There are 18.8 million Bitcoin in the world
To date, there are approximately 18.8 million Bitcoin and there will only be 21 million Bitcoin, according to Hut 8.
Hut 8 is a digital asset mining company with industrial-scale operations in Alberta, Canada.
All Bitcoin is expected to be mined by 2140.
Bitcoin is a digital currency that enables worldwide peer-to-peer transactions over the Internet.
It is also independent of any central authority, such as a bank or a government.
Instead, it is governed by a pre-programmed algorithm called the Secure Hash Algorithm 256 (SHA-256) that is backed by millions of computers around the world called «miners.»
Miners record transactions and verify their authenticity.
While fiat currencies are controlled by central banks and governments, miners are spread across the world and store transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain, which is a digital public ledger that can be accessed by anyone.
Bitcoin
This global and transparent system is known as «decentralized control» since the management of Bitcoin does not have a central point of failure or attack.
Unlike fiat currencies, which have an unlimited supply that is controlled by governments and central banks, the supply of Bitcoin is controlled by SHA-256 to keep its availability in short supply and the total supply fixed.
Due to scarcity and the computational power required to mine Bitcoin, it is often referred to as «digital gold.»
Blockchain
The Bitcoin blockchain is a cloud-based digital public ledger where Bitcoin transactions are grouped together and represented as a block on a network chain, containing all the relevant details of the transactions.
At the same time, the Bitcoin blockchain is maintained by a community of miners.
All transactions on the blockchain are transparent and designed to make it extremely difficult to add, delete, or change data without being detected by users.
For its part, mining is the process of verifying Bitcoin transactions by solving a computationally difficult encrypted code, called a «hash.»
The hash rate is the number of attempts to resolve the encryption code that the computer can process per second.
The miners use equipment that produces a high hash rate, as it leads to more attempts to solve the encryption code.
The average hash rate over a two-week period determines the network’s difficulty rate, which is set every two weeks.
The difficulty of the network is a measure of how difficult it is to solve a block.
This computational process of hashing the code is known as proof of work. Bitcoin miners use Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) computer chips to compete with each other to correctly resolve the encryption code.
