The Bitcoin network has just reached a new threshold. 20 million Bitcoins have been officially mined, out of a total supply of 21 million. This means 95.2% of Bitcoin’s total supply is circulating openly
Mining is the process of validating transactions into blocks in a blockchain to earn rewards in the form of new Bitcoins. Since Bitcoin was first mined in 2009, 20 million Bitcoins have been mined. So, how many years will it take to mine the remaining 1 million?
Also Read: What Is Mining: How It Works, Types, and Roles in the Crypto World
The prediction market platform Polymarket gives a shocking answer. Through X, Polymarket reports that mining the final 1 million Bitcoins will take 114 years.
Bitcoin mining does reward miners with new Bitcoins, but the amount of rewards is not always constant. In fact, they grow exponentially smaller. This is because of the Bitcoin halving phenomenon that occurs every 4 years. To put it simply, the amount of new Bitcoins miners receive is halved every four years.
When Bitcoin was first launched, miners earned 50 BTC for each block of transactions they processed. This is why the number of Bitcoins circulating in the market increased rapidly.
However, after four halvings, Bitcoin rewards for miners are only 3.125 BTC per block. New Bitcoin production slows down, so the remaining 1 million Bitcoins will take over a century to be mined.
Also Read: What is Bitcoin Halving? Impacts, History, and Prediction for Investors
With that, the Bitcoin market has entered an unprecedented era of scarcity. Miners successfully mined 95.2% of Bitcoin’s total supply in 17 years, while the remaining 4.8% will be aggressively fought for, piece by piece, in the next century.
Money managers at Wall Street and major US companies no longer overlook Bitcoin’s potential. They are silently claiming the remaining supply through spot ETFs and direct purchases while it’s still available.
