# Halvings and the subsidy

The block subsidy, what Blockspace Holdings' documents say about it and the halving schedule, the fees beside it, and the sats coinbases never claimed.

URL: https://blockspace.wiki/basics/halvings-and-the-subsidy/

In Blockspace Value Theory's account, a miner's revenue for a [block](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/block/) has two parts: the [block subsidy](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/block-subsidy/) and the fees of the transactions it includes. This page gives what Blockspace Holdings' documents record about the subsidy. They do not give the halving schedule's interval or its dates, so this page does not either.

## The subsidy now

Blockspace Value Theory (v3.0, July 2026) lists the current block subsidy as **3.125 BTC**, in its table of measured network figures. It describes the subsidy as one that "currently dominates miner revenue and is identical for every block".

On the supply of bitcoin itself, BVT says: "The 21 million cap is enforced by every validating node rejecting inflationary blocks."

## The halving schedule, as BVT uses it

BVT mentions the halving schedule once, as a comparison it withdrew. Version 2.0 had treated a ceiling of about 210 GB of blockspace a year "as analogous to Bitcoin's halving schedule — a known, protocol-guaranteed supply curve". Version 3.0 calls that an error: blockspace "does not follow a curve; it follows the fee market." See [why blockspace is scarce](/basics/why-blockspace-is-scarce/).

## When fees become the reward

*This section reports Blockspace Value Theory, a living document and an untested thesis.*

BVT's risk chapter starts from the subsidy: because it is the same in every block, "extending the chain tip is always rational". "As the subsidy approaches zero and fees become the reward, that changes — because fees are lumpy in a way the subsidy never was." It cites Carlsten et al. (2016) on the incentive this creates to [reorg](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/reorg/) a block with unusually high fees rather than build on it. BVT notes that its own long thesis assumes fee revenue rises to replace the subsidy, and that this is "the scenario in which this problem is most acute".

Fees so far: the census has counted 30,078,484,994,465 sats in fees over the whole chain (as of block 972,318, 2026-10-20 12:15:32 UTC).

## Sats a coinbase never claimed

Each block begins with a [coinbase transaction](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/coinbase-transaction/), written by the miner. blockspacelabs.com describes [lost sats](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/lost-sats/) as "sats that coinbase transactions never claimed, so they exist in no output". ord, on [Blockspace Holdings' own node and indexers](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/blockspace-holdings-node-and-indexers/), counted 2,895,844,904 lost sats (as of block 972,320, 2026-10-20 12:17:53 UTC).

Sources:

- block.space docs: Blockspace Value Theory · https://block.space/docs/bvt
- block.space docs: data types · https://block.space/docs/datatypes
- The blockspacelabs.com page (index.html) · https://blockspacelabs.com
- ord /status (the blockspace.to ord server) · https://blockspace.to/status
- block.space meter and summary APIs · https://block.space/api/summary

Live figures: census as of block 972,318, 2026-10-20 12:15:32 UTC; ord as of block 972,320, 2026-10-20 12:17:53 UTC

Updated: 2026-10-20