Total Bitcoin (BTC) in circulation hit a major milestone Monday morning, a year and a half after the last Bitcoin halving, since 90% of the maximum total supply has been mined.
Current data from Blockchain.com shows that Bitcoin tokens in circulation hit 18.899 million on Monday, meaning only 10% of the total supply remains to be mined. Yes OK The first 90% of BTC took about 12 years to be mined, the rest will take a little longer.
Bitcoin has a hard cap of 21 million coins set by its anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. This limitation is written in the source code of Bitcoin and is enforced by the nodes of the network. Bitcoin’s hard cap is critical to its value proposition as a currency and investment tool.
As detailed by Cointelegraph, It will take 119 years to complete the Bitcoin mining process as the rate of production of new Bitcoin is halved every four years in a predetermined execution of the protocol, also known as the Bitcoin halving..
Since the Bitcoin blockchain only creates new BTC as a reward for miners who verify new blocks, the halving ensures that less Bitcoin is produced as the total supply in circulation increases.. Since May 2020, miners have earned 6.25 Bitcoin for every new verified block. This rate will drop to 3,125 BTC per block in the next halving in 2024.
By 2040, the reward per block will have been reduced to less than 0.2 BTC and only 80,000 Bitcoin will remain out of the 21 million originally available. The last Bitcoin will take about 40 years to mine.
Bitcoin price started the week with a new rejection of the $ 50,000 mark, as the end of the year is fast approaching. As of press time, is almost 30% below its all-time high of $ 68,789 reached on Nov. 10.
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