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Doesnt the bitcoin network need mining to work? As far as I understand it, mining needs to be done forever, even if its impossible to collect new coins.

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I don't think it does. Bitcoin can be split to the eighth decimal place, IIRC. If bitcoins become hard to get, the price should go up, then needing one whole btc to buy something should get less common. Or maybe you're right and years from now it'll all collapse and some other improved crypto-coin will have to take its place. I guess we'll find out, because there is a hard-limit on how many btcs can be obtained(21 million to be exact) by mining, so when that runs out...

Mining is fundamental to the operation of bitcoin. "Mining" just means finding a satisfactory hash for the next block of transactions.

People pursue mining because of the rewards built into bitcoin, transaction fees are supposed to eventually replace that reward.

From what I understand, the work that the miners do currently needs to continue for transactions to be added to the P2P ledger. This is why whoever wants to process a transaction will need to pay a fee that goes to the miner once Bitcoins stop getting generated to reward mining in 2016 or something. Otherwise, people who are in it for the profit will stop doing the "mining".

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