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Supply

Supply and issuance

How new bitcoin enters circulation, why it stops, and what is genuinely unknown about the coins already issued.

Issued so far

Protocol rule
What does this mean?
The sum of every block subsidy up to the current height, derived from consensus rules. Lost coins are still included.

Current subsidy

Protocol rule
What does this mean?
The new bitcoin created per block in the current halving era.

Next halving

Estimate
What does this mean?
The height is a protocol rule; the date is an estimate because blocks average ten minutes rather than taking exactly ten.

Protocol rule

The issuance schedule

Every 210,000 blocks the subsidy halves. The sequence is fully determined by the rules; only calendar dates are estimates.

Halving schedule
EraFrom blockSubsidyCumulativeEstimated date
0050 BTC10,500,000 BTC…
1210,00025 BTC15,750,000 BTC…
2420,00012.5 BTC18,375,000 BTC…
3630,0006.25 BTC19,687,500 BTC…
4840,0003.125 BTC20,343,750 BTC…
51,050,0001.5625 BTC20,671,875 BTC…
61,260,0000.78125 BTC20,835,938 BTC…
71,470,0000.390625 BTC20,917,969 BTC…
81,680,0000.1953125 BTC20,958,984 BTC…
91,890,0000.09765625 BTC20,979,492 BTC…
102,100,0000.04882812 BTC20,989,746 BTC…
112,310,0000.02441406 BTC20,994,873 BTC…

What we do not know

Supply is exact. The number of usable coins is not. These uncertainties belong in an honest explanation.

  • How much bitcoin is lost to discarded keys is unknown; estimates vary widely and remain estimates.
  • The real final total is slightly below 21,000,000 because subsidies round down to whole satoshis and a few early blocks claimed less than allowed.
  • Addresses are not people. Distribution statistics per address say little about ownership.
  • Future dates are projections based on a ten-minute average, not promises.

Sources