80 Percent of the Total Bitcoin Supply Have Now Been Mined

This weekend marks a milestone for bitcoin as 80 percent of the currency has now been mined into circulation, this means there’s only 20 percent left to mine. Satoshi Nakamoto’s protocol was one of the first to introduce digital scarcity and soon enough the digital asset will become even harder to obtain.

There Are Only 4.2 Million Bitcoins Left to Mine

So far on January 13, 2018, 16,800,000 BTC have been mined and there’s only 20 percent left for miners to acquire. When Satoshi Nakamoto introduced the bitcoin protocol to the public by launching the codebase in 2009, the cryptocurrency came with a capped supply. The supply will never be increased and Nakamoto set the number to 21 million bitcoins ever to be found. So far the creator’s plan and miners securing the network have successfully secured this rule from changing with hashpower. Theoretically, however, skeptics believe there could be a way to increase the supply through manipulative tactics such as a 51 percent or Sybil attack. As the digital asset’s life approaches a decade no one has been able to break the rules of 21 million supply cap.