With 18 Million Bitcoins Mined, How Hard Is That 21 Million Limit?

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In a matter of hours, the 18 millionth bitcoin will have been mined and the world's first cryptocurrency will draw one step closer to its hard-coded cap of 21 million coins.

The next 3 million bitcoins will be progressively slower to mine as a result of block reward halvings which occur every 210,000 blocks and reduce new bitcoin supply by 50 percent.

Eventually, once there are no more bitcoins left to mint, miners will rely solely on transaction fees, which are paid by users to transfer coins through the blockchain.

Currently, with each block, miners get a subsidy of 12.5 newly created BTC, worth roughly $99,370, plus any additional transaction fees, which normally don't total more than 1 BTC. Along the same lines, Paul Brody, global innovation leader for audit firm Ernst & Young, said bitcoin's limited supply could limit the cryptocurrency's utility as a global reserve currency.

Both Walch and Brody suggested that bitcoin's 21 million supply cap might one day be subject to change.

In the rare instances it has, the bitcoin community has gone through fierce governance disputes - such as the infamous scaling debates of 2017, which centered on a potential increase to bitcoin's block size.

Still, a prospective hard fork that would change bitcoin's 21-million-coin supply cap is conceivable, if perhaps heretical.

"It's not a given that bitcoin has to stay at that 21 million hard limit," said EY's Brody.

"There are half a dozen variables that determine miner profitability [right now] including the cost of electricity, their access to bandwidth transaction, the block subsidy, the transaction fees at the time, bitcoin price, their local currency exchange rate, the type of equipment and how efficient it is at converting electricity into mining."

While the 18th million bitcoin may not be the best reminder of the ongoing reality of a limited supply cap, the next upcoming milestone on bitcoin's horizon assuredly will.

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