Over 18 Million Bitcoin Has Been Mined
As you may already know, an interesting fact about Bitcoin is that its creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, has decided to limit the total supply to 21 million coins. Just like it has been initially pointed out by market analysts, the 18th million bitcoin has been mined on the 18th of October – thus, the cryptocurrency has reached yet another milestone.
At this point in time, there are less than 3 million bitcoin left to be mined. The idea behind this system is to stimulate the market economy laws, thus leading to price increases as demand grows and supply decreases. According to market analysts, the new supply threshold also had an impact on the BTC price, as it has increased from under $8,000 levels, to $8,200 at press time.
It is important to keep in mind that the last bitcoin will likely be mined sometime in 2140 as studies point out. This statement generally leads to some confusion, as those who are new to the crypto market often ask themselves one simple question – how come 18 million were mined in 10 years, yet the remaining 3 million coins will take more than a century before they’re minted? The reason here is bitcoin halving, yet another interesting protocol created by Bitcoin’s creator.
With this in mind, the following 3 million coins will be harder and harder to mine, due to the bitcoin block reward halving events. To put things into perspective, once every 210,000 blocks are recorded on the blockchain, the mining reward is reduced by 50%. This has happened several times until now, and has always led to massive price increases for the world’s most popular digital currency. The bitcoin halving event usually takes place once every 4 years, whereas the next halving is bound to happen sometime in May 2020. As such, in the near-future, the block reward will be reduced to 6.25 BTC, from the current value of 12.5 BTC. In theory, this should give way to another bull run for the cryptocurrency, as supply becomes scarcer.
However, what happens to miners once the 21 million coins are mined? Wouldn’t this leave them without any incentive? Not really – at that point in time, the plan is to have miners rely solely on transaction fees. The idea here is that by then, bitcoin will be mass-adopted and used by people throughout the world so often that transaction fees can cover miners’ operations, alongside their expected profits. Of course, the actual scenario will vary a lot depending on what happens to the cryptocurrency market as a whole until then.
Despite these aspects, numerous worldwide economists believe that deflationary economic systems aren’t sustainable in the long run. However, the crypto market is dynamic and market rules can often be bent, or disregarded entirely. Even so, the 21 million limit isn’t set in stone – Bitcoin offers the instruments required to lift the limit in case the public considers that such a move would benefit the cryptocurrency. Anyhow, it will likely be long before this is even brought into discussion.