There are 21 million Bitcoins, only 4 million left to be mined

CNBC reported that data from Blockchain.info showed that the 17 millionth bitcoin was "mined" on Thursday. According to the design of Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous founder of the cryptocurrency, by 2140, no new bitcoins will be generated, and the number of bitcoins in circulation will always be slightly less than 21 million.

This means that there are only 4 million bitcoins left in the world that have not been mined. Bitcoin investor Ansel Lindner believes that scarcity has pushed the price of Bitcoin to a new high this year. He predicts that the price of a single bitcoin will reach $19,000 in December this year.

Cryptocurrency is powered by energy-intensive equipment, where miners use high-computing power equipment to solve complex mathematical equations. They then receive Bitcoin as a reward, and the block reward is halved every 210,000 blocks, approximately every four years, with the most recent halving taking place on July 9, 2016. As a result, the Bitcoin mining process will slow down.

The first batch of Bitcoins were mined in January 2009. According to Blockchain.info data, it took about 200 days to mine the first 1 million coins. The number of Bitcoins exceeded 16 million in November 2016. The remaining 4 million coins are not expected to be mined for the next 122 years.