Every Bitcoin Cash block creates new coins for the miner who found it. How many is decided by one short rule in the node software, and that rule alone fixes the whole supply schedule. This guide walks through it.
The rule
The reward starts at 50 coins. For every 210,000 blocks that have passed, it is divided by two. In the software this is a bit shift on the amount in satoshis (one BCH is 100,000,000 satoshis), so the result is always rounded down to a whole satoshi.
- Blocks 0 to 209,999: 50
- Blocks 210,000 to 419,999: 25
- Blocks 420,000 to 629,999: 12.5
- Blocks 630,000 to 839,999: 6.25
- Blocks 840,000 to 1,049,999: 3.125 (the current era)
- Blocks 1,050,000 to 1,259,999: 1.5625
The homepage shows where in the current era the chain is.
How much each era issues
An era has 210,000 blocks, so the coins it creates are 210,000 times its reward.
| Era | Reward | Coins issued in the era | Issued in total at its end |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 50 | 10,500,000 | 10,500,000 |
| 2 | 25 | 5,250,000 | 15,750,000 |
| 3 | 12.5 | 2,625,000 | 18,375,000 |
| 4 | 6.25 | 1,312,500 | 19,687,500 |
| 5 | 3.125 | 656,250 | 20,343,750 |
| 6 | 1.5625 | 328,125 | 20,671,875 |
Each era adds half of what the one before added. That is why the total approaches 21 million but never reaches it.
Why the cap is just under 21 million
If the reward could be halved forever without rounding, the sum would be exactly 21,000,000. Because the reward is rounded down to whole satoshis, a tiny amount is lost in the later eras. After 33 halvings the reward is less than one satoshi and becomes zero. The last block with a reward is block 6,929,999, and the schedule ends at 20,999,999.9769 BCH.
At ten minutes per block that last block is more than a century away, around the year 2140.
Coins per day and inflation
At the target of 144 blocks a day the current era creates 450 BCH per day, about 164,250 BCH per year. After block 1,050,000 it is 225 BCH per day, about 82,125 BCH per year. Measured against the coins already issued, yearly issuance falls from roughly 0.8 percent to roughly 0.4 percent.
The real number of blocks per day is usually a little above or below 144, so the real daily issuance moves with it.
Issued is not the same as spendable
The schedule says how many coins have been created. A small number can never be spent: rewards that miners did not fully claim, coins sent to provably unspendable outputs, and coins whose keys are lost. A node can report the sum of all unspent outputs, which is slightly below the scheduled figure.
Shared history with Bitcoin
The first two eras and the first part of the third happened before Bitcoin Cash split from Bitcoin in August 2017. Everyone who held bitcoin at the split held the same amount of Bitcoin Cash, so the coins of those eras exist on both chains. From the split on, each chain issues its own coins on the same schedule. The comparison is on the halving race page.
For miners
Fees on Bitcoin Cash are small compared with the block reward, so a halving cuts mining income in BCH nearly in half. The mining calculator shows the effect for a given hashrate. It is a comparison under stated assumptions, not a forecast.