The Bitcoin network reached a major milestone recently after its circulating supply crossed 18.9 million BTC. While the news failed to have a major impact on its price, the overall network activity spiked.
The recent number indicates that 90% of the total 21 million coins have already been mined. It took almost 12.9 years to mine 90% of the BTC supply. However, the remaining 10% will take approximately 112 years.
The difficulty level in Bitcoin mining is increasing over time. In addition, the block reward has decreased substantially since halving events. However, the spike in the price of the crypto asset brought significant profits for BTC miners. Bitcoin touched an all-time high of almost $69,000 last month. With that, operational BTC miners reported record profits. Even after the latest correction, BTC mining firms are still operating with record margins.
“The Bitcoin circulating supply has now passed 18.9M BTC, which is 90% of the total 21M coins that will ever exist. It took 12.9yrs to mine the first 90% of the supply and will take approximately 112yrs to mine the remaining 2.1M,” Glassnode noted.
Bitcoin Volatility
The world’s most valuable digital asset remained volatile recently. While bulls have struggled to keep the price above the $50,000 price level, increased pressure from sellers pushed the market cap of Bitcoin below $900 billion. In terms of weekly performance, BTC is down by almost 8% in the past 7 days.
“The BTC market has attempted to regain its footing, following a tumultuous and volatile deleveraging event last week. Bitcoin prices were largely range-bound, opening at $49,368, and trading between a high of $51,900, and a low of $46,942. After significant market volatility like last week's deleveraging event, it's valuable to assess the broad investor response, changes in spending patterns and sentiment, and new emergent trends that are observable in on-chain and derivative data,” Glassnode explained in its latest report.
