Bitcoin price, where next?

[pjt]

But do we not need miners to process the transactions? What happens without them?

[WTFH]

But do we not need miners to process the transactions? What happens without them?

[northernladuk]

Has anyone told PC the bad news yet?

[tomtomagain]

But do we not need miners to process the transactions? What happens without them?

No ( not as far as I understand it .... but my understanding is limited, I'm sure some of the "True Believers" will correct me if I'm wrong ).

"Miners" solve a complex crypto problem that releases a new batch of coins. The problem was designed to get harder & harder to solve, and there's only a limited number of solutions.

When mining stops then the ability to create new BitCoins stops. However the existing BitCoins are still valid and tradeable, just the "money supply" will stop increasing.

Restriction of supply, should in theory, make coins individually more valuable - similar to having a currency backed by physical gold. However, I have know idea what will really happen.

They could just decide to allow coins to be traded in 0.00001 blocks rather than 0.0001 blocks. "They" being whomever it is who decides such things. They could, of course, all just fall into squabbling and trolling each other on the internet.

[jamesbrown]

Has anyone told PC the bad news yet?

I think you mean the tax payer.

[Hobosapien]

No "To the moon" option, poll fail.

[stonehenge]

No "To the moon" option, poll fail.

Over $½M not good enough for you?

Actually, there was a >$1M but NAT replaced it with andyw.

[Mordac]

Good effort sir.

But, erm, 27 post views and 57 votes for AndyW's mum?

Momentum rigged the election, get over it...

[NotAllThere]

It's somewhere around $3000 per block in the US. Probably cheaper in China if you've a government hyr

N"Miners" solve a complex crypto problem that releases a new batch of coins.

Miners are given a hash value. They must find a number that hashes to that value, that is less than a set amount. The point being it is easy to verify that number meets the criteria, but it is very hard to find it. The first miner to do it gets the transaction fees (payable to the miner by the buyer in the transaction) for the block of transactions they've verified and a few bitcoins (12.5 at the moment?). The bitcoins they get per block verification is what dwindles over time.

Mining doesn't stop when the subsidy reaches zero. The validation of a block of transactions, and thereby adding it to the blockchain is called mining. This continues so long as transactions continue. Miners make money from the transactions they successfully process before anyone else.