How many bitcoins are there in the world?

One of the most common questions for those new to the world of Bitcoin is, what is the total issuance of bitcoin and who controls it? 

How many bitcoins are there?

We have all heard that the total amount of bitcoin is limited to an issuance of 21 million coins. However, is this true? What does such a limited amount of bitcoins really guarantee? How long will it be until the total issue? What will happen after its full emission, will I be able to buying bitcoins?

How much is the real and total emission of bitcoin?

When Satoshi Nakamoto introduced the world to Bitcoin technology, many were amazed at its creation. In particular, because of the decentralized economic system so well achieved that it supported this cryptocurrency. Given the decentralized economic nature of Bitcoin, Nakamoto designed a controlled currency issuance system. This issuance system is designed to allow controlled currency inflation in a completely autonomous way. In fact, as time goes by, Bitcoin tends to deflation.

This system maintains a marked balance between different actors within Bitcoin. Going through work and time mining is., the difficulty of it, the total mining power of the network, the compensation received for each block that is reduced at each halving and the total circulation of coins. All of this is controlled autonomously by the Bitcoin operating protocol designed by Nakamoto. In that sense, the controlled issuance of Bitcoin is scheduled to become "very close" of the 21 million Bitcoins, but it will not reach that exact amount. Hence, many people questionhow many Bitcoins are left to mine».

To see this in more detail and understand it, let's look at the following box:

It is interesting to have some perspective on what the evolution of Bitcoin will be in the future to understand its value. In the following table you have the true initial forecast of issuance of bitcoins until the thirty-fourth halving:

What does the issuance of bitcoins guarantee?

As we mentioned before the total issue of Bitcoin it is a feature that is integrated in the programming of the same. This is how it was created and how it has remained throughout all this time. The current Bitcoin developers have been careful and clear not to tamper with this. Altering it means making a hard fork of Bitcoin with all the problems and situations that this represents. At this point, the Bitcoin development community has been declared many times as "purist»Or«extremist«, but the truth is that they wanted to keep the original spirit of Bitcoin together with its specifications.

For example, improvements like followed o Lightning Network they improve the scalability and security of the system, but they do not break this economic balance. We can say then, that the guarantee of the total issuance of Bitcoin is not only in the code, but also in the very active community that makes life in the Bitcoin ecosystem and sustains it around the world. Any change in the issuance of coins by either party would break said balance and all trust. This would inevitably result in the weakening and even the fall of Bitcoin.

How many bitcoins have been lost?

However, despite all the programming and means created to guarantee the correct issuance of bitcoins, there have been small errors in the process. For example, the first mined block of Bitcoin, the genesis block has a coinbase transaction that cannot be used. That means there are 50 BTCs in that block that no one can use, not even their miner, Satoshi Nakamoto. Other errors for example can be seen in the block 124724. In this block, an attempt was made to intentionally claim 0,00000001 BTC less than allowed, but accidentally did not claim commissions either, losing 0,01000001 BTC.

Another programming error can be seen between the blocks 162705 and the block 169899. A total of 193 blocks claimed less than allowed due to an error, resulting in a total loss of 9,66184623 BTC. The same happened for example between the blocks 180324 and the block 249185. Among these there were a total of 836 blocks claimed less than allowed, resulting in a total loss of 0,52584193 BTC. The block 501726 had no transaction results (except a 0 value commitment), losing the entire reward: 12,5 BTC.

Each of these errors have added bitcoins that are not within the Bitcoin economic ecosystem and that modify how many bitcoins left to mine. No one can use or recover them, they are the so-called "lost coins" that no one can ever enjoy.

A replicated situation

But Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency with these characteristics. All cryptocurrencies have been based on Bitcoin technology and have adapted or improved it. Many of them are actually still guided by the same economic system that supports Bitcoin. Others have put it aside and have made the decision to have infinite emissions with other emission and inflation control systems.

For example, Litecoin It has a coin issuance system very similar to Bitcoin. His halving happens every 840.000 blocks and his rewards are split in half. Its time between blocks is 2,5 minutes instead of 10 minutes like Bitcoin. This results in slightly higher inflation than Bitcoin's, but faces the same issue of total issuance. In Litecoin this total issue is close to 84 million coins. In fact, if we examine this data more globally, we will see that Litecoin only quadruples its emission and halving numbers, and reduces the generation of each block four times.

Other emission adjustments are the one presented for example in Monero. Monero has a very similar Bitcoin issuance but much more accelerated. In fact, the total issue of Monero will be reached in 2025. But at that time, the "tail emission" (tail emission). This is infinite coin issuance that will keep inflation very low on Monero. All this in order to maintain an incentive for Monero miners.