They'll get paid with transaction fees only. I'm theory the demand for block space will outpace the block subsidy before that happens.
Discussion
Thank you for the answer! Do you think this will cause the price to send a transaction to increase? I figure that (like now) transactions sent with low fees will wait in que until the miners decide to process them.
It has less to do with what miners decide and more to do with how impatient people are. E.g
If there are 10k transactions pending you can always get ahead in line by paying more. Or if there's no rush, pay less. If the 10k transactions are all set to 1 sat/vbyte you dont have to pay much to get confirmed faster, but if they are outbidding each other it can quickly climb.
Lightning generally avoids this.
Thank you! Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!
I see this as a possible future failure point for Bitcoin that makes me prefer the doggie coin / Monero approach of subsidizing miners forever