Altcoin News: Miners Are Preparing to Mine 18 Millionth Bitcoin

October 16, 2019, by Marko Vidrih on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

The total volume of Bitcoin emissions on Monday reached 17.992 million, according to the data of the Blockchain.com portal.

As Rhythm analyst on Twitter notes, the 18 millionth Bitcoin coin should be mined before the end of this week.

“It will take another approximately 120 years to mine the remaining 14.3% of the total supply, or ~3,000,000 bitcoin. Miners competing for their bitcoin reward has also never been higher, with hashrate at an all-time high,” he adds.

Image source: Blockchain.com

In other words, about 85% of the Bitcoins of the emission limit set at the protocol level has been released to date. However, not all of these coins are available for spending. Some of them are forever lost due to the fact that the owners have lost access to their wallets. Values ​​may vary depending on the chosen methodology, however, a number of analysts agree that such coins account for about 20% of the total supply.

Although technically the release of the 18 millionth Bitcoin doesn’t change anything, the developers of the Luno crypto-custodial service, for example, call this week outstanding. Miners are waiting for a significant change next May — then there will be another Bitcoin halving or a reward reduction for adding blocks to the cryptocurrency blockchain.

Earlier was noted that the growth in the number of large Bitcoin addresses since the beginning of the year has been happening at the same pace as in the early years of the cryptocurrency.

Author: Marko Vidrih