If there were no transactions, would mining be possible?

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What would happen if suddenly everyone stops transferring bitcoins so that there is no work for miners (no transactions to be grouped into blocks)? Would mining be possible in that conditions? How exactly?

Of course, I realize this is impossible, I am interested in the theory behind it.

José D.

Posted 2017-12-10T22:13:21.033

Reputation: 141

Question was closed 2018-02-22T00:32:41.857

Answers

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Yes.

Miners would just produce empty blocks. They would only be paid a subsidy (12.5 BTC per block, currently) and not any fees from transactions.

In its early history, Bitcoin had many empty blocks.

Pieter Wuille

Posted 2017-12-10T22:13:21.033

Reputation: 54 032

2A link to an empty block on one of the explorers would make this a perfect answer. – 4276 – 2017-12-10T23:28:41.900

It seems that "many empty blocks" is an understatement, the first real transaction appears to be https://blockchain.info/block/00000000d1145790a8694403d4063f323d499e655c83426834d4ce2f8dd4a2ee 170 transactions after the genesis block, which is indeed empty https://blockchain.info/block/000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f (except for the transaction that outputs the newly generated coins)

– berdario – 2017-12-11T04:56:33.510

Asked: 2017-12-10T22:13:21.033

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Active: 2017-12-10T22:30:56.390