Bitcoin has surpassed 20 million mined coins, meaning over 95% of its total 21 million supply is now in circulation. But don’t expect them to appear anytime soon — the last fractions of Bitcoin, called satoshis, are projected to be mined around the year 2140. Bitcoin’s supply is built into its code, making it very different from traditional money like dollars or euros. When Satoshi Nakamoto launched the network in 2009, the system was designed to release coins gradually.
Miners earn new bitcoins as rewards for validating transactions and adding them to the blockchain. These rewards started at 50 BTC per block and are cut in half roughly every four years in an event called a “halving.” The latest halving in 2024 reduced the reward to 3.125 BTC per block, slowing the pace of new BTC entering circulation. This means the early years saw a faster creation of coins, while the final million will trickle out extremely slowly.
Right now, miners produce about 450 BTC per day, half of what they did before the 2024 halving. As the rewards continue to shrink, miners will increasingly rely on transaction fees rather than new coins to sustain their operations. Another factor affecting BTC’s supply is that some coins are effectively lost. Some early coins were sent to addresses with no private keys, and estimates suggest between 2 and 3.5 million BTC may never be recovered.
Leave a Reply