Since the introduction of bitcoins 13 years ago, almost 85% of all the possible bitcoins have been mined.

According to crypto experts, however, mining the remaining bitcoins will take longer – over 100 years.

Recent statistics show that bitcoins have surpassed 18 million. Experts suggest that there will be no new bitcoins after 2140.

Bitcoin was first launched in 2009. Since then, its value has increased by millions of dollars.

Bitcoin’s constant rise in value is due to the limited amount of coins that are possible to be made. The rarity of an item increases its value. Partly, the astronomical rise in bitcoin’s value is due to the fact that only a limited amount of digital currency can be created. There will always be a shortage.

Satoshi Nakamoto (whose identity is still unknown) created bitcoin to create a store of value using blockchain technology.

One of the unique conditions in the Nakamoto-created source codes for bitcoin is a strict limit on how many bitcoins anyone can mine. The finite nature bitcoin has is partly responsible for its rise in price as more people want to own it.

Bitcoin is not limited in the way that traditional paper currency issued from central banks across different countries has. The government has the option to print as many paper currency notes they need, but at the expense of inflation.

21 million bitcoins can be produced. 18.77 million have been mined. This is 83% of all bitcoins currently in existence and can be circulated within 12 years.

The estimated 97% of all bitcoins have been mined by 2030, a mere ten years later. The remaining 3% of bitcoins will be in circulation by the end of the century, specifically by 2140.

The algorithm used to create Bitcoin actually keeps the supply constant of newly mined cryptocurrency – regardless of how many miners are involved.

Since August 2021, there has been one 6.25 bitcoin block per ten minutes. Each new block is reduced by half every four years. In the end, each block that is mined will only be worth 0.000000001 bitcoin.

Experts predict that bitcoin’s value will remain stable after 2140. This is despite the fact that no new bitcoins will be created.

It is too early to know the extent of the currency’s limited supply. Each block of bitcoin that was mined produced 50 digital coins in 2009. It was almost worthless back then. In 2010, an American programmer traded 10,000 bitcoin for two Papa John’s pizzas. In 2012, the first “halving” of bitcoins was achieved when each block produced 25 bitcoins. This reduction drove bitcoin’s value to $200 at the close of 2013. In 2016, and 2020, the second and third ‘halvings’ of bitcoin mining occurred. Each block currently mined yields 6.25 Bitcoins. Bitcoin’s value had risen to more than $10,000 by the time of the third “halving”. Since 2020, the price of bitcoin has increased by four fold.

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