Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority or banks. Managing transactions and the issuing of bitcoins is carried out collectively by the network. Bitcoin is open-source, its design is public, so nobody owns or controls Bitcoin and everyone can take part. Through many of its unique properties, Bitcoin allows exciting uses that could not be covered by any previous payment system.
However, the issuance of Bitcoins, the first cryptocurrency to appear on the market, is limited from the very beginning. Every time the blockchain is closed and registered, new Bitcoins are issued. But to make them a scarce commodity, every four years the issuance drops by half.
There are currently 19 million Bitcoins in the world and there are still 2 million coins to be issued. The total number of Bitcoins to be issued in all of history is 21 million, so experts estimate that this figure will be reached in 120 years.
Currently, each block with Bitcoin transactions generates 6.25 new BTC, which is distributed to the miner who has confirmed that block together with the users’ commissions. But this amount was not always that amount.
Every 4 years or so, the block reward is halved in an event known as halving. Initially, in 2009, each Bitcoin block generated 50 BTC, but this reward was first reduced to 25, then to 12.5 BTC and lastly to 6.25 BTC, in the years 2012, 2016 and 2020, respectively.According to CoinMarketCap, the price of Bitcoin at the moment of writing this article is US$46.605,49 with a 24-hour trading volume of US$35.508.390.211. The number one cryptocurrency is ranked number 1 in CoinMarketCap’s ranking, with a live market cap of US$885.526.803.961. It has a circulating supply of 19.000.481 BTC coins and a maximum supply of 21.000.000 BTC coins.
