4

This question already has an answer here:

What would happen if suddenly everyone stops transferring bitcoins so that there is no work for miners (no transactions to be grouped into blocks)? Would mining be possible in that conditions? How exactly?

Of course, I realize this is impossible, I am interested in the theory behind it.

|improve this question

marked as duplicate by Nate Eldredge, pebwindkraft, Dr.Haribo, Andrew Chow♦ Feb 22 '18 at 0:32

This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.

9

Yes.

Miners would just produce empty blocks. They would only be paid a subsidy (12.5 BTC per block, currently) and not any fees from transactions.

In its early history, Bitcoin had many empty blocks.

|improve this answer
  • 2
    A link to an empty block on one of the explorers would make this a perfect answer. – fredsbend Dec 10 '17 at 23:28
  • It seems that "many empty blocks" is an understatement, the first real transaction appears to be blockchain.info/block/… 170 transactions after the genesis block, which is indeed empty blockchain.info/block/… (except for the transaction that outputs the newly generated coins) – berdario Dec 11 '17 at 4:56

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.