The reward
The winner collects the block subsidy plus the fees, written into the block itself.
Step 9 of 143 min readUpdated October 5, 2026
Subsidy plus fees#
The miner of a block receives two things: the block subsidy, currently 3.125 BTC, and the fees paid by the transactions included in the block. They claim both in the coinbase, the first transaction of the block, which they write themselves.
A real coinbase, output by output#
The coinbase of block 969,985, decoded in your browser. The pool that found it paid itself in two outputs; the six others carry no value, only data commitments required or used by the protocol and by the pool.
| Output | Paid to | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| #0 | 1K6KoYC69NnafWJ7YgtrpwJxBLiijWqwa6 | 0.00000546 BTC |
| #1 | 1AfCc4F9c4VTYSE31PUe2kUEKs6ZxiDjxm | 3.15421454 BTC |
| #2 | Data commitment, no value | 0 BTC |
| #3 | Data commitment, no value | 0 BTC |
| #4 | Data commitment, no value | 0 BTC |
| #5 | Data commitment, no value | 0 BTC |
| #6 | Data commitment, no value | 0 BTC |
| #7 | Data commitment, no value | 0 BTC |
- Block subsidy
- 3.125 BTC
- Transaction fees
- 0.02922 BTC
- Total created by this transaction
- 3.15422 BTC
Total: exactly the subsidy plus the fees of the 3,948 other transactions. One satoshi more, and every node would have rejected the block.
Not created from nothing#
The subsidy is how new bitcoins enter circulation, but its amount is not up to the miner: it follows a schedule written into the protocol and enforced by every node. It started at 50 BTC and halves every 210,000 blocks, about every four years, so the total will never exceed 21 million.
| Block | Date | Subsidy |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | January 2009 | 50 BTC |
| 210,000 | November 2012 | 25 BTC |
| 420,000 | July 2016 | 12.5 BTC |
| 630,000 | May 2020 | 6.25 BTC |
| 840,000 | April 2024 | 3.125 BTC |
| 1,050,000 | expected around 2028 | 1.5625 BTC |
Spendable after 100 blocks#
Technical details
Coins created by a coinbase can only be spent once 100 more blocks have been added on top, about 17 hours. This protects the network if the block is later abandoned in a fork: the reward of an abandoned block never existed.