TL;DR Breakdown
- Bitcoin has made significant progress since its inception.
- There is a possibility that bitcoin developers can change the hard limit, but at what cost?
Bitcoin (BTC) has been keeping up with a 200% annualized rate of return. This is despite being disregarded severally. It is presently the leading blockchain-based cryptocurrency globally.
The currency recently set an all-time high at almost $69,000. It surpassed a previous all-time high of $64,000 earlier this year. This figure had also surpassed an ATH of $20,000 in the last trimester of 2017.
At the time of this writing, bitcoin is trading at $59,276. It had fallen by about 10%. Some bearish factors could have caused this plunge.
The US President, Joe Biden, signed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. It comes with stringent measures on crypto-trading taxes. Moreover, there is a new warning to Chinese companies about mining that has been issued.
Foundation of BTC
The concept of BTC came to be in 2008. Its white paper, which is nine pages long, was published the same year. The pages are few but enough to change the world. It was written by an anonymous figure under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.
The author’s identity remains a mystery. Moreover, no one can verify if a group or a single party developed BTC. The paper contains information on how bitcoin would work. The currency was established on January 3, 2009. Since then, its value has grown a million-fold. BTC currently has a market value of over $1 trillion.
According to a new study, less than 10,000 people worldwide collectively own almost 6 million bitcoin. This figure is about a third of the 18.8 million bitcoins that have been mined so far. Out of the BTC available, almost 30% is believed to be lost forever. It is so because some individuals have lost their private key while some hard drives have crashed.
There are a total of 21 million bitcoins available for mining. So there are around 2.13 million, which is yet to be brought into circulation. The mining reward halving takes place every 210,000 blocks. Each block takes approximately 10 minutes to mine. Additionally, halvings take a quadrennial period before the next one. After 64 total halvings, all 21 million bitcoins will be in circulation. This will be in 2140. There won’t be any more BTC to reward miners.
When miners form new blocks, they also earn the fees associated with every transaction. The fees depend on the amount of network congestion. An example is during the 2017 Crypto boom, where miners attained almost $60. The fees also vary with the transaction magnitude.
Bitcoin Average Transaction Fee is at the 2.7 level. This is down from 2.9 yesterday. About a year ago, it was at the 2.6 level.
It is believed that Satoshi Nakamoto holds the largest BTC cache. Reports indicate that Nakamoto holds 1 million BTC. The amount is valued at about $4,500,000,000.
It is estimated that the figure mined over 20,000 blocks. The individual or group also received about one million bitcoin in cumulative block rewards for the historical innovation.
Still, other wallet addresses are holding a fortune. 1FeexV6bAHb8ybZjqQMjJrcCrHGW9sb6uFBalance wallet holds 79,957 BTC ($4,835,287,495). The BTC wallet has remained untouched for over 5years.
Changing the hard limit
Theoretically, the developers of Bitcoin can alter how it functions. They can increase the hard limit. With this, a good number of bitcoin participants are required to agree.
The move will decrease the value of the bitcoin investors hold. For this reason, this kind of change could take a long while if it happens.
