History of Bitcoin Mining

The final bitcoin won’t hit the market until the year 2140, but the transactions will keep happening, and miners will get their share through that. There is a Bitcoin Improvement Protocol (BIP) for miners from where miners can make decisions on some matters of the mining.

The rewards generated from bitcoin mining keep reducing by half every four years on average.

There is a goal of reaching 21 million bitcoins, out of which around 19 million bitcoins are already in circulation. If there are no miners to create bitcoin, there will still be bitcoins in the market, but there will be no additional bitcoins, and it will be an unsafe process to transfer a bitcoin.

In 2009, mining a single block rewarded 50 bitcoins. In 2012, it was decreased to 25 bitcoins. The number was 12.5 bitcoins in 2016, and as of 2021, it is 6.25 bitcoins for each block.

Bitcoins were initially mined on regular desktop computers, which was a slow process. Later the bitcoins are generated using mining pools spread across various parts of the globe.

Coming at the correct hash is wholly based on how quickly a system can generate hash numbers.  In the early years, it was with CPUs but now GPUs are used for mining. On a normal CPU, it will take thousands of years to find a block. Lately, miners have been using ASIC machines for mining. 

Bitcoin mining is legal in most of the countries in the world, but it is an illegal activity in several countries like Algeria, Pakistan, Nepal, Egypt, Ecuador, etc.