Bitcoin's Block Rewards Running on Fumes

Roughly 95.5% of all the Bitcoin that will ever exist has already been mined, and the remaining 950,000 coins will take another 114 years to arrive. Those coins are worth around $60 billion at today's Bitcoin price, but they trickle out so slowly that Bitcoin is already about as scarce as it will ever get.

Miners collect 3.125 bitcoin for every block, worth about $200,000 at current prices, and this figure halves roughly every four years. The next cut arrives around April 2028 and takes it to 1.5625 coins. Each halving after that cuts it in half again, until the reward reaches a single satoshi and rounds down to nothing around 2140.

The Bitcoin network currently relies on block rewards for miners' income. However, as these rewards shrink, transaction fees are expected to take over as the primary source of revenue. But despite this expectation, fees have actually been falling as a share of miner pay since April 2024's halving.