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20 million coins out of Bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap have now been mined. Here’s how long it will take for the remaining tokens to hit circulation.
Bitcoin Supply Reaches 20 Million Milestone After 6,267 Days
In a new post on X, on-chain analytics firm Glassnode has discussed the latest milestone achieved by the Bitcoin network: more than 20 million tokens have now entered circulation. The cryptocurrency’s supply grows whenever miners add a new block to the chain and receive the corresponding block reward. This inflation of the asset isn’t fixed, decreasing with time as events known as Halvings take place. Initially, Bitcoin started out with a block subsidy of 50 BTC, but four Halving events have occurred since then, bringing the metric down to just 3.125 BTC.
Halvings occur about every four years, with the next such event being estimated to occur sometime in 2028. Thus, as time passes, the block reward will only shrink further, reducing the growth rate of the asset’s supply. There is a limit to how small the block reward will become, however, as the cryptocurrency’s supply itself has a hard cap: 21 million tokens. After this figure is reached, no more block subsidy will be handed out, so no more Halving events will occur, either.
With the Bitcoin supply now hitting the 20 million mark, more than 95% of all BTC that will ever be has hit circulation. This milestone was cleared on Monday as block 940,000 was mined. It took the network 6,267 days or roughly 17 years to reach this point. Glassnode has shared a chart that compares the supply record against some of the other 20 million milestones achieved by Bitcoin in its history.
Now, the question is: when will BTC hit the final 21 million supply milestone? Since the growth rate of BTC is only trending down as Halvings occur, the remaining 1 million will take more time than any of the previous 1 million batches. In fact, the remaining stack of tokens will take many more times to mine than all coins in existence today: about 114 years. That puts a possible timeline for the record at the year 2140.
A consequence of the Bitcoin supply being capped is that miners will eventually stop receiving a part of their income. These chain validators make revenue via two streams: the block subsidy and transaction fees. As Halvings occur, the former is going down over time, but it remains the primary source of income for the miners today.
Once all of the Bitcoin supply is depleted, miners will need to rely on the transaction fees alone to make ends meet. For now, the fees aren’t big enough to sustain this group, but it’s anyone’s imagination how the picture will look in 2140.
BTC Price
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $70,800, up more than 5% over the past week.
Featured image from Dall-E, chart from TradingView.com
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