According to new data, 90 percent of the total BTC supply has been mined, but the remainder will take a little longer to create
The total circulating BTC reached a key milestone
On Monday morning, one and a half years after the last BTC halving, the total circulating BTC reached a key milestone, with 90 percent of the maximum total quantity mined.
According to Blockchain.com, the number of BTC in circulation reached 18.899 million on Monday, leaving only 10% of the total supply to the mine. While mining the first 90% of BTC took around 12 years, the remaining 10% will take a little longer.
Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of Bitcoin, established a hard cap of 21 million coins. This restriction is written into the source code of BTC and is enforced by network nodes. Bitcoin’s value proposition as a currency and an investment tool is dependent on its hard cap.
BTC network only creates new BTC as an incentive for miners
According to Cointelegraph, the Bitcoin mining process will take 119 years to complete since the rate of manufacturing new bitcoins is cut in half every four years in a pre-determined protocol execution known as the Bitcoin halving.
Because the BTC network only creates new BTC as an incentive for miners to confirm new blocks, the halving ensures that as the overall circulating supply grows, fewer BTC is produced. Miners have earned 6.25 bitcoin for every new block verified since May 2020. In 2024, the next halving will reduce this rate to 3.125 BTC per block.
By 2040, the block reward will have dropped to less than 0.2 BTC, with only 80,000 Bitcoin remaining out of a total of 21 million. It will take nearly 40 years to mine the last BTC.
As the end-of-year close approaches, the BTC price opened the week with a new rejection of $50,000. At the time of publication, it was about 30% lower than its all-time high of $68,789 set on Nov. 10.
