Only 20% Bitcoins left to be mined

Last year there were talks that more than 50% of the total bitcoins have been mined, but this weekend sounded a landmark for bitcoin as 80 percent of the currency has now been mined into circulation. This means that only 20 percent of the total are left to mine now. Moreover, Satoshi Nakamoto’s protocol was one of the original to begin digital paucity and shortly enough the digital asset will be harder than ever to obtain.

The numbers are now- 4.2 Million

As of January 13, 2018, 16,800,000 BTC have been mined and only 20 percent of the total are now left. There were only 21 million bitcoins that were introduced in the market by Satoshi Nakamoto as the bitcoin protocol was launched in 2009.

The supply was capped forever and could not be thus increased. Whatsoever be the changes that have occurred in the administration, the creator’s plan and miners securing the network have secured this rule from changing with hashpower. Hypothetically, though, cynics deem there could be a mechanism by which they can increase the supply such as some manipulative tactics like 51 percent or Sybil attack. It has been more than a decade now that Bitcoin has come into existence; however, the supply remains limited and capped to 21 million without any breakthrough.

Solving the General’s Problem

Many believe that Satoshi cleared one of the toughest computational equations, the Byzantine General’s problem. This equation has caused a security flaw that had plagued computer scientists for decades. Fundamentally the problem subsists with distributed networks as the issue brings certain faults or security flaws making it easy to attack. This, in turn, makes it hard for protocols to prove something because there is an insolvability proof within the network.

With Satoshi’s Proof-of-Work in the original Bitcoin protocol, the economic measure makes it intricate to attack by making threats to the network costly, and time-consuming. For the first time ever in the world of digital computing, Satoshi introduced an asset that couldn’t be copied or double spent. And at the same time, he limited the supply, which also introduced digital scarcity like no other technology before it.

Bitcoin’s Digital Scarcity

The limited availability of the bitcoins make the asset hard to acquire and it become more scarce it becomes. In most cases when an asset is restrictive and resources are difficult to come by, the supply causes demand for the market. The supply of bitcoin shows a considerable gap between how many there are and those who want to acquire some. Majority of the bitcoiners believe that digital scarcity will make bitcoin more costly over time, and with 16.8Mln mined it will get harder to obtain.

In addition to the trouble in accessibility miners themselves are going to have to up their processing power continuously. In two years or less calculating on hashrate speed, the next miner reward halving is nearing. This means instead of miners getting 12.5 BTC for every block they mine they will get 6.25 BTC in two years time. This network consensus contract of a halving every four years will make bitcoins more harder to obtain even for the big warehouses all over the world filled with data processors. Every one of them and ASIC technology itself will have to advance for mining operations to be persistently be lucrative.

Source: Applancer