2140

I imagine that many already know what this number is about. You may have already figured out that it represents the year when the last BTC will be mined. Then, 131 years have passed since this whole crypto world began. What will happen then? What price will the BTC have? Will it be gone by that date? Will it be worth $1,000,000 USD or even more? Unfortunately, we cannot answer any of these questions. Possibly the 3rd or 4th generation of my family is the one to see that ending. With a bit of luck, I could last a little more than 60 years, reaching 90. The life expectancy is much lower, but I suppose that I'm the exception to the rule and enter the 100-year club.

BTC mining

Without going into much detail, the mining of BTC is nothing more than the solution of complex mathematical problems, where the new BTCs are created. These problems are impossible to solve by hand, and a great deal of computational power is required to solve them. This process, the most striking thing is undoubtedly energy consumption, for which many countries such as China have come to prohibit the mining of BTC. New Bitcoin is generated when the miners process the transaction blocks, whenever someone sends and receives bitcoins. The process is by placing that specific transaction in a block, which is added to public records known as the blockchain. Miners have to validate these transactions, preventing them from being duplicated and legitimate. Security is guaranteed. Approximately every 10 minutes a BTC is mined.

Since 2009 the reward has decreased by half approximately every 4 years:

- 2009, 50 bitcoin

- 2012, 25 bitcoin

- 2016, 12.5 bitcoin

- 2021, 6.25 bitcoin

- 2026, 3.125 bitcoin

This process is known as Halving. No one knows for sure why Satoshi Nakamoto chose for the BTC to be finite, and for it to be only a total of 21 million. Maybe this is what makes BTC so eye-catching because it is finite. Or maybe, it will be what makes it come to an end and collapse everything to $0.

If we take into account that we have all tried at some point to mine BTC through different programs, even web browsers, and miners specialized in the subject, we would say that we lost our time, power and fried the computer. My personal experience mining BTC with a computer with a micro i3, 8 GB RAM, and no video card was laughable. For a little cold the machine and I made a ridiculous figure in a few months. Eventually, he gave up on the matter. Luckily my computer survived such a feat.

More than 18.5 million bitcoin has already been mined. All this in just 12 years. Impressive right? We have seen how BTC has cost about $19,000 USD in 2017, then even down to almost $3,000 USD, for later overcoming the $63,000 USD. This has happened gentlemen in just 12 years? Let's imagine what is to come if there is still an eternity left. Maybe our future generations look at 2140 how BTC costs 1 million USD and think about us and why we didn't hold a few today.

Environment and mining of BTC

Today it is news all over the planet that this practice generates too high an energy cost. Environmental impact is not something to be overlooked. After all, if we don't do things right, no one can possibly see the last BTC being mined. The planet does not withstand so many natural disasters and industries that have been around for a long time, to add one more. Steps have been taken to promote cleaner energy in order to mine BTC futures and even Elon Musk after turning away from bitcoin because of this problem, took it up again saying they were "promising" efforts.

In China, measures have been taken to restrict the use of cryptocurrencies, since it is considered the largest extractor for several years. China has 65% of the world's mining, due to its electricity prices, but even so, the government has closed the activity to more than 90%. It is that in China they take everything very hard. When the fury of planting plots for the Shiba cryptocurrency began recently, HDDs disappeared from stores across the country, and their prices rose astronomically.

It was also news recently that El Salvador has adopted the BTC as legal currency, and even its president raised plans to use renewable energy, using nothing more and nothing less than the energy produced by the volcanoes in his country. Now it is nature that will work to mine BTC and not the other way around. The decision is historical, and I quote what the Bitcoin Law says as it is known: "every economic agent must accept bitcoin as a form of payment when it is offered by whoever acquires a good or service." What do you think? At the same level as the USD throughout the country. This news definitely moved the world. President Bukele even shared a video of what would be a bitcoin mine on his Twitter account.

2032

According to current calculations, it is estimated that 99% of all bitcoin will be mined this year. Barely 23 years have passed since it all began. By this date, we should still be around Ahah. Only 1% will remain to be mined in a period of 108 years. Will it be profitable?

Incentive to miners

What if the miners don't have a sufficient incentive? If they use more electrical energy than they are capable of earning? It just all falls apart. Or another variant is that they live on the commissions of the transactions, which in itself if they are high today, imagine when the time comes.

I remember the first transfer I made in BTC, I did not know that a considerable fee was needed according to the moment, and I only put in $0.11 of fee. It took almost a week for the transaction to be validated. No miner took pity on my soul until a long time later, Ahah. Today it is known that BTC fees are very high, for that reason many prefer LTC and in our case BCH.

Closing thoughts

What do you think happens? Does anyone around here have some saved BTC and plan to leave it to future generations? The truth is that I do not have any BTC in my possession, everything I have had to use for personal reasons. I do not regret it, we all have to live our lives, and to continue having opportunities, we have to be alive, first and foremost. If I had saved my BTC when I bought it at the price of approximately $10,000 USD, today I would have 5 times more, and so I imagine everyone. That is why I strive daily not to do the same with these valuable BCHs that read.cash is putting in my way. Today, as I was talking to my wife, she was telling me that we would buy the boy a gift after a while when it started to pay off. I told him that we would buy him the gift, but trying to save the Fiat money. We would leave these BCHs in your wallet, so that in the future we can surprise you and that your life, despite everything that has had to go through and will have to continue happening in the future, due to your health issues, will be a little more pleasant. So here I am, at 1 am, after reading, commenting, and rewarding dozens of articles throughout the day, writing this one for publication in the morning. My son deserves it, the effort is little if it is about him.

That's it for today folks. Thank you very much for reading and supporting me (in 2 days I'm 1 month in read.cash, what a joy :) ).

To my sponsors, I only have words of thanks for you. They are cracks! They inspire me day by day.

Many thanks to @GarrethGrey07 for joining my sponsors. I will try not to disappoint you, friend. Thanks!

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