Block reward
Also called: block subsidy, coinbase reward
The block reward is what the miner who finds a block receives: newly created coins plus the fees of the transactions included.
When a miner, or a pool, finds a valid block, it is entitled to include a special transaction in it, called the coinbase transaction, which pays it the block reward. This reward has two components: the subsidy, meaning coins created according to the protocol's rules, and the fees paid by users whose transactions are included in the block.
On Bitcoin, the subsidy has been 3.125 BTC since the April 2024 halving. It is cut in half every 210,000 blocks, so the total number of bitcoins gradually approaches 21 million without ever exceeding it. As the subsidy falls, transaction fees make up a larger share of miners' income. These fees vary a lot from one block to the next depending on network activity.
For an individual, the reward for an entire block is rarely within reach: with a single machine, finding a Bitcoin block is a lottery. In a pool, the reward is shared among all participants according to their hashrate. That is why a machine's earnings are often counted in satoshis, and why they depend on the subsidy, the fees, the difficulty and the pool's payout method all at once.
Our Bitcoin collection brings together the SHA-256 machines able to take part in this race for blocks.