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Present data from Blockchain.com shows Bitcoin circulation reached 18.899 million as of December 13. It means there is only 10% of the BTC total supply left to mine. Whereas the first 90% of BTC took about 12 years to mine, the remaining will take somewhat longer.
Bitcoin has a hard cap of 21 million coins set by its unknown inventor Satoshi Nakamoto. This restriction is written in Bitcoin’s supply code and executed by community nodes. The hard cap on Bitcoin is crucial to its value offer as a currency and an investment tool.
For the reason that Bitcoin blockchain solely creates new BTC as a reward for miners to verify new blocks, halving ensures much fewer Bitcoins guarantees if the total circulating supply increases.
Since 2020, miners have gained 6.25 bitcoins for each newly verified block. That rate will decrease to 3.125 BTC per block the next time it halves in 2024. By 2024, the block reward can drop lower than 0.2 BTC, and only 80,000 Bitcoin out of 21 million can be left up for grabs. The remaining Bitcoin will last about 40 years.
Furthermore, Bitcoin price started the week with a recent rejection of $50,000 because the end-of-year shut is quickly approaching. It’s nearly 30% down from its all-time high excessive of $68,789 reached on November 10.