By 2033, 99% Of All Bitcoin Will Be Mined, But Why Remaining 1% Will Take More Than A Hundred Years?

Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin (BTC) 13 years ago and vanished. The network has been working great ever since.

Since 2008, the real-life identity of Satoshi Nakamoto is never revealed nor identified by anyone in the world. However, some people claimed themselves to be “Satoshi,” but any trusted sources or government institutions verified none.

The only thing that everyone knows about him is that he has written the source code for Bitcoin and the original Bitcoin whitepaper back in 2008. This is where the digital currency era came into birth.

He has placed a unique condition while writing source code for Bitcoin, i.e., a hard limit on the number of Bitcoin that can ever be produced, which is 21 million.

According to recent reports, 18.90 million total Bitcoins have been brought into circulation since January 2022. The remaining 2.1 million Bitcoins are still there to be mined. The placement of a hard limit ensures that the currency will act as a store of value in the future, and its price will rise along with demand and decreasing supply.

The price of Bitcoin registered an all-time low price of $65.53 on July 5, 2013 (9 years ago). Bitcoin has never revisited this price since 2013, just because the maximum supply is programmed to remain stagnant.

In 2013, nobody was aware of the use of Bitcoin. Therefore, they were afraid to put an investment in it. People began to understand the idea with time, and now everyone wants their hands on BTC.

Bitcoins are rare, and the asset’s demand rises with time. Therefore the price of Bitcoin shoots million times from its initial value, currently trading at $41,339.24. If someone invested in it at the early stages, he would have rewarded himself with 30616.34% growth.

It is expected that the early 2030s will mine almost 99% of total Bitcoins, and the last 1% will take nearly a century to get mined. But why the remaining 1% will take 100 years. 

According to Documenting Bitcoin’s:

“Satoshi Nakamoto programmed the last Bitcoin to be mined in 2140, meaning they intentionally created something they would never get to see finished. They planted a tree for the next generation knowing they’d never get to enjoy its shade, a truly selfless act.”

After almost 13 years since Bitcoin was born, only 10% of Bitcoins are left to be mined. Bitcoin mining is the name of the activity that generates new BTC. The miners get a reward for each valid Block generated and added to the Bitcoin network. Along with mining rewards, transactions are processed and validated by the miners, and transaction fees are also passed to the miners. Each valid block added to the Bitcoin network currently generates 6.25 BTC of rewards plus fees. Every four years, Bitcoin Halving occurs that half miners rewards. In May 2020, Bitcoin halving reduced miners’ rewards to 6.25 BTC per block, which was 12.5 BTC per block in 2016.

When it comes to Bitcoin mining, the mechanism left by Satoshi called halving reveals that miners’ rewards are halved on average every four years. In other words, in 2024, another cut in rewards will happen, making each block have only 3.12 BTC of compensation. And this is precisely the magic that will make the 10% of Bitcoins left to be mined take much longer than the first 90%—almost more than 100 years.

The idea behind the creation of Bitcoin is assumed to fight inflation. To understand this concept more profound, we must compare Bitcoin with currencies issued by central governments.

We all know that currency supplied by central governments has no hard limits set, which means governments are free to print any number of dollars they need because they do not mind the resulting inflation. But on the other hand, Bitcoin does. Satoshi Nakamoto places a hard limit for Bitcoin to make it a scarcer asset over time. Because of this hard limit in place, Bitcoin price will only see a price rise and will act as a store of value in the future.