90% of Bitcoin’s 21 Million Total Supply Has Already Been Mined

It has taken Bitcoin miners one month short of 13 years to mine 90% of the assets total supply.

When Bitcoin launched in 2009, its developer, Satoshi, envisioned that there would be 21 million coins, which now forms the total expected supply of Bitcoin. These coins were to be gradually released until February 2140 via mining on the network.ย 

The rationale for pegging Bitcoin to a fixed supply was to create a mechanism to consistently drive the price of Bitcoin. However, as Bitcoin gained more popularity, there was a surge in the number of miners, leading to the faster than anticipated mining of Bitcoin.

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90% of Bitcoin Mined in Nearly 13 Years

On Monday, December 13th, Bitcoin reached a milestone. At the time of writing, 90% of Bitcoin’s capped supply of 21,000,000 coins has already been mined โ€“ Bitcoin now has a total supply of 18,899,675 BTC.

With the first being Bitcoin mined on January 9, 2009, it has taken Bitcoin miners one month short of 13 years to mine 90% of the asset’s total supply. When all of the Bitcoins have eventually been mined, miners will depend on fees from the transactions occurring on the cryptocurrency’s network for revenue.

Validating the scarcity theory, when only 10% of the supply had been mined in early 2010, the price of Bitcoin was at $0.10. However, when 50% of Bitcoin’s total supply had been mined, it hovered over $7.50. Now, Bitcoin is trading at the $48.6k mark at the time of writing.

On the Flipside

In addition, the number of unique addresses holding Bitcoin has also reached a new all-time high, suggesting that, more people than ever are holding Bitcoin.

Why You Should Care

Bitcoin’s limited supply will create scarcity, which is expected to drive the price of BTC to higher heights.

This article is for information purposes only and should not be considered trading or investment advice. Nothing herein shall be construed as financial, legal, or tax advice. Trading forex, cryptocurrencies, and CFDs pose a considerable risk of loss.

Author
Milko Trajcevski

Milko Trajcevski is a DailyCoin news reporter, mainly focused on Ethereum (ETH), Cardano (ADA), and their founders (Vitalik Buterin and Charles Hoskinson). Milko is an avid follower of crypto and blockchain technology and has written thousands of articles on the subjects. He finds joy in transforming complex issues into written content that anyone can understand. Milko has used and analyzed numerous exchanges, such as Coinbase, FTX, and Binance. He also closely follows all of the latest news around the largest decentralized exchanges (DEXs). Location: Skopje, Macedonia

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