While it might sound alarming to the uninitiated, there is no danger to Bitcoin for having only 10% of supplies left. It is the result of the built-in protocol of Bitcoin set up by its anonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin’s cap is set at 21 million, and it cannot be changed. The anonymous creator(s) of Bitcoin wrote this into the source code of the network. However, it will take much longer for Bitcoin miners to mine the rest of the supply. Since Bitcoin supply is halved every four years, it will be increasingly complex to mine new Bitcoins. As a result, each Bitcoin will take more time to be mined. According to estimates from CoinTelegraph, it will take more than 100 years to mine the remaining Bitcoin supply.
Bitcoin mining refers to the process of minting new Bitcoins by adding valid blocks to the Bitcoin public ledger. The process is resource and power-intensive since it involves complex mathematical calculations. Every two weeks, the difficulty of mining new Bitcoins readjusts to maintain a block time. Bitcoin miners are remunerated in two ways – either through Bitcoins for their mining efforts or by third-party entities to validate transactions. Some senders would offer a high incentive to push miners to give their transactions more priority. Despite many setbacks and regulatory difficulties, Bitcoin mining has continued to flourish. With more than 100 years left for the supply to end, Bitcoin mining is unlikely to slow down any time soon.
