How Will the Network Continue after All Bitcoin Has Been Mined?
Bitcoin has a maximum supply of 21 million and controls the issuance schedule through halvings and difficulty adjustments. The last bitcoin is expected to be produced around 2140, after which miners' revenue will shift from new block rewards to transaction fees.
Fixed Limit and Issuance Progress
The Bitcoin protocol limits total supply to 21 million. As of August 2025, approximately 19.91 million had been mined, representing about 94.8% of the limit. Because the block reward is halved approximately every four years, the remaining bitcoin will be issued at an increasingly slow rate, and the last one is not expected to be produced until around 2140.
Faster Machines Do Not Finish Mining Early
The Bitcoin network targets an average of about 10 minutes for the production of a new block. More mining machines or improved performance raises the network-wide hash rate, but the protocol increases mining difficulty accordingly; if the hash rate falls, difficulty also declines. Hardware upgrades therefore do not simply cause all bitcoin to be mined much earlier, but mainly change competition among miners.
Miner Revenue after Block Rewards End
After the last bitcoin is produced, miners will no longer receive newly issued BTC and will depend solely on transaction fees paid by users. Fees will need to be sufficient to cover mining costs and maintain security incentives. Possible future outcomes include higher fees, more transactions moving to scaling solutions such as the lightning network, or some miners leaving because revenue is insufficient.
Mined Does Not Mean Usable
The quantity mined on-chain is not exactly the same as the quantity actually available for circulation. The evidence says that some bitcoin may be permanently unrecoverable because of lost private keys, damaged hard drives, or forgotten wallets and cites an estimate as high as approximately 20%. The proportion is an analytical estimate, not a precise statistic that the protocol can confirm directly.
Original Tutorial
https://www.binance.com/zh-CN/academy/articles/what-happens-after-all-bitcoins-are-mined
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