And this is one of the things that make Bitcoin the best money, it’s limited supply. No one is going to turn on the money printer without a hard fork, and people that hold Bitcoin, run nodes along with miners will not go along with devaluing their holdings or income. The only way that could happen is to hijack the protocol and get rid of a lot of node runners so megacorp nodes could change the software, which is exactly what they’re trying right now, but the community of node runners are fighting back with BIP110 and changing the node software they run.
Bitcoin’s issuance schedule was embedded in the protocol by its pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, and is fixed in the software.
The Bitcoin network crossed 20 million coins mined on Monday, reaching the milestone at block height 939,999 based on the current 3.125 Bitcoin block reward. The block was confirmed by Foundry USA pool, according to Mempool data. The event arrived roughly 17 years, two months, and one week after the genesis block was produced in January 2009.
More than 95.2% of Bitcoin’s fixed 21 million coin cap has now been issued. Fewer than 1 million coins remain to be distributed as block subsidies before miners become reliant solely on transaction fees. Those final coins are projected to take approximately 114 years to produce, with the last fractions expected to emerge around 2140.
Bitcoin’s issuance schedule was embedded in the protocol by its pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, and is fixed in the software. Block rewards began at 50 Bitcoin in 2009 and are cut in half every 210,000 blocks, roughly every four years. The most recent halving on April 20, 2024, reduced the reward from 6.25 Bitcoin to 3.125 Bitcoin, lowering average daily output from 900 Bitcoin to around 450 Bitcoin. The next halving is currently estimated for April 11, 2028.
The distribution curve is heavily front-loaded. It took 17 years to mine the first 20 million coins, while the remaining one million will be released over more than a century as successive halvings slow output to a near standstill. This structure contrasts with traditional monetary systems, where new supply can be issued at discretion.
Kraken Global Economist Thomas Perfumo said Bitcoin’s design is what separates it from other asset classes. “This programmable scarcity, coupled with predictable issuance and decentralized design, is what sets Bitcoin apart from competing forms of money and asset classes,” Perfumo said He added that while short-term price reflects macro conditions, long-term value accrual is tied to the network’s hard money properties.
Energy Co managing partner David Eng wrote on X that the market is “about to experience something new: a global asset with almost no new supply left.” Swyftx portfolio manager Tommy Rogulj described Bitcoin as “a hard-capped, permissionless, and neutral bearer asset operating on a transparent supply curve that cannot be expanded like fiat currencies.” Grayscale Investments stated late last year that the concept of predictable, scarce digital money “has rising appeal in today’s economy due to fiat currency tail risks.”
Not all analysts view the 20 million milestone as a market catalyst. Capriole Investments founder Charles Edwards called it “a non-event, no impact,” arguing the supply growth rate is already known with certainty and priced in. Elektron Energy CEO Raphael Zagury agreed the milestone alone is unlikely to move the price in the near term, saying “liquidity and macro still dominate.”
Once the final Bitcoin is mined around 2140, the network’s security model will depend entirely on transaction fees to compensate miners. Some analysts have raised questions about whether fee revenue alone will sustain miner participation at that stage, though no resolution to that question exists within the current protocol design. Notably, 230.09 Bitcoin from the genesis block remain permanently unspendable, and coins lost through misplaced private keys are not counted in the circulating supply figure.