Watch how Bitcoin gets mined in the video below.
The supply of total Bitcoins in circulation is capped at 21 million, and we have now hit 18.8999 million Bitcoin currently circulating on the network, as of Monday morning, according to Blockchain.com. This is 90% of all Bitcoins.
The very first Bitcoins were mined on January the 9th, 2009. That means it has taken twelve years for Bitcoin miners to hit the 90% mark.
According to Coindesk, despite there now only being 10% left, “the remaining supply [of Bitcoin] is not expected to be mined until February 2140, based on network activity estimates and Bitcoin’s halving schedules.”
Yahoo Finance reports that Bitcoin was being traded for less than $0.10 when 10% of the supply was mined in early 2010, and traded for $7.50 when 50% of the supply was mined in December 2012.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $46,923.40 ($65,782.1 AUD), having declined substantially from its peak of $69,000 ($96731.44 AUD) earlier this year.
As the world’s first and most famous cryptocurrency, Bitcoin has led blockchain technology revolution since the beginning. Bitcoin blazed a trail when it initially broke into popular consciousness in 2017, and in the years following it consequently afforded all other cryptocurrencies the possibility of succeeding in its wake.
Bitcoin relies on miners who, Coindesk explains, “continually process transactions and validate blocks in a process broadly referred to as mining. Such participants provide their computing resources and hardware to solve millions of complex calculations on the Bitcoin network each second, receiving Bitcoin as rewards.”
According to Coindesk, “Miners currently receive 6.25 Bitcoin for each block they mine, which would drop to 3.125 bitcoin after the next halving in 2024.”
It’s also worth noting that not every Bitcoin will be available on the open market, even when the remaining supply has been completely mined.
According to Decrypt, 3.7 million Bitcoin are probably gone forever, due to Bitcoin sometimes being lost, burned, or just plain forgotten by its owners.
Decrypt also reports that Bitcoin’s creator Satoshi Nakamoto “may have mined around 1.1 million BTC in the first few months of its existence,” writing that “since then, it appears that Satoshi hasn’t touched his stash, indicating he, or she (they? it?), cannot or will not move these coins into the circulating supply.”
Bitcoin is down 6,36% today and down 25% over the last month. Bullish investors are still pointing out there is typically always a slump after an all-time high, while bearish investors are taking a step back, after individuals like big wig investor Louis Navellier have recently warned that things like Federal Reserve tapering could see Bitcoin fall to $10,000 USD per Bitcoin, a stinging decline of 80% from its all-time high set last month of almost $70,000 USD.
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