Bitcoin restricted supply has recently grown even more constrained, with less than two million Bitcoins available to mine
Bitcoin reached a significant milestone today, bringing the world one step closer to the day when the final new Bitcoin is released: the quantity of coins surpassed 19 million. As a result, even though 19 million BTC have been mined in around a dozen years, the final 2 million will not be minted until 2140 if the protocol continues unchanged.
The Bitcoin price in USD can be thought of as a lagging indicator of humanity’s understanding of the technology and its innovative value proposition. Currently, only a small percentage of the world’s population truly grasp the unique concepts of programmatically DeFi and scarce money. So while the Bitcoin price might trend to infinity over the long term, that won’t likely become a reality until most of the global population – or most of the world’s capital – starts understanding that. When they do, a sharp supply shock might ensue as an unlimited amount of money flows into a limited amount of Bitcoin.
There will be no more than 21 million Bitcoin (BTC) in circulation, according to Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper. It is, more exactly, the maximum amount of coins that may be mined before production is totally and permanently halted. The network just exceeded the 19 million BTC threshold, thirteen years after the mining of the first block in its history, dubbed “Genesis Block.” To put it another way, more than 90% of Bitcoins already “in circulation.”
A miner currently receives 6.25 BTC each block mined. Since Nakamoto mined the first block, which provided a 50 BTC reward, the block reward has been decreased in half every 210,000 blocks — nearly every four years. Each epoch, fewer new BTC are given, further increasing the asset’s scarcity.
