Bitcoin Touches New Milestone With 90% of Total Supply Mined

However, the entire supply won’t get mined until February 2140.

AccessTimeIconDec 13, 2021 at 6:51 a.m. UTC
Updated Oct 24, 2022 at 3:07 p.m. UTC
Alex Thorn
Head of Firmwide Research
Galaxy
Hear Alex Thorn share his take on "Bitcoin and Inflation: It’s Complicated” at Consensus 2023.
Alex Thorn
Head of Firmwide Research
Galaxy
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Hear Alex Thorn share his take on "Bitcoin and Inflation: It’s Complicated” at Consensus 2023.

Shaurya is the Co-Leader of the CoinDesk tokens and data team, focusing on decentralized finance, markets, on-chain data, and governance across all major and minor blockchains.

Alex Thorn
Head of Firmwide Research
Galaxy
Hear Alex Thorn share his take on "Bitcoin and Inflation: It’s Complicated” at Consensus 2023.
Alex Thorn
Head of Firmwide Research
Galaxy
Consensus 2023 Logo
Hear Alex Thorn share his take on "Bitcoin and Inflation: It’s Complicated” at Consensus 2023.

Ninety percent of all bitcoins have been mined as of Monday morning, according to data from blockchain tracker Blockchain.com. The feat means 18.89 million bitcoins – of a maximum of 21 million – are now on the open market.

Reaching the milestone took nearly 12 years since the first bitcoins were mined on Jan. 9, 2009. However, the remaining supply is not expected to be mined until February 2140, based on network activity estimates and Bitcoin’s halving schedules.

Prices have mirrored the increasing supply as demand for newer bitcoin heats up. The asset exchanged hands for less than $0.10 when 10% of the supply was mined in early 2010, and hovered at $7.50 when 50% of the supply was mined in December 2012. As of press time, bitcoin trades at over $49,000, having declined 28% from its peak of $69,000 earlier this year, as per data from CoinGecko.

Bitcoin, as a proof-of-work network, relies on network participants called miners who continually process transactions and validate blocks in a process broadly referred to as mining.

Such participants provide their computing resources and hardware to solve millions of complex calculations on the Bitcoin network each second, receiving bitcoin as rewards. Miners currently receive 6.25 bitcoin for each block they mine, which would drop to 3.125 bitcoin after the next halving in 2024.

Meanwhile, not all of 21 million bitcoin is expected to be available on the open market. Crypto analytics firm Chainalysis estimates 3.7 million bitcoin have been “lost” based on analyzing address activity, from reasons ranging from losing one’s private keys to even death. A further 1 million bitcoin is still held by Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, untouched because the pseudonymous person/s mined the amount in the network’s early days.

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Shaurya is the Co-Leader of the CoinDesk tokens and data team, focusing on decentralized finance, markets, on-chain data, and governance across all major and minor blockchains.


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Shaurya is the Co-Leader of the CoinDesk tokens and data team, focusing on decentralized finance, markets, on-chain data, and governance across all major and minor blockchains.


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