The emergence of cryptocurrency in 2009 was the impetus for the development of a unique direction - mining. From the first days of Bitcoins birth, thousands, and over time, hundreds of thousands of people began to mine cryptocurrency using the available capacities. And if at the initial stage, mining on your own PC guaranteed obtaining acceptable results, then over time, the income began to decline. The reason is the drop in the volume of available cryptocurrency, its limitedness. The total number of Bitcoins to be generated is limited to 21 million coins. The closer the miners are to this figure, the more difficult the mining is, and the more power is required to obtain the cryptocurrency. Despite the complication of the mining process, the number of miners collecting or mining hard-to-find online coins in various available ways is growing every day. Their multimillion army is constantly replenished with new volunteers.

How many Bitcoins are available today?

Bitcoin generation is a direction that large enterprises and individuals are engaged in, joining forces in pools. This process is called mining, that is, mining coins by generating new blocks. The acquisition of cryptocurrency is based on complex calculations, and huge technical resources are involved in the process. Knowing how many Bitcoins there are in total, the "miners" manage to adjust to current realities in time, purchase equipment, unite into more powerful pools, and use the capabilities of large mining companies.

About 3600 coins are added to the total cryptocurrency network every day. Moreover, the new injection makes the process of extracting the next batch more difficult for the participants. Back in the early years, Bitcoin mining was possible with a home PC. All that changed during that period was the hardware requirements, namely the power of the video card and processor. At that time, tens, if not hundreds, of Bitcoin could be mined within a month. The first miners who mine coins with the minimum expenditure of technical resources received the greatest benefit.

How many Bitcoins are there today? According to various sources, about 13 million coins have already been received. According to miners, the upper limit will be reached by the middle of the next century, around 2140. But what are the reasons for this delay, if 60% of the available Bitcoin has been mined over the past seven years. There are two of them:

Growth in requirements for the hardware used for cryptocurrency mining.
Increase in the time required to mine 1 Bitcoin.
Against the background of the complication of the process of calculations, large mining companies appear, focused on obtaining new coins. Their leaders invest huge amounts of money and resources in the purchase of expensive equipment. They calculate exactly how much Bitcoins can be earned and how long it takes to pay off the investment.

Over time, the received capacity is used to solve their own problems (capital accumulation) or for renting to other users. Such a business is in demand, because the number of people wishing to earn cryptocurrency is only growing.

Security of change in the total number of Bitcoins

Considering the issue of the value of cryptocurrency and the characteristics of its production, it is important to take into account the security factor. It is mentioned above how many Bitcoins will be generated in total (21,000,000) - of which almost 60% is received. Each coin created can be used as a means of payment. Money makes sense if it is backed up by something - debt, gold or some other precious metal. Bitcoin cryptocurrency is an exception. Virtual money is not backed by gold, but is backed only by the current supply and demand.

It is believed that the value of Bitcoin is supported by the amount of expended resources required to mine one coin. This is not true. In some way, cryptocurrency is backed by the value of the goods set by the seller and the price that the buyer is willing to pay.

There is another concern associated with buying a large number of coins. Information on how many Bitcoins have already been mined is not a secret. What happens if someone decides to purchase a large batch of cryptocurrency? The problem is that it is unrealistic to make such a deal in one go. The seller will constantly increase the price until the buyer runs out of funds. In addition, not all Bitcoin are available for sale, not to mention that 40% of the cryptocurrency is not mined at all.

It turns out that one coin is a means for calculations, the exchange rate of which depends on the current supply and demand. The closer the production limit, the higher the deficit and the faster the cost of 1 Bitcoin grows. In addition, the cryptocurrency rate depends on a number of other factors - the possibility of application in large countries, the relationship of financial regulators, the political situation and the use of coins by powerful market “players”.

So the question of how many Bitcoins today is primarily relevant for miners, market participants (traders) and people who accept coins as a means of calculating.

How is mining complicated based on the fact how many Bitcoins are there in total?

The total number of Bitcoins is information that has not been a secret since the early days of cryptocurrency. The emission of one coin is directly related to mining, in which the computing power of different units is used. The process of earning cryptocurrency went through several stages, starting with working on personal computers and ending with using the capacities of large farms. At the same time, the issue of earning coins with the help of one computer is a thing of the past. A new era has come - large pools and mining farms.

Official data show that almost 11 million virtual coins have been generated in the last 4-5 years alone. How many Bitcoins can be obtained in the coming years is unrealistic to calculate. It depends on many factors - the popularity of the cryptocurrency, the level of applied capacities, the development of the technical sphere. Perhaps, in 1-2 years there will be a machine capable of generating the remaining volume of coins within 1-2 years.

According to statistics, since 2009, the following trend has taken place - every four years the volume of mined coins decreases twice. What does it mean? If during the first four years, for example, 10 million coins were mined, then in the next similar period the figure will decrease by half (5 million), then - by the same amount (2.5 million). It turns out that the issue of reaching the total number of Bitcoins will gradually recede. One day a situation will arise when 100 thousand coins remain to be mined, but this process will take several more years. The question is whether the strategic interest in mining cryptocurrency will continue in this case, or no one will be mining at all.

The knowledge that Bitcoin mining will come to an end sooner or later worries many users of the crypto network. Already today, dozens of theories are being put forward about what will happen to virtual currency and what its future will be. At the moment, such reasoning does not make sense. Knowing how many Bitcoins are in total should be taken from the position of help, not a sentence.

The projected year 2140 is still far away, and technological progress does not intend to stop. Perhaps in 5-10 years other money will appear, which Bitcoin will lose in all respects. In the meantime, it is worth taking advantage of the available opportunities and working on the popularization of existing virtual coins. The existing realities show that the release of the cryptocurrency in 2009 was justified, which is also proved by the popularity of new coins. All that remains for the miners is to take into account how many Bitcoins there are today and persist in their mining. This is important as long as the new money brings profit and benefits to society.

Instead of an epilogue

The judgments expressed in the last part of the article undoubtedly lead to specific thoughts. However, people involved in mining shouldnt worry about the future. Indeed, with the increase in the number of mined coins, the volume and scale of financial transactions carried out using Bitcoin are growing. In the future, when cryptocurrencies take a dominant position in the global financial market, miners will change the profile of their activities, and individual computing nodes will receive quite acceptable commissions for approving each money transfer. The genius of Nakamotos ideas is that, by that time, Bitcoin will have a very high value, and interest rates will indeed be paltry compared to the standards in force in the modern financial world.