News JVTech How many Bitcoins (BTC) are mined every day?
Published on 27/11/2022 at 16:55
The least we can say is that Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin (BTC), had it all planned out. In order to make cryptocurrency scarcer, the mysterious individual behind the Bitcoin code has defined a time-limited stock, similar to gold and precious metals. 14 years after the launch of the cryptocurrency, how much Bitcoin is generated each day to reach the limit of the total coin supply?
The limited stock of Bitcoins
On October 31, 2008, a man named Satoshi Nakamoto shared his virtual currency project through his whitepaper (technical document). Through it, we learned in particular that Bitcoin would have a limited supply.
Indeed, to approximate the value of a real currency, Bitcoin had to borrow some notions of scarcity applicable to gold and other precious metals. Thus, the Bitcoin code is formal, the network will only be able to generate 21 million BTC and not one more.
This figure may seem significant, but in view of the growth in demand, the further in time the more the value of a bitcoin becomes scarce. Thus, demand increases and each new minted coin brings Bitcoin closer to its maximum supply, which is fixed.
How many bitcoins exist today?
Of course, these new bitcoins are obviously not appearing on the network as if by magic. To operate, the Bitcoin network (the blockchain) requires a lot of computing power. By taking advantage of various machines such as graphics card RIGs or ASICs, miners secure Bitcoin transactions.
These transactions are recorded in “blocks”. Once a block is validated, the network rewards miners with bitcoin. This is how the supply of Bitcoin is flowing little by little.
After almost 14 years of activity, mining farms around the world have successfully mined 19,218,206 BTC. This figure represents about 91.51% of the total bitcoin supply. By carrying out a very simple calculation, we realize that there are “only” 1,781,794 bitcoins left to mine.
However, if it took ten years to generate all these bitcoins, to issue the remaining 10%, it will take much longer…
The last bitcoins will be the hardest to mine
The further into the life of Bitcoin, the meager the rewards given to miners. All this is the result of what is called: the halving (halving in French). As its name suggests, this process divides the rewards in Bitcoins per mined block every 210,000 blocks (about 4 years).
When the crypto launched in 2009, the network generated 50 Bitcoins for each validated block. In 2022, a block yields 8 times less: 6.25 BTC.
In this context, with the current computing power, all Bitcoin miners manage to generate 900 BTC per day. While the price of Bitcoin has largely fallen, the mining industry generates more than €14,295,600 in equity every day. However, from this figure must be deducted the costs related to machinery, electricity and maintenance of the premises.
The next halving is scheduled for March 2024 and this one will reduce the rewards to 3,125 per block. The rate of BTC issued will therefore increase to 450 per day. During the next four years following this next halving, we can deduce that 657,000 Bitcoins will be mined taking into account the reduction in rewards. This exponential division of bitcoin emissions allows us to assert that, apart from any disaster scenarios, the entire supply of bitcoi, i.e. 21,000,000, will be reached by 2140.
