Bitcoin’s big limit

Five charts to start your day

Imagine a future where only 21 million bitcoins can ever exist. Around 19.8 million are already mined, so time is ticking. Bitcoin’s tight supply has a lot of people excited because scarcity can boost prices. Since there is no government in charge, bitcoin’s code automatically controls its output. The reward for mining bitcoins keeps getting cut in half, making it trickier to score fresh coins. By the year 2140 the last bitcoin should appear, and many bitcoiners believe prices will keep soaring once the supply is locked. Ok, so that’s along way off, so who cares?

Well as you can see in the chart below, the problem is the diminish marginal increase in supply that we are already now experiencing. We will be pretty close to peak bitcoin within ten years, so rising prices due to a restricted supply is an issue now, rather than later.