90% of all bitcoins were mined with 18.89 million BTC

According to Glassnode, 90% of all bitcoins had been mined by Monday morning. This means that there are 18.89 million bitcoins out of 21 million on the market right now.

Source: Glassnode

This milestone will be reached almost 12 years after the first bitcoin was mined on January 9, 2009. However, the remaining stocks will not be depleted until February 2140 based on estimates of network activity and plans to cut in half.

The price has already reflected the supply as the demand for new bitcoins has increased. The asset traded at less than $ 0.10 when 10% of the offer was mined in early 2010, and hovered above $ 7.50 when 50% of the offer was received in December 2012. It was trading at nearly $ 49,000 at time of publication, 29% less than it peaked at $ 69,000 this year.

Source: TradingView

Bitcoin, a Proof-of-Work (PoW) network, relies on network members known as “miners” to continuously process transactions and verify blocks in a process known collectively as “waterfall mining”.

Miners donate their computers and hardware resources to perform millions of complex computations on the Bitcoin network every second and receive Bitcoins as a “reward.” Miners are currently receiving 6.25 BTC for every block mined, which will drop to 3.125 after the next halving in 2024.

Meanwhile, not all of the 21 million BTC are expected to be available on the market. Cryptocurrency research company Chainalysis estimates that 3.7 million BTC is “lost” based on the analysis of targeted activity for a variety of reasons, from the loss of private keys to death. Another 1 million BTC, owned by bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto, hasn’t moved since that mysterious father started mining in the early days of the network.