Bitcoin Has Issued 95.7% of Its Cap as Mining Subsidies Decline

Bitcoin (BTC) had issued about 20.1 million coins under its mining schedule by Oct. 20, leaving roughly 899,000 BTC to be created before block subsidies end around 2140.

At block 972,334, cumulative scheduled issuance stood at 20,101,046.875 BTC, or about 95.7% of the nominal 21 million limit. That calculation describes how many coins the schedule has created. It does not show how much of the existing supply owners can access or spend.

The network crossed the 20 million BTC mark at block 939,999 on March 9. The milestone did not change how new coins are created: miners receive a subsidy for adding each block and collect fees from the transactions they include.

The current subsidy is 3.125 BTC per block. It is cut in half every 210,000 blocks, reducing the amount of new bitcoin created with each successive subsidy period. The rule follows block height rather than a fixed calendar date.

Those cuts continue until the subsidy falls below one satoshi, bitcoin’s smallest unit, and reaches zero. Adding the scheduled subsidies using whole-satoshi amounts produces 20,999,999.9769 BTC. The familiar 21 million figure is a rounded description of that total.

The final subsidy is expected around 2140, but the year remains an estimate because the schedule counts blocks rather than elapsed time. Most of the planned supply has already been issued, while the remaining coins are expected to arrive over more than a century.

Once subsidies end, miners can still collect fees for including transactions in blocks. Those payments transfer existing BTC between users and miners; they do not create additional coins. The issuance schedule does not set future fee levels or determine how much miners will earn from them.

The next scheduled subsidy change comes at block 1,050,000, expected in 2028, when the subsidy for each new block will fall to 1.5625 BTC.