According to findings from both CoinMarketCap, the circulating supply of Bitcoin now surpassed 17 million coins. This means that over 80% of the max Bitcoin supply that will ever be created have been mined. However, the supply is not set to run out anytime in the near future.

Max Bitcoin supply makes it similar to gold

Bitcoin takes several key facets of inspiration from gold in a seemingly deliberate decision from Bitcoin’s anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Not much is known about the person or group behind the Nakamoto pseudonym, but the mysterious figure was ‘born’ on the same day that the U.S. set out to confiscate gold in 1933.

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The currency’s parallels to gold present one of its most significant use cases; serving as a store of value. Bitcoin’s limited supply allows the currency to retain a sense of value for holders, as less than 21 million BTC will ever circulate in the market.

Bitcoins are created each time miners discover a new block. The rate of block creation is then slowed down every 2,016 blocks and the block creation rate halves approximately every four years. This means that Bitcoin’s total circulating supply will only ever reach a figure slightly under 21 million coins by 2140.

With the news that there is now 17 million BTC in circulation, there are less than 4 million bitcoins left available for individual digital currency miners and mining pools. However, calculations show that the supply will not run out until around 2140 due to the block creation rate continually halving.

Spendable vs. circulating supply, and Buterin’s ETH proposal

It is important to note that Bitcoin’s maximum circulating supply of slightly under 21 million coins differs from the currency’s spendable supply. Put simply, a purportedly significant amount of Bitcoin has been lost, stolen, or destroyed, and will never re-enter the economy.

This was especially common during Bitcoin’s first few years on the market, when digital currency wallets were much less accessible for the average user and exchanges were less common.

While Bitcoin’s maximum supply is limited, Ethereum does not have the same measure in place at the current point in time. This was a topic that Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin brought up on April Fools’ Day 2018, when he used the opportunity to introduce a proposal for implementing an Ethereum maximum supply.

While the timing caused the community to debate whether or not Buterin’s proposal was a joke, the topic since lingered. Buterin’s proposal reflects an important topic of discussion for Ethereum, the world’s second largest digital currency in terms of market cap.

While Bitcoin inches closer to the far-away date when the last bitcoin will be mined, the Ethereum community continues to discuss if a similar maximum supply is a necessary step in the platform’s growth.

Photo from BeatingBetting.co.uk.

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