If you’ve ever thought Bitcoin mining was just clicking “start” on your computer and waiting for magic coins to appear, buckle up. Luke Broyles, a Bitcoin analyst who sounds like he talks to his computer more than people, predicts that mining the final Satoshi (that’s Bitcoin’s tiniest crumb of digital gold) will be a cosmic-scale energy binge. Imagine the power of 20 million Bitcoins, then multiply that energy use by a number only your microwave might understand.
Broyles tells us that getting that very last nugget will not only outpace the energy spent mining the first 20 million coins but will apparently hog so much juice it could keep the lights on during the entire first third of the 22nd century. Yeah, that’s the future your great-great-grandchildren might complain about when they’re stuck mining tiny digital change just to pay for their carbon credits.
The final singular Bitcoin will take more energy to create than the first 20,000,000 Bitcoin… the entire first third of the 22nd century.
The final satoshi will take infinite energy.
Digital scarcity is designed to blow out to infinite difficulty to create… Few understand.
— Luke Broyles (@luke_broyles) April 25, 2025
Infinite energy? You might be wondering if Broyles means that literally or if he just stayed up too late watching sci-fi films. Either way, the metaphor stands tall: Bitcoin’s “digital scarcity” isn’t just for drama, it’s a full-on epic saga, turning the mining process into a Sisyphean Everest climb in kilowatt-hours.
As if it wasn’t digital drama enough, the Bitcoin halving (that’s crypto’s cruel version of “here, have half as much candy”) happens every four years. Each halving chops the mining rewards in half and apparently makes the computer scrabble for coins slower and slower, while guzzling more resources like a toddler in a candy store. The reward recently plummeted to 3.125 BTC and will soon nosedive to a modest 1.5625 BTC—good luck miners, send energy bills to the future.
1.15 million Bitcoins left to mine — so start charging rent
Of the 21 million Bitcoins ever to exist (because even digital treasure has a cap), about 19.85 million are already slurped up by early adopters, speculators, and probably some random guy who bought it accidentally. That leaves 1.15 million coins still tucked away in this digital haystack. Patience is a virtue, because these last coins will take… well, until 2140 to fully emerge from the digital depths, assuming the internet still runs on something more than smoke signals.
Once the Bitcoin drip turns off completely, miners won’t just give up their rigs to Netflix binges—they’ll doctor transaction fees like bartenders who won’t serve you unless you’ve got cash. So the blockchain keeps chugging, even without shiny new coins spitting out.
And at the moment, Bitcoin’s commanding a cool $94,181 a coin, down slightly from a stratospheric $109,114 in January. So your digital piggy bank might still be more reliable than that drawer of loose change.
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2025-04-26 18:05