17.85 million Bitcoins BTC have been mined, how long can the remaining 3.15 million BTC be mined?

On Wednesday, cryptocurrency enthusiasts announced on Twitter that the number of bitcoins mined has exceeded 17.85 million. This means that 85% of the 21 million bitcoins have been mined. Nevertheless, the remaining 15% will be slowly released in the next 100 years.
17.85 million Bitcoins BTC have been mined, how long can the remaining 3.15 million BTC be mined?

85% of Bitcoins have been mined

A new block on the Bitcoin network means that new coins are mined, and new bitcoins are mined approximately every 10 minutes. Currently, 12.5 bitcoins are produced per block, but by May 2020, this number will be reduced to 6.25, which is "halved." The mining rewards are halved every four years, until only a small amount of bitcoins are produced per block.
17.85 million Bitcoins BTC have been mined, how long can the remaining 3.15 million BTC be mined?

Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto set this supply ceiling for his invention. Unless there is a hard fork to force the total amount to be changed, the number of bitcoins in circulation will never exceed 21 million (interestingly, due to accidents such as coin loss, the actual number of bitcoins is less than 21 million).

Satoshi Nakamoto has never personally appeared to explain why the number 21 million was chosen, nor has he explained the concept of the upper limit of supply. Therefore, there are many relevant speculations.

Dan Held, co-founder of Interchange and former Uber founder, stated that the supply cap was set because Satoshi Nakamoto wanted to make Bitcoin a value-preserving product.

Held said that Satoshi Nakamoto talked about the status of Bitcoin as a commodity, so he believes that Satoshi Nakamoto is more inclined to use scarcity to give Bitcoin value, making it a value-preserving product.

Held also believes that Bitcoin plans to become an alternative to banks, not the new version of Visa, so Satoshi Nakamoto wrote the news headlines at the time in Coinbase in the genesis block. He believes that the total amount of 21 million, the block generation time of 10 minutes, and the block of 1MB can support his view.

As for whether Satoshi Nakamoto wants to make Bitcoin a value-preserving product or a payment tool, there are many related disputes. We may never wait for Satoshi Nakamoto's standard answer.

Bitcoin to change the total amount? Don't even think about it

It is worth noting that some people have already begun to discuss the issue of increasing the total amount of Bitcoin. According to Babbitt, at the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto roundtable this year, participants discussed the possibility of increasing the total amount.

Information about this meeting is very limited, and even the list of participants is unknown. The venue of the event is somewhere in Mexico. However, the information posted on Twitter by Matt Luongo of Fold indicates that someone has raised questions about the viability of deflationary Bitcoin.

Luongo explained that when most of the miners' income comes from transaction fees, the Bitcoin economy can become "unstable." He said that as the number of transactions on Bitcoin layer-1 (a protocol layer other than the Lightning Network and side chains) decreases, the Bitcoin main chain is vulnerable to block reorganization.

Therefore, he mentioned that it is possible to lift BTC's long-standing supply restrictions, "allowing the security of the Bitcoin blockchain at the expense of all holders."

However, this proposal has always only stayed at the proposal stage, and the Bitcoin community will not allow this to happen.