Why is 2140 the end of bitcoin inflation?

The final Bitcoin halving, where the mining reward becomes smaller than one satoshi, is expected to occur in 2140

article-image

Artwork by Crystal Le

share

It’s well known that the Bitcoin network experiences a halving of supply approximately every four years. Less appreciated is that these are set to continue for over a century into the future.

Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto programmed the year 2140 — 30 halvings from now — as the year that the block rewards (the subsidy paid to miners for processing transactions into blocks) would drop to less than one satoshi, the smallest unit of bitcoin.

The use of the term “satoshi” — equivalent to 100 millionth of a bitcoin (or 0.00000001 BTC) — emerged organically among early Bitcoin users and developers, appearing in various forums and discussions starting in 2010 or 2011, and became widely accepted in 2013.

Read more: The Bitcoin halving is about a month away — here’s what you can expect

The halving is modeled after the physical mining of scarce resources, according to Jameson Lopp, co-founder and chief security officer at Casa.

“There’s nothing special about the year 2140,” Lopp told Blockworks. “It’s just how the nature of halvings along with the level of precision of satoshis ended up working out.”

Lopp notes that Nakamoto explained the supply schedule to Mike Hearn, a former Google engineer who became an early Bitcoin contributor, in 2009:

“My choice for the number of coins and distribution schedule was an educated guess,” Satoshi wrote. “I wanted to pick something that would make prices similar to existing currencies, but without knowing the future, that’s very hard.”

Read more: Satoshi warned against labeling bitcoin as an ‘investment’

He picked 21 million, but Satoshi added that the divisibility of a bitcoin in practice could be represented differently depending on how valuable one bitcoin gets. “For example, if 0.001 is worth one euro, then it might be easier to change where the decimal point is displayed, so if you had one bitcoin it’s now displayed as 1000, and 0.001 is displayed as one.”

For what it’s worth, 0.001 BTC is worth about 65 euros (approximately $70) today.

Why the rate of issuance would decline for 132 years, however, was never explained.

“I expect it was more of a ‘better safe than sorry’ decision to give the system decades to bootstrap,” Lopp said.

Unless the price of bitcoin (BTC) doubles every four years, each halving brings less income from block rewards to miners. So to maintain the network’s hashrate, which is important for Bitcoin’s security, transaction fees will become more important over time.

Whether that will happen in practice remains to be seen, but Lopp is optimistic.

“I expect that as we see the multi-layered Bitcoin ecosystem continue to expand, the base chain will start to look more and more like a high-value cryptographic accumulator and it will make economic sense for on-chain transactions to pay relatively high fees,” he said.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

  • Blockworks Daily: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.
  • Empire: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.
  • Forward Guidance: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.
  • 0xResearch: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.
  • Lightspeed: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto’s hottest networks.
  • The Drop: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.
  • Supply Shock: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.
Tags

Upcoming Events

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

tg trading bot report graphic.png

Research

Telegram trading bots have found their primary niche in highly speculative token launches and retail-dominated memecoin markets, with many features specifically tailored to token sniping and copy-trading strategies.

article-image

Ethereum is hoping that increased DA will grow user demand — and its profits through DA fees

article-image

11 years ago, Bitcoin contributors prevented a supply crisis… two centuries from now

article-image

Both samczsun and ZachXBT have issued warnings after the Bybit hack last month

article-image

The investor criticized Michael Saylor’s plan to render his personal bitcoin holdings inaccessible to anyone else forever

article-image

The exchange has structural defenses and protocols to limit manipulations

article-image

Upshift is being spun out of August, which raised $10 million earlier this month