On the 13th January, a significant milestone for bitcoin was achieved. On this day 16.8 million bitcoins, 80% of the 21 million bitcoin supply cap, had been mined. Now, only 4.2 million bitcoins remain.

Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of bitcoin, built the 21 million supply cap into the cryptocurrency’s protocol, as a way to ensure scarcity. This means that the more bitcoins which are mined, the more scarce remaining coins become, which should, in turn, make the remaining bitcoins more valuable. Once all 21 million bitcoins have been mined, it will be much harder to attain them, which could further increase the value of each coin.

At the moment, when a block has been mined, the miner receives 12.5 bitcoins. However, the Bitcoin protocol dictates that the reward received by miners will halve every 210,000 blocks, which works out at about every four years. The next halving of the reward earned by miners is due to take place in June 2020, when the rate received by miners will drop to 6.25 bitcoins for every mined block.

The price of bitcoin is currently showing signs of recovery after the sharp price correction which followed the pre-Christmas mania that saw prices reach $20,000.