Mining Every Last BitCoin? I’m told that their is a total number of bitcoins that can be mined, 21 million bitcoins I’ve heard. I’ve heard that the more bitcoins that are mined there is a direct increases in the level of difficulty and in resources, required to mine more bitcoins.

I’ve heard many estimates from 10 years to 100 years to mine all 21 million bitcoins.

With the unknown variable of future increases in processing power, how could anyone make a educated guess as to how long it will take?

Additionally, if it is true that Moore’s law will be ending as we currently know it due to limitations in our current manufacturing methods of Processors, then this would lend even more weight to my theory that estimating the time of will take to mine all 21 million bitcoins is a guess, at best.

Please explain if I’m wrong and what I’m failing to understand about this, as I’m pretty new to crypto but eager to learn!

Cheers!
I’ve heard that the more bitcoins that are mined there is a direct increases in the level of difficulty and in resources, required to mine more bitcoins.


You have heard incorrectly. That is absolutely incorrect. The difficulty has nothing to do with how many Bitcoin have already been mined; all that matters for the difficulty is the average time between blocks for a sample of 2016 blocks.


  I’ve heard many estimates from 10 years to 100 years to mine all 21 million bitcoins.


It is estimated that the block subsidy (which is what creates new Bitcoin) will reach 0 in 2140. The block subsidy will effectively be 0 long before that. It is impossible for all Bitcoin to be mined within 10 years as the hashrate required for that is too great.


  With the unknown variable of future increases in processing power, how could anyone make a educated guess as to how long it will take?


Blocks are mined at a roughly fixed rate. The rate is fixed by the difficulty which adjusts every 2016 blocks. The difficulty adjusts so that it takes 10 minutes to find a block, on average. So if there is a massive increase in hashrate, the difficulty will increase as well so that blocks are still found 10 minutes apart.

Since we know how long it will take to mine blocks, on average, and we also know how many blocks it takes to mine all Bitcoin into existence (6,930,000 blocks), we can predict, roughly, when all Bitcoins will be mined.