In recent times, you definitely would have heard of the famous cryptocurrency Bitcoin at some point or another. It is easily one of the greatest innovations of a disruptive nature that has allowed enormously significant changes to occur in recent times in our financial markets.
Although it started as an experimental lowkey currency, it has taken up the global spotlight not just in the virtual currency world but in finance itself. Most people thought it was a sham when it first came out with Bitcoin having to earn the trust of the very first ones to invest in it.
It has come a long way, but in all honesty, it is only getting started. Bitcoin proved all the doubters and conservatives wrong by blowing open the market and ushering in a new era of finance and payment techniques.
Apart from being an excellent mode of payment for people to pay online, it is also a perfect hedge against inflation, eliminating the need to print more money to make exchanges day in and day out. It is easily one of the most significant and widespread currencies with a higher adoption rate than most other currencies in today’s world.
It is considered the godfather of all cryptocurrencies and has paved the way for more cryptocurrencies to enter the virtual finance scene. It is most likely the reason for people to have a crypto market in the first place.
Read more on advfn.com to know more about crypto and how it is globally affecting markets. This article will address various things about bitcoin, one of them mainly about its volume of supply. Therefore, without any further ado, let’s get into this!
Origin Of Bitcoin
To start with the basics, let’s take a step back and go into the past. For those who don’t know how trading began before, the concept of money was through the barter system prevalent all over the world at that point. The barter system was a very primitive and flawed system with many problems that came up with transactions from time to time.
One of the most prominent and prevalent problems of that time was the problem of double wants. The double want problem was when two people wanted the same thing, and a transaction was not possible in that situation.
The deferred payment system was also not possible with the barter system, so the concept of money and its arrival was such a disruptive one in finance. As time went on, though, finance became more complicated and needed better instruments and systems to keep up with the pace of improvement in financial infrastructure.
With the invention of the modern computer, virtual currencies began to take precedence in finance. This, however, did not solve the fundamental problem of price manipulation and inflation due to overprinting of physical money, which is why the titular piece of currency entered the scene in the first place.
What Is Bitcoin?
In 2008, a person or even perhaps a group of people under the pseudo-anonymous name Satoshi Nakamoto were the ones who were involved in publishing a paper about a financial instrument that would change the world forever.
Using a technology known as Cryptography, Bitcoin was a perfectly secure and completely encrypted currency that would have no packet loss from one end to another.
This technology disrupted the existing financial system but took time to do so, mainly because people doubted its viability and security. Bitcoin took its time to get inserted into the financial market but did make its mark doing so.
The Supply And Number Of Bitcoins
It is pretty simple to understand what the currency in discussion is about. Still, the world is a little confused about its supply system. The standing statement and rule about bitcoin are that its market supply is capped off at 21 million.
It seems to be such an exact number. It’s alright to ask ourselves the question as to why it probably couldn’t have been a more significant number? Suppose 200 million or perhaps 30 million? When Nakamoto came up with the concept of Bitcoin, the total physical currency that is fiat currency measured up to 21 trillion in our financial world.
This included everything from coins, notes, bonds, junk bonds, and bearer bonds. As every currency, such as a rupee having 100 paise in it, Bitcoin is known to have the smallest unit, also known as a Satoshi.
This one Bitcoin comprises 100 million Satoshis, and by this, we can infer that in the entirety of the whole space, there can only be 2100 trillion Satoshi in the total value of Bitcoin throughout the total market value. This highly points out that only 21 million bitcoins can be totally in supply and can ever be in store.
How Many Are Mined In A Day?
On average close to a hundred and forty blocks are mined in around 24 hours of the world’s financial clock. Remember, though, this is only a moderate rate and can be lower or higher.
This is based on the power of each miner’s system. If corporations did the maximum mining rate with electric companies, this would likely be a lot higher.
There is a circulatory rule with how bitcoin moves forward and exists in our current financial system. The rate at which every individual block is mined will also reduce over time as the example of the past reward system in Cryptocurrencies were such that miners were given around 50 bitcoins for every block mined, with the figure reducing to around 25 in a few years and will continue to keep decreasing that way.
The next reward will be given around 2024 in May. This is when the new limit and compensation will be declared for the mining of one bitcoin. What started with fifty bitcoin per block will now be reduced to less than 6.5.