With less than 5% of BTC remaining to be mined, Bitcoin confirms its built-in scarcity. Unlike other blockchains with changing monetary rules, Bitcoin remains faithful to its original protocol. This stability reinforces its unique position: a non-manipulable digital asset, designed to counter inflation and censorship.
95% of BTC has already been mined – as expected, it is becoming scarce
It is important to remember that Bitcoin is unique among digital and even physical assets: its monetary policy is immutable and transparent, and its transactions are inherently censorship-resistant.
Whereas many blockchains regularly adjust their economic rules (modifying token issuance, operation, and usage), Bitcoin is based on a code that is virtually set in stone and audited. No single entity can impose a change without the explicit consent of the entire network.
It is precisely this robustness that has allowed Bitcoin to guarantee, since its inception, a maximum supply of 21 million units—a certainty that few other cryptocurrencies can offer.
Today, the 95% threshold of the maximum supply of bitcoins has been reached, amounting to nearly 19.96 million BTC. Only about 1.04 million BTC remain to be mined, a scarcity that will continue to grow over time, until the final issuance is expected between 2130 and 2140.
Bitcoin Issuance Over Time
But the scarcity perceived by the market is actually even greater; it is estimated that 3 to 4 million BTC are permanently lost due to lost or destroyed private keys.
Added to this are the famous BTCs belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of Bitcoin: approximately 1.125 million BTC, mined in the network’s early months and never moved since.
The majority of the community considers these BTCs to be out of circulation forever. Taking these losses into account, the actual available supply could thus fall to around 16 million BTC, or even less.
What if someone stole Satoshi’s BTC?
Although the 1.125 million BTC attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto are considered permanently lost, some Bitcoiners believe there remains a tiny chance they might one day be recovered.
Two scenarios are frequently discussed:
The first relies on an entropy flaw during the generation of private keys in Bitcoin’s early days. If the private key generation algorithm used by Satoshi lacked sufficient randomness, then well-equipped attackers could, in theory, recover some of these keys through brute force.
The second scenario involves quantum cryptography. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could break classical cryptographic algorithms, such as ECDSA, which Bitcoin uses to secure private keys. This type of threat is still very theoretical, but it poses an existential question for all systems based on current cryptography; Bitcoin would not be the first victim of such computers.
