BTC will be fully in existence and all mining activities will have to cease at the time.
I though this was basic knowledge for all Bitcoin supporters, that mining doesn't stop even after the entire Bitcoin supply has been mined.
~snip~
It's a bit of a surprise that somebody who is a hero member and has been on the forum for more than 8 years thinks that mining stops as soon as all coins are mined.
Anyway, the role of miners is not merely to
mine or extract coins as if they're miners of gold or whatever precious stone and metal, such that when the supply is depleted there's nothing else to mine and the operations stop. The role of miners in the Bitcoin system is to process transactions and add them to the blockchain. So, they continue to have an essential role even after the last Satoshi is mined. Transactions won't be confirmed without them.
If it isn't anymore profitable to mine, then many will stop. As a result, the difficulty in mining will fall. It may reach to a point when even a personal computer at home could be able to perform it. In which case, profit would be realized once again.
Whether we want to or not, we cannot wait until all coins are mined. We'd all be dead by then.
I know the role of miners is not only to mine bitcoins but they also play the role of processing transactions on the bitcoin blockchain. But as I emphasized, people continue to mine bitcoin because they still enjoy large profits from mining. But once all the bitcoins are mined, profits will certainly decrease significantly, and maintaining mining machines just to process transactions will not be feasible. Because the cost of mining machines is very expensive, not to mention other additional costs, but if it is as you say then we can use personal computers to process transactions at that time. Then everything is simpler and easier.
Things happen gradually. It isn't like something is suddenly switched off once all coins are mined. Rewards are growing smaller and smaller until such time that there's none left. So there's a lot of time for adjustment and assessment and changes. Halvings happen every 4 years.
Supposedly, the price of Bitcoin will make up for the decreasing reward. So even if the reward would only be less than 0.1
BTC a couple of decades from now, for example, it shouldn't be much of a problem because the price must have also risen a lot by then. The same is true when after the 1 Satoshi reward in 2136 until 2140, there'd be nothing else but transaction fees. The assumption is that the fees will be sufficient because of the level of adoption and the price of Bitcoin.
Whether all this will prove to be right or not in the end, we will never know. But we might face a somehow similar challenge within our lifetime. By 2052, the reward is already as low as 0.0244
BTC. If the price of Bitcoin hasn't multiplied several fold by that time, it's going to be difficult for mining operators and many of them might shut down.
