A Community Proposal for Tokenomics Optimization - Annex
GitHubSome independent research on the distribution of Bitcoin coins (PoW mining):
1) Between 2.3 and 3.7 million bitcoin are lost, reducing market capitalisation by between 13% and 22%. Market capitalisation could be reduced by a further 35% if illiquid investor holdings are removed from the cap. 08/06/2018 Chainalysis
2) The maximum number of bitcoins that will ever be in circulation is 14 million. This maximum value was reached this month, April 2020. The available supply of bitcoins will decrease for the first time ever in May 2020. After the 2020 halving, the rate at which bitcoins are irretrievably lost will exceed the rate at which new bitcoins are mined. 16/04/2020 Cane Island Digital Research
3) Another 20% hasn’t moved from its current set of addresses in five years or longer. We consider this lost Bitcoin. 18/06/2020 Chainalysis
4) Our analysis shows that currently 78% of the circulating Bitcoin supply (14.5 million BTC) can be classified as being illiquid. 29/12/2020 Glassnode
In any explorer that shows the richest addresses (top-100 and top-100), the early miners' Bitcoin wallets such as those of Nakamoto (who altogether has 1 M BTC) and others are never present.
It is evident from the research that the circulating supply of Bitcoin reported by CMC, CoinGecko and others coincides with the mined coins and does not correspond with those actually in circulation since it includes the early miners' wallets and those with lost coins. This classification may be fine, but it should be uniform for all projects. If it were also applied to TON, i.e. if the various statistics sites had matched the circulating supply with the amount actually mined as is the case with Bitcoin, the TON Foundation's proposal would not have been necessary.