OPN Intel · Supply
Supply & scarcity
There will only ever be 21 million bitcoin. The issuance is fixed in code — 50 per block at the start, halving every four years — so the supply curve is known in advance, all the way to the last coin around 2140. This is protocol arithmetic, not a projection (barring a change the whole network agrees to).
About 95.6% of all the bitcoin that will ever exist has already been issued. New supply is arriving at 0.8% a year and falling — already 2.1× scarcer than gold’s ~1.7%. At the next halving (~2028) the reward drops to 1.5625 BTC and issuance halves again.
The halving schedule
Every 210,000 blocks (~4 years) the block reward halves. Past dates are exact; future ones are estimates at ~146 blocks/day.
| Halving | When | Block | Reward after | % mined after |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | 2012 | 210,000 | 25 BTC | 50.0% |
| #2 | 2016 | 420,000 | 12.5 BTC | 75.0% |
| #3 | 2020 | 630,000 | 6.25 BTC | 87.5% |
| #4 | 2024 | 840,000 | 3.125 BTC | 93.8% |
| #5 | 2028 · est | 1,050,000 | 1.5625 BTC | 96.9% |
Show the full schedule — 2032 to the last coin (~2140)
| Halving | When | Block | Reward after | % mined after |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #6 | 2032 · est | 1,260,000 | 0.78125 BTC | 98.4% |
One honest footnote: “mined” counts coins issued, not coins still usable. Estimates put millions lost to forgotten keys forever — so the effective float is smaller than the number here.