Bitcoin News

Story: Bitcoin’s Last 929,465 Coins Will Take Over 100 Years to Mine

By Dan Saada

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What the Next Two Halvings Actually Mean. The next halving, expected around 2028, drops the block reward to 1.5625 BTC.

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Lost Coins, Thin Margins, and the Real Supply Picture. Here's something that doesn't get enough attention: the actual circulating supply is probably…

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The 2028 Halving as the Next Real Test. The 2028 halving is the one to watch. It's the first one that cuts supply below 100,000 BTC per…

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About 929,465 bitcoins are still sitting there, waiting to be dug out. And at the current pace, the last one won't hit circulation until somewhere around 2140.

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That's not a glitch or a delay. It's the point. Bitcoin's code was written this way from the start — a deliberate, almost mechanical slowdown baked into the network's DNA since…

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The network has already mined roughly 20.07 million BTC as of block height 962,570. That leaves the remaining coins at just 4.43% of the total 21 million cap.

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The next halving, expected around 2028, drops the block reward to 1.5625 BTC. Then in 2032, it falls again to 0.78125 BTC. Those aren't big numbers.

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For miners, that's a direct hit to revenue. Their income comes from two places: newly minted coins and transaction fees. Right now, fees account for only 0.

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The hashrate tells part of the story. Total computing power on the network hit roughly 900 exahashes per second over a recent weekend.

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See also: Adam Back vs. Peter Todd: Bitcoins 21 Million Cap Debate Splits Core Developers

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Bitcoin's design also has a quirk worth knowing. The maximum supply isn't a clean 21 million.

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The difficulty adjustment keeps everything running regardless. Every roughly two weeks, Bitcoin recalibrates how hard it is to mine a block.

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Some public mining companies have already started pivoting. Faced with a hashprice bear market and shrinking subsidies, a handful of operators have shifted resources toward…

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The pressure won't let up. Each halving tightens the squeeze on miners who haven't upgraded their machines or cut their energy costs. Less efficient rigs get retired.

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The 2028 halving is the one to watch. It's the first one that cuts supply below 100,000 BTC per year in new issuance. That's a threshold the market hasn't seen before.

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