With the supply now surpassing 20 million mined bitcoins, around 114 years remain to complete the total issuance.
Seventeen years after its launch, the Bitcoin network has officially issued more than 20 million BTC, surpassing 95.2% of the protocol’s 21 million coin cap.
The 20 million milestone was recorded at block number 939,999, according to available on-chain data. The event was made possible by the current block reward of 3.125 BTC. The historic block was mined by the mining pool Foundry USA. This milestone comes after the network had already crossed exactly 95% of the total supply last November.
Since the launch of the genesis block in January 2009, it took just over seventeen years to mine the first 20 million coins. However, the remaining one million will take approximately 114 years to be issued, with the final fractions of satoshis expected around 2140.
The defining feature of the system lies in its halving mechanism, a programmed process that cuts the block reward in half every 210,000 blocks, approximately every four years.
Issuance began with a 50 BTC block reward in 2009. The fourth and most recent halving, which took place on April 20, 2024, reduced the reward from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per block. The next halving is currently estimated for April 11, 2028, according to data from the Bitcoin Halving Countdown.
It is worth noting that 230.09 BTC remain technically unspendable due to the genesis block reward and other outputs created with scripts that make them impossible to spend. Additionally, the circulating supply does not account for coins that may have been lost by users who misplaced their private keys.
