Just before midnight UTC, Bitcoin reached a new milestone as 90% of the token has now been mined and put in circulation. The Bitcoin network accomplished the feat after mining over 700,000 blocks. The miner received over 6 of the tokens at the close of the block. The supply in circulation is just 100,000, shy of 19 million.
Notably, Bitcoin will not get to the exact total of 21 million. One reason is that Satoshi had built the system such that He or anyone else would be restricted from transacting some of the Bitcoin mined by him in the first-ever block. Additionally, many of the tokens have been locked up forever. The estimates of the lost tokens are in millions. Some of these may come back into play, however.
Increased Scarcity To Make It More Attractive
The milestone leaves just over a couple of million Bitcoin yet to be in circulation. The mining of the remaining tokens is expected to take some decades. The CEO of a Bitcoin and Blockchain company, Adam Back, said it is a good time for the new achievement. The increasing scarcity will only solidify Bitcoin as a viable investment asset class. He noted the token’s fixed supply compared to central bank-issued currencies.
At present, the inflation rate of Bitcoin sits conveniently between the standard set by many central banks of 2%. At the current trajectory, Bitcoin’s inflation rate is set to continue reducing and get near half of the standard. The move is set to happen in less than three years, with the token approaching 20 million circulating supply.
Bitcoins Dependable System
The predictability of the Bitcoin blockchain in terms of supply sets it apart from the traditional currency market that has a supply dictated by economic targets of policymakers. Notably, the current milestone coincided with the disappearance of Satoshi just over a decade ago. With the fixed supply and lost tokens, proponents of the token believe that the value of their coins can only go up.
Block rewards are reduced by 50% after every 210,000 Bitcoins are mined. The next reward halving is expected in May 2024. The decrement will see the reward drop from 6.25 Bitcoin to 3.125. We will see the inflation rate at just over 1% about this time. The mining of Bitcoin is expected to end four decades after the end of the century. Bitcoin would have hit 98% of its total supply by the end of the decade with an annual inflation rate of less than 0.5%.
These estimates remain susceptible to change as the rate of mining keeps growing. These events could likely happen sooner than predicted. At the moment, it seems like the cryptocurrency market, including Bitcoin, is experiencing a market crash.
Bitcoin dropped close to the $45k mark yesterday in another huge daily sell-off. The price fluctuation at the moment doesn’t seem to have investors fazed. Bitcoin being moved to exchanges has dropped to an almost three-year low. It represents a possible overall bullish sentiment in the market.