Block Rewards

What this measures

This chart tracks the average reward earned by the miner of a block, in BTC, based on mempool.space data. It adds up 2 things: the subsidy, meaning the bitcoin newly created by the protocol with each block, and the fees paid by the transactions the miner included. Both are paid out through the first transaction in the block, known as the coinbase. It is the only way new bitcoin ever enters circulation.

A schedule written into the code

The subsidy has nothing to do with the market. It is cut in half every 210,000 blocks, roughly every 4 years: 50 BTC at launch in 2009, 25 in 2012, 12.5 in 2016, 6.25 in 2020, then 3.125 BTC since the April 2024 halving at block 840,000. The next one will happen at block 1,050,000, around 2028, and bring the subsidy down to 1.5625 BTC. Its exact date will depend on the actual pace of blocks.

On the chart, these halvings draw a staircase. Anything above the subsidy floor is fees. When the curve lifts clearly above that floor, demand for block space has tightened, which the block fees chart breaks down.

Two things to keep in mind. Values are averages per period, in BTC rather than dollars: a reward that is stable in bitcoin can be worth very different amounts depending on the price. And a miner cannot spend their reward right away: the protocol requires a wait of 100 blocks, a little under 17 hours, before it becomes spendable.

Issuance no one can force

This schedule is the concrete form of the 21 million bitcoin cap. No miner can pay themselves more than the rules allow: a block claiming too large a reward would be rejected by nodes, whatever hashpower stands behind it. A miner can, however, claim less, and the unclaimed bitcoin is then lost forever.

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The consequence is mechanical. With every halving, the fee share of the reward grows, not necessarily because fees rise, but because the subsidy shrinks. Around 2140 it will be gone entirely, and miners will be paid by fees alone. What these rewards add up to over a full day shows up in miner revenue.

The schedule itself has been public since 2009. The sensitive part lies elsewhere: each halving takes away half of miners’ guaranteed income and sends them, for the rest, to a fee market none of them controls.