This question is still very much un-answered to my knowledge. I don’t know if any others have anything else to say but this is what I have managed to find out by doing my research.
Why raise this topic?
The reason why this topic has come to mind is due to the increase in bitcoins popularity. I have noticed that a lot more people are purchasing mining contracts and their own miners to join in on this bitcoin craze. With this increase in contracts and overall hash-power means that transactions etc. are being processed more and more quickly. But why isn’t the amount of bitcoins coming into circulation increasing more then what they are?
)Mining difficulty
As more miners join the network block creation increases. A block is completed by answering a generated difficult mathematical question. Once this answer has been found and confirmed by the other miners on this blockchain a new block is created. This reduces the average mining time to complete a block. Once a block is finished a reward to the miners goes out. This is where the bitcoins come from. As block times decrease pay out rates increase. So the difficulty of this maths question. This increases the block chain time so the mining time to complete a block goes back to average. An ideal average is 10 minutes per block.
Bitcoin pay-outs and circulation Amount.
Bitcoin has a limit of 21,000,000 coins. This is rumoured to never be reached. Every time a block is completed a pay out at the very beginning was 50 btc. After 210 thousand block the rewards are reduced by half. This slowly regulates the inflation of bitcoins into the market. Our current pay-out is 12.5 btc. So far to this time of publish 16,398,263 btc are in circulation. This means that only 4,601,738 are left to be mined. The finally btc to be mined will be around / in the year of 2140!!!
What will happen next!
No-one is sure what will happen next. Technically btc will never reach 21 million. This is due to in block 124724 user midnightmagic solo mined a block to himself. This then underpaid him by 1 Satoshi. Will btc start introducing yearly add ons like other altcoins? Will the miner’s fee that we pay be enough to keep us going? Will we ever see those miner’s fees again?
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btc wallet address: 1L1CYPs7qZwKXRVJrwrk3DS95KE1LqJtGD
eth wallet address: 0xe4E42168382203A97227326346009ff03C4b0436
ltc wallet address: Ld84Ykuzj1Mf9oo8e9QvrwjhzyqedPbtdK