Number of bitcoins breaks the limit of 17 million

More than 17 million bitcoins have been mined. The psychological barrier was broken in the course of Thursday. A total of 21 million bitcoins can be mined and the last one is not expected to be in circulation until 2140.

The latest Blockchain.info update shows a total of 16,999,603 bitcoins in circulation at the time of writing, but since that update was many hours ago, the actual number that has been mined exceeds 17 million. Each bitcoin block produces 12.5 new bitcoins and since a new block appears every 10 minutes, 1800 new bitcoins are currently being added per day, Coindesk calculates.

The 16 million bitcoin barrier was broken in November 2016, with 18 million expected to follow at the end of 2019. It takes longer and longer for the next million to be destroyed. In total there are 21 million bitcoins to mine. The latter will be mined at the current rate in May 2140.

The first 50 bitcoins were mined on January 3, 2009, by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto. A block halving takes place every 210,000 blocks. That last happened in July 2016, when the block size went from 25 to 12.5 bitcoins. In 2020, there will be another decrease in the reward, from 12.5 to 6.25 bitcoins.