
- 5:46ratchet. Bottom line, state actors can
- 5:49and will subsidized security if it keeps their reserves
- 5:52spendable. This is Sailor again.
- 5:54In a world right now, I guess you have a trillion dollar asset
- 5:58class and the Bitcoin miners get paid 10 billion a year.
- 6:02So the cost for the security right, Ten billion a year is is
- 6:08like 1%, right. The fees will trend to be less
- 6:13than that, and so that that 1% security cost will probably
- 6:17become half a percent, 1/3 of a percent, 1/4 of a percent, 1/10
- 6:21of a percent. But there's no reason why the
- 6:24revenues can't go up while the value that's that's protected
- 6:29goes up. And the incentive is always
- 6:32going to be to run the equipment, even if the
- 6:35transaction fees aren't high. Once you've invested $100
- 6:38million in Bitcoin mining equipment, it's a sunk cost.
- 6:42You can't repurpose it to anything else.
- 6:45If your electricity is free and if you have $100 million of
- 6:49equipment, then it doesn't matter whether you make a
- 6:53million a year, 10 million a year, or 100 million a year.
- 6:55You would run it for a million a year.
- 6:57You would run it in 99% lower price because a million a year
- 7:02is still better than nothing a year.
- 7:04The electricity is worth nothing to you.
- 7:07A third of all the electricity in the world is valueless.
- 7:09It's it's wasted stranded. We got too much.
- 7:12In the best case global adoption, the fees stay small
- 7:16relative to trillion dollar transfers.
- 7:18In the worst case, adoption stalls and energy spikes and on
- 7:22chain transactions become a kind of luxury railcar.
- 7:25The script tells me that three forces stopped the hash rate
- 7:27from hitting zero. But before we go to that, do you
- 7:30want a mining partner that's aligned with you?
- 7:32I know I do SAS mining only earns when you do as in mining
- 7:37as much Bitcoin as possible. SAS Mining handles the hosting
- 7:41hardware and power so you can mine Bitcoin straight to your
- 7:45own wallet with 0 maintenance. Start stacking sats quietly and
- 7:48live your life. It's non custodial, easy to set
- 7:51up, and honestly, there's nothing more satisfying than
- 7:54stacking sats straight from the source.
- 7:56Book a call with one of their expert team members and start
- 7:59mining today at says mining.com. All right, so those three
- 8:02forces, one layer 2 siphon lightning moves the coffee money
- 8:07off chain to free power Miners flare gas, stranded hydro
- 8:13negative cost wind #3 hardware life cycle obsolete rigs migrate
- 8:19until electricity is free enough.
- 8:21Mining on expensive electricity goes out of business.
- 8:24So when they go out of business, where does their equipment go?
- 8:27It migrates to the next buyer. Who's the buyer of last resort?
- 8:32Someone that has free power, there are actually places where
- 8:35there's negative, where the power is negative cost, where
- 8:40people will pay you to take the electricity.
- 8:43You know that that happens on solar and wind grids where the
- 8:49sun is shining, the wind is blowing, and we're going to burn
- 8:51out the grid unless you take the power.
- 8:54Unfortunately or fortunately, fees are the price of honesty
- 8:58Seems pretty obvious, but the bigger the value secured, the
- 9:01more we will pay to keep thieves out.
- 9:04So here's a question for future you will you shell out a fat fee
- 9:08for an immutable transfer or will you ride lightning and
- 9:11leave the base layer to the whales and the nation states?
- 9:14Let me know in the comments below what fee tier you'd
- 9:17stomach. Don't forget to smash that like
- 9:18button. Use a hammer if you'd like and
- 9:20subscribe to the simply Bitcoin channel for more content like
- 9:23this. We're coming out with it every
- 9:24single day and hit that little notification bell because it'll
- 9:28tell you when new videos come out just like this one later,
- 9:31everybody.