Last Friday, a remarkable event occurred in the Bitcoin network, the 19 millionth coin being mined.

The event is special and even an important milestone given that Bitcoin is limited to only 21 million cryptocurrencies.

This means that after 13 years of existence, more than 90% of all bitcoins are now traded.

The remaining 10% is expected to be completed by 2140.

This is due to a process called forking, in which the Bitcoin mining reward destined for miners is split in half every four years.

Back in 2009, anonymous Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakomoto mined the first block called the Genesis Block.

Nakomoto’s reward was 50 bitcoins, whose wallet to this day remains unknown despite being worth more than $2.3 million today.

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In 2022, the reward for mining a single block of bitcoin was 6.25 BTC which is less than $300,000.

In most cases, the reward is shared between each participant who contributes computing power to the mining pool that received the reward.

The massive drop in mining rewards since 2009 is due to the Bitcoin mining reward halving.

After every 210,000 blocks mined, the rate of Bitcoin entering the market slows by half due to the increased mining complexity.

This happens approximately every four years.

The next Bitcoin fork is expected to take place on March 2, 2024, at which point the block mining reward drops to 3.125 BTC.

After the final block of Bitcoin is mined in 2140, miners from it onwards will be rewarded with user transaction fees for validating transactions.

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At this point, the Bitcoin network might look very different than it does today.

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