When all 21M BTC are mined (around 2140), block rewards go to zero and miners are compensated only through transaction fees.
The network security model then relies entirely on fee incentives. If transaction volume remains high enough, miners stay profitable. If not, hash power could decrease, which might affect security assumptions.
As for hardware: most modern BTC mining uses ASICs, which are highly specialized and not practical for AI workloads. They’re optimized for SHA-256 hashing and can’t be easily repurposed. GPUs, on the other hand, can be redirected to AI or other compute-heavy tasks.
The bigger open question is whether the long-term fee market will be sufficient to sustain miner incentives without block subsidies.
