A milestone has been reached in the bitcoin supply schedule: 94% of the total bitcoin supply They have now been issued through mining. Out of a total of 21 million hard-capped btc, more than 19.74 million have been mined so far.
The bitcoin supply is issued through mining, where computers validate transactions and receive bitcoin as a reward. The initial mining subsidy was 50 btc per block, which is halved every 210,000 blocks or approximately every 4 years.
This event, called the bitcoin halving, ensures a predictable and decreasing inflation rate as supply increases. There have been three halvings, which reduced the subsidy from 50 to 25 to 12.5 to the current 6.25 btc.
Halvings, combined with increasing difficulty and competition, mean that fewer and fewer new bitcoins enter circulation over time. Of the 21 million btc in circulation, over 94% or 19,741,655 btc have been mined since bitcoin was launched in 2009.
That leaves only about 1.26 million btc left to be minted. At the current block reward of 6.25 btc, the remaining supply will take over 100 years to be fully minted. Experts estimate that 99.9% of all bitcoins will have been mined by 2140, and by then miners will primarily earn fees rather than subsidies.
This controlled supply schedule is a key aspect of bitcoin’s value proposition. As issuance slows and demand grows, bitcoin is designed to become more scarce over time — an attractive attribute for investors facing unlimited fiat money printing and currency debasement.
