With just over 1 million BTC remaining to be mined, we're looking at a supply picture that's already 95% circulating. What makes this interesting isn't some theoretical limit—it's baked into the protocol itself.

No board meeting can suddenly authorize fresh coins into existence. No market crisis rewrites the rules. No emergency powers change the math.

Bitcoin's scarcity operates on a different level. It's not backed by promises or institutional commitments. The constraint is enforced at the code level—transparent, immutable, and verifiable by anyone running a node. That's the distinction that separates it from traditional monetary systems.