Bitcoin hits 19 million milestone, only 2 million left to mine
Out of the 21 million supply circulation of Bitcoin, 19 million has already been mined on April 1. Now, only 2 million Bitcoin have been left to be mined. The milestone comes almost 12 years after the first block, which consed of 50 Bitcoins, was mined on January 9, 2009.
It should be noted the left Bitcoins are yet to be mined until the year 2140. The 19th million block ‘730002’, was mined SBI Crypto.
For the uninitiated, Bitcoin is one of the few cryptocurrencies with limited supply. Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto capped the number of Bitcoin at 21 million, to make the cryptocurrency scarce and control inflation that might arise from an unlimited supply. Bitcoin is “mined” miners who solve mathematical puzzles to verify and validate block of transactions occurring in its network. It is a process of adding new Bitcoins into circulation. After performing a set of transactions successfully, the miner is awarded a block of Bitcoins.
Every four years, the reward for mining Bitcoin is halved— at the time of Bitcoins, exence in 2008, the reward for confirming a block was about 50 Bitcoins. Over the years the reward has been significantly reduced. In 2012, it was halved to 25 Bitcoins, and it went down to 12.5 in 2016 and in May 2020, miners stood to earn 6.25 Bitcoin for every new block subsequently. the end of 2024 it is expected that miners will only earn 1.56 Bitcoins for verifying a block of transactions. This process is called halving and will continue till the last Bitcoin is mined.
The 18,500,000 millionth Bitcoin was mined in September 2020, as the current issuance rate is 6.25 Bitcoin per block. It may seem that the world’s most popular cryptocurrency is close to being exhausted, but Bitcoin’s halving schedules predict that the remaining 10 percent supply will sustain until February 2140, as per blockchain.com.
According to Human Rights Foundation chief strategy officer Alex Gladstein, given how early the world is on the route to adopting Bitcoin. “Truly amazing that 19 million of a total of 21 million bitcoin have been issued and globally dributed and yet we are only at the very dawn of nation-state adoption,” he tweeted.
Meanwhile, El Salvador is the only nation-state to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. In September, El Salvador became the world’s first nation to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, a move that generated global media attention but also attracted criticism from the opposition and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warning the country to not make Bitcoin a legal tender, considering risks related to the volatility of the cryptocurrency. The country is now issuing Bitcoin-backed “Volcano Bonds” to raise money.
