Every person alive, set against a currency that cannot print more of itself. The world’s population keeps growing; Bitcoin’s supply is capped at 21 million coins and most of it is already mined — so every birth divides a fixed pie a little thinner. Here is what that looks like in the actual numbers.
“It might make sense just to get some in case it catches on. If enough people think the same way, that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.”— Satoshi Nakamoto, January 2009, days after the first bitcoin transaction
live· block 966,538 · population model anchored June 25, 2026
Even that "issued" figure overstates what can ever be spent: block 501,726, mined December 30, 2017, has a coinbase transaction that claims 0 BTC instead of the 12.5 BTC subsidy then in effect — an entirely empty block, its reward destroyed by whatever mining bug produced it. That satoshi will never exist. The 21 million cap this page computes from the halving schedule is Bitcoin’s theoretical ceiling; the real one is smaller still, and no one can ever put it back.
Computed from Bitcoin’s halving schedule and the population model above, month by month since 2020. Halvings marked; the last point is today’s real issued supply.
$471.000 T of global household wealth, divided by a fixed supply of 21 million coins — UBS Global Wealth Report 2025 · year-end 2024.
21 million bitcoin will ever exist, split among the world’s millionaires — UBS Global Wealth Report 2025 · year-end 2024.
There are 60,000,000 USD millionaires alive and only 20,999,950 bitcoin will ever exist — so if every one of them wanted in, each would get just 0.3500 BTC.
Four different kinds of number sit on this page, and they are not equally true.
The chart's historical points use the theoretical ten-minutes-a-block schedule rather than real block timestamps — real blocks land a little faster than that on average, which is why the live point sits a hair off the theoretical line. Sources: the UN World Population Prospects, the UBS Global Wealth Report, and mempool.space — all public. Nothing here is investment advice, and nothing here is for sale.