How many Bitcoins are left to mine?
Quick Answer
Roughly 1 million of the 21 million cap remain — about 19.9 million are already mined. New supply trickles out at 3.125 BTC per block until the 2028 halving, with the final satoshi expected around 2140.
TL;DR
~95% of all Bitcoin already exists. The last 5% takes over a century to issue, in halving steps.
Key Takeaways
- 1About 19.9M of 21M BTC are mined — over 94% of total supply
- 2Issuance: 3.125 BTC/block (~450/day) until the 2028 halving
- 3The last Bitcoin arrives around 2140 due to halving geometry
- 4Millions of mined coins are estimated permanently lost — real supply is lower
Full Explanation
Bitcoin's supply is the most predictable in monetary history: about 19.9 million coins exist today out of a hard cap of 21 million, leaving roughly 1.1 million still to be issued. New coins arrive only as block rewards — currently 3.125 BTC per block, roughly 450 per day — and that rate halves every 210,000 blocks.
The geometry of halving explains the strange timeline. Over 94% of supply was issued in Bitcoin's first 15 years, yet the final coins won't arrive until around 2140: each four-year era issues half as much as the last, so the remaining amounts shrink toward zero without quite touching it until the final satoshi.
Two footnotes change the practical picture. First, the 21 million overstates real supply: forensic studies estimate millions of coins are permanently lost — Satoshi-era wallets, discarded hard drives, forgotten keys — making circulating Bitcoin scarcer than the headline number. Second, 'running out' of new coins isn't a crisis but a design milestone: mining doesn't stop in 2140; miners simply earn transaction fees instead of new issuance, a transition already gradually underway.