What Happens When All 21 Million Bitcoin Are Mined?

Bitcoin keeps running after the last coin around 2140: transaction fees replace new coins as miner pay, and efficient Bitcoin miners on cheap power come out ahead.

By Michal Beno, CEO, OneMiners10 October 2026

Mining is a global competition. Specialised computers called Bitcoin miners make trillions of guesses per second, trying to find a number that lets them add the next block of transactions to the shared ledger, the blockchain. Together the network makes about 970 EH/s of guesses, where one exahash per second is a billion billion guesses every second. Roughly every ten minutes one miner wins and collects two things: the block subsidy (brand-new bitcoin) and the fees paid by the people whose transactions are in that block.

The 21 million cap is not a number stored in a vault. It is the result of one rule in Bitcoin's code: the subsidy is cut in half every 210,000 blocks, an event called the halving. Add up 50 BTC per block, then 25, then 12.5 and so on, and the total approaches 21 million without ever passing it.

A second rule, the difficulty adjustment, retunes the puzzle every 2,016 blocks (about two weeks) so blocks keep arriving near the ten-minute pace however many miners join. That steady pace is what makes the halving dates predictable. Today's difficulty is about 132.7 T, with the next adjustment estimated at around +2.4%.

Bitcoin launched in January 2009 with 50 BTC per block. The first halving, at block 210,000 on 28 November 2012, cut it to 25 BTC. The second, in July 2016, cut it to 12.5 BTC. The third, in May 2020, brought it to 6.25 BTC, and the fourth, at block 840,000 on 20 April 2024, set today's 3.125 BTC.

With about 144 blocks a day, the network creates around 450 new bitcoin per day. The block height is about 970,038, so the next halving at block 1,050,000 is roughly 80,000 blocks away, expected around spring 2028. From then on the reward is 1.5625 BTC, about 225 new bitcoin per day. Each halving keeps the same pattern: the supply of new coins shrinks, while the work needed to earn them does not.

As of block 970,039 on 5 October 2026, about 20,093,800 bitcoin had been issued, according to blockchain.info's supply counter. That is roughly 95.7% of the cap, leaving about 906,000 still to come. This is the surprising part: almost all bitcoin already exist, yet the last coins will take more than a century to arrive.

The reason is the halving itself. Each four-year era issues half as many coins as the one before, so each era mines half of whatever is left. By the 2028 halving about 96.9% of all bitcoin will exist, and by the 2036 halving about 99.2%. The final sliver then trickles out over roughly another hundred years.

Bitcoin can be split into 100 million pieces called satoshis. After enough halvings the subsidy shrinks below one satoshi and, because the code cannot pay a fraction of a satoshi, it becomes zero. That happens at block 6,930,000, after the 33rd halving. At ten minutes per block that lands around 2140. The exact date will drift a little, because blocks do not arrive at perfectly regular intervals, and rounding means the final total sits just under 21 million.

In practical terms, very little changes for users. Transactions still need to be checked, ordered and written into blocks, and the network still needs a large amount of computing power to secure that record against attack. Only the new-coin part of the miner's paycheck disappears.

A transaction fee is what a user pays to have a transfer included in a block. When the network is busy, users bid higher to get in sooner, and miners collect those bids. Right now fees are a small slice. Glassnode data, reported by ForkLog on 12 August 2026, showed fees at 0.69% of miner revenue on 11 August 2026, after a low of 0.52% in April 2026, and below 1% for nearly a full year. For comparison, The Block reported in December 2025 that fees made up roughly 7% of miner revenue in 2024, a year boosted by heavy demand from Ordinals and Runes, two ways of recording extra data and tokens on Bitcoin.

The open question, stated plainly: for fees to fully replace the subsidy, fee income per block has to grow a lot, the bitcoin price has to rise, or both. Nobody can promise that. What is certain is that the change is gradual. Each halving gives miners about four years to adjust, and the subsidy stays meaningful for decades.

Every halving cuts revenue per unit of work in half, so the cost side decides who keeps going. The key number is efficiency in joules per terahash (J/TH): the energy used for each trillion guesses. The network pays about $0.040 per TH/s per day before fees, a figure called hashprice. An Antminer S23 Hyd at 580 TH/s and 9.5 J/TH earns about $23 per day and draws 5.51 kW, about 132 kWh a day. At $0.048 per kWh that power costs about $6.35.

The clearest lesson is the break-even electricity price: the rate at which daily revenue just covers the power bill. Here it is today, and after the 2028 halving if price and network size stayed the same. They will not, but it shows the direction.

Break-even power price, today vs after the 2028 halving

Bitcoin miner	Efficiency	Today	After 2028
Antminer S23 Hyd 580T	9.5 J/TH	$0.175	$0.087
Antminer S21 Pro 245T	15.0 J/TH	$0.111	$0.055
Antminer S21 200T	17.6 J/TH	$0.094	$0.047

USD per kWh. Break-even = hashprice / (24 x J/TH), hashprice $0.0398 per TH/s per day, 5 October 2026. After 2028 assumes the same BTC price and network size.

Read the chart this way: after the next halving, on today's price and network, the S21 at 17.6 J/TH would sit right at a $0.048 power rate, while the S23 Hyd keeps a wide cushion. Price and network size will move, but the ranking does not: lower J/TH on cheaper power survives more halvings.

Antminer S23 Hyd 580T$12,299Hashrate580 TH/sEfficiency9.50 J/THPower draw5,510 WBreak-even power$0.175/kWhNet/day at 4.80c$16.74View on OneMiners

Antminer S21 Pro 245T$2,299Hashrate245 TH/sEfficiency15.00 J/THPower draw3,675 WBreak-even power$0.111/kWhNet/day at 4.80c$5.52View on OneMiners

Antminer S21 200T$907Hashrate200 TH/sEfficiency17.60 J/THPower draw3,520 WBreak-even power$0.094/kWhNet/day at 4.80c$3.90View on OneMiners

Three efficiency tiers, live OneMiners prices 6 October 2026. Card figures use hashprice including recent fees, so they can differ by a cent from the subsidy-only examples.

Frequently asked questions

Michal Beno

CEO of OneMiners, the global Bitcoin mining hosting and hardware platform with 15 published hosting locations, 7-year fixed electricity contracts and a 7-year hardware warranty. He writes about the economics of industrial Bitcoin mining.

Informational only, not financial advice. Figures are a snapshot from public market data and news reports as of 5 October 2026 and can change quickly. Crypto prices can fall as well as rise. No return is offered or implied. Do your own research.