A recent study published by CoinMetrics revealed the total amount of bitcoins mined in the entire history of the cryptocurrency. Likewise, it analyzed the amount of supply available and the sum of bitcoins lost.
When Satoshi Nakamoto created the Bitcoin protocol he introduced a limited supply of 21 million coins. However, there is no way to verify in the major cryptocurrency’s codebase that this limit has not been exceeded. Instead, the software controls that each block does not exceed the prescribed number, the recent study explains.
A milestone in Bitcoin history was reached last month when block 600,000 was mined, an event that led to the end of the coin’s planned supply. Several experts, including the CoinMetrics team, maintain that the total number of mined bitcoins is close to 18 million.
To obtain this calculation, CoinMetrics used the following formula:
« 210,000 blocks * 50 BTC + 210,000 blocks * 25 BTC + 180,000 blocks * 12.5 BTC = 18M BTC «
However, other analysts have commented that Bitcoin supply did not surpass the 18 million milestone at block 600,000. Pieter Wuille, the developer of Bitcoin Core, mentioned that the actual supply for block 600,002 was BTC 17,999,854.
Bitcoins trapped and duplicated
One of the revealing results of the CoinMetrics analysis is the fact that the actual supply of Bitcoin is apparently much smaller than previously believed. When added up, the total lost coins are around 1.6 million, reducing the current actual supply of Bitcoin to just over 16.4 million.
The study used various methods to find out exactly where the lost coins came from. Some of them have been stolen, but other lost coins are due to unclaimed rewards or duplicate transactions.
One case of unspent coins is a group of 50 BTC that were trapped in the first Bitcoin genesis block; a transaction that is also not recorded in the cryptocurrency ledger. For its part, although it does not seem possible for cryptocurrencies, there are two cases of duplicate transactions, the report states. This happened twice early in Bitcoin’s history and represents a total of 100 lost coins, experts explain:
The easiest transactions to duplicate are “coin-based transactions”. The first transactions of each block – since they do not contain digital signatures or references to previous transactions .”
Lost forever
Although it may seem impossible, they also highlight cases in which miners have not claimed the block reward. The report revealed that the first time this occurred was in block 124,724 in May 2011. Along these lines, the study pointed out at least three important cases in which no reward has been claimed totaling BTC 20.5.
Likewise, a significant amount of bitcoins were sent to fake addresses, before OP_RETURN outputs were standardized. Three of those popular fake addresses currently represent more than 2,200 BTC that may not be lost forever but are unlikely to be recovered again.
To distinguish the bitcoins that are most likely to be lost forever. CoinMetrics analyzed the coins that have not moved for the longest time. Among this group is the 79,956 BTC stolen from the Mt. Gox exchange in 2011, a sum that has remained untouched since then. The address also stands out as the sixth address with the largest amount of Bitcoin in the world.
Another major theft noted by the study was the attack on Bitfinex in 2016, where around BTC 120,000 disappeared. The CoinMetrics report is conservative compared to other studies that estimate that around 4 million bitcoins are lost forever. Analysts revealed, however, that 1.5 million coins have been paralyzed since July 2010.
Estimated Bitcoin supply minus total coins lost, equal to the “liquid” supply of circulating BTC in 2019
See Also: Cryptocurrency Mining Malware Infected Over Half-Million PCs Using NSA Exploit!
