Once all the bitcoin blocks are mined(21 million limit has been reached) then would calculating the nonce still be so power intensive since the reward at this point of time would only be the transaction fee cost . What are the reasons miners will continue to operate their huge power hogging machines ? Also what would happen to the speed of block creation? Right now it is difficulty which governs it. but once all blocks have been mined how fast would newer blocks be created at the same rate or much faster?
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1 Answer
Note that there are not 21 million blocks but 21 million bitcoins generated through mining. As for your specific questions, the difficulty of a block is independent of its reward so that would continue to match the hashing power of the network. And the reason that people will continue to mine is, as you state in the question, because they will receive the transaction fees for their effort.
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But right now people are kind of breaking even or generating very small profits even with the block reward and mining with transaction fees. Wont the miners begin to make loss once there is no reward and hence stop mining? May 29, 2013 at 2:15
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Not sure where you found that information, but the main pools are all doing pretty well right now. If the value of bitcoins rises then the number of bitcoins needed in fees and/or mining reward decreases; certainly although the number of coins obtained for mining a block today is basically half what it was a year ago the value is significantly higher thanks to the exchange rate. As the mining reward goes away transaction fees will tend toward whatever they have to be to keep the service running.– jgmMay 29, 2013 at 17:59