Bitcoin Supply Capped at 21 Million as Blockchain Relies on Computational Power

Bitcoin's restrictive supply of 21 million coins is one of its key characteristics.

The blockchain, a public ledger of transactions, relies on computational power to validate and record trades. Miners receive rewards for creating new blocks, which are batches of transactions secured by cryptographic formulas.

A hard fork in the protocol would allow older nodes to reject new rules, potentially splitting the network if both laws sets continue operating. A soft fork tightens opinion legislation while allowing nodes that remain enforcing the old, looser rules to continue doing so.