95% of all bitcoin is now mined and circulating

On Monday, bitcoin (BTC) hit a psychologically significant milestone when 95% of the asset’s supply was officially mined.

The significant moment came when Antpool mined block 923,999, earning Bitcoin’s coinbase reward containing the 19,950,000th BTC.

Tens of thousands of nodes around the world enforce a hard-capped, 21 million-coin limit on BTC’s supply. (The precise number is actually slightly less.)

Although anomalous inflation bugs during Bitcoin’s early years have momentarily threatened to increase the supply, the network has matured and the community is strongly committed at this time to maintaining the 21 million cap.

Starting at 50 BTC per coinbase reward when the network started operating in 2009, the protocol-level reward for miners who mine a block of transactions is slashed 50% roughly every four years in the aptly-named “halving.”

In November 2012, the coinbase reward halved to 25 BTC, then again in July 2016 to 12.5 BTC, and so on. The coinbase reward is now just 3.125 BTC per block.

The next halving will occur in April 2028 and will cut the reward to 1.5625 BTC per block.

The next bitcoin mining milestone after 95%

As a result of the halving cycle’s decreasing reward, the current 95% figure of mined BTC supply will increase to 99% by the year 2035.

Then, it will then take from 2035 until 2140 to mine the final 1%.

As with many aspects of Bitcoin, the largest rewards went to the earliest adopters. Bitcoin mining was once a hobbyist activity that anyone could perform on a home PC. 

Nowadays, multi-billion-dollar public companies scour the planet for stranded power sources and negotiate with governments for energy contracts that affect municipalities.