This week cryptocurrency miners had processed the 17 million coins across both Bitcoin (BCH) and Bitcoin Core (BTC) networks, marking a great milestone within the history of blockchain technology. Now there are only 4Mn BCH and BTC left to mine but it’s still a very long time away until the very last coins are mined.
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80.9% of All Bitcoins Have Been Mined
According to blockchain data, today both BTC and BCH miners mined the 17 millionth coin per network, and there are only 4 million left to mine. Now individuals may say that only 4 million coins is not much of a supply since 17 million were mined in less than ten years, so they might expect the last coins to be mined shortly. However, that’s not the case for both networks as mining difficulty continues to increase on both chains, and every four years the mining block reward is cut in half. Right now both BTC and BCH networks produce 12.5 coins after every block found, and when the halving takes place the reward will only be 6.25 newly minted coins. The BTC chain is expected to halve its mining reward in roughly 763 days or May 29, 2020, depending on the hashrate. If the networks hashrate grows slower or faster the halving date could change.
Source: Blockchain.info
BTC and BCH Halvings and the Last Coin Found Will Likely Be Different Time Frames
Further, the mining of the last coins won’t be found very quickly because of mining difficulty changes, which makes it harder for miners to find blocks over time. BTC’s ‘Difficulty’ is a metric used to measure the probability of finding the next
