I just noticed an interesting piece of data: the circulating supply of Bitcoin has already approached 20.01 million coins, getting closer and closer to the total cap of 21 million. But here’s an interesting point: the remaining 1 million Bitcoins, at the current mining speed, will take another 114 years to be fully mined.

In other words, although the total supply of Bitcoin is fixed at 21 million coins, most of them might never be mined within our lifetime. This also explains why Bitcoin’s scarcity is so strong — not only is the total limited, but the mining difficulty increases over time, and the time intervals between new coins being mined get longer and longer.

Interestingly, as mining rewards decrease and difficulty increases over time, this design to some extent ensures Bitcoin’s long-term value proposition.