Bitcoin’s circulating supply has reached approximately 20.07 million coins, leaving roughly 929,465 BTC still to be issued under the protocol’s hard cap of 21 million. That remaining portion will take more than a century to enter circulation because of the network’s programmed halving schedule, which steadily reduces the block subsidy until issuance effectively ends around the year 2140.
The figure is derived directly from on-chain measurements of total mined supply at recent block heights near 962,570.
At the current subsidy of 3.125 BTC per block and an average of one block every ten minutes, new coins are created at a rate of about 450 BTC per day, or roughly 164,250 BTC per year.
This rate is fixed by code and cannot be altered by any central authority.Every 210,000 blocks—approximately every four years—the reward paid to miners is cut in half.
The original subsidy began at 50 BTC, then fell through successive halvings to 25, 12.5, 6.25, and today’s 3.125 BTC.
The next reduction is projected for 2028, when the subsidy drops to 1.5625 BTC and daily issuance falls to around 225 BTC.
Subsequent halvings continue this decline, so that by the early 2030s the daily output will be measured in tens of BTC rather than hundreds.Because issuance was front-loaded, the network reached 50 percent of its maximum supply in its first few years and 75 percent not long afterward.
The 95 percent threshold was crossed in late 2025. Reaching 99 percent is expected around 2035.
The final 1 percent, however, stretches across decades as the subsidy shrinks toward zero.There will be no single block that releases the “last” whole bitcoin.
By the time the schedule approaches 2140, rewards will have dwindled to fractions of a satoshi—the smallest unit of bitcoin, equal to one hundred-millionth of a BTC. After the final one-satoshi era, the subsidy reaches zero.
The theoretical maximum is actually slightly under 21 million (approximately 20,999,999.9769 BTC) because the protocol uses integer arithmetic that cannot create fractions smaller than one satoshi.
Miners currently earn the bulk of their revenue from the block subsidy; transaction fees still represent only a small percentage of total income in most periods.
Each halving therefore forces the industry to rely more heavily on fees, higher bitcoin prices, more efficient hardware, or lower energy costs.
Hashrate—the total computational power securing the network—remains high, but the long-term security budget depends on whether fees can eventually replace the disappearing subsidy.
The remaining 929,465 BTC are not the same as coins available for purchase.
A meaningful portion of already-mined bitcoin is believed to be permanently inaccessible due to lost private keys or other irreversible losses, further tightening effective supply. The next major test arrives with the 2028 halving, when the pace of new issuance will slow once more and the network’s economic incentives will be tested again.