Brian Armstrong, the head of America’s largest cryptocurrency company, Coinbase, issued a statement in which he described Bitcoin as a decentralized international payment vehicle, inflation-resistant, and outside of centralized control. 

Such status, he said, is provided by the programmatic limitation - never more than 21 million coins will appear on the network. Armstrong also recalled that miners recently mined a twenty-billion bitcoin.

The commemorative block number 939 999, which brought a twenty-million coin, was treated by the Foundry USA pool, as evidenced by the Mempool service. It took the mining community 17 years to surpass the 20 million BTC mark, while the final million will flow more slowly - full emission completion is expected only by 2140. By that point, the block fee will have virtually disappeared, and the only source of revenue for miners will be commissions on transactions.

The protocol-based Halving mechanism reduces the reward for obtaining a block by half every four years. While miners were receiving 50 BTC each in the early days of the network in 2009, payouts after the fourth halving on April 20, 2024 fell to 3,125 BTC, and the next similar revision is expected on April 11, 2028. 

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The material is prepared solely for informational purposes and does not constitute a financial advice or recommendation.