3. How much Bitcoin will miners receive after the next halving?

Every new block will produce 6.25 BTC. At inception, the reward was eight times as much.

When Bitcoin was launched in 2009, miners were receiving 50 BTC per block. Thus, a total of 10,500,000 BTC was generated before the next halving took place in November 2012, when miners began to receive 25 BTC for each block.

It may seem like an overly generous bonus (more than $365,000 per block, based on current value), but the network was only just starting to develop at the time, and no one knew for certain whether people would continue to find the concept worthy of investing their computer processing power into the Bitcoin blockchain to keep it alive.

Related: What Powers China’s Crypto Mining Industry, and Is It Sustainable?

Another fact to take into account is that the all-time high market price for that period was $31 per BTC in June 2011, but that “bubble” later burst and Bitcoin was back to $2 before the year’s end. Nevertheless, mining has ultimately turned out to be much more profitable for those who got in early, which is a big part of the reason Bitcoin critics call it a Ponzi scheme.

The second Bitcoin halving occurred on July 6, 2016, as block number 420,000 was produced and miners began collecting 12.5 BTC for every new block, which is the current rate. The third halving will reduce that rate in half yet again, which will lower the block reward to just 6.25 BTC, or around $45,000 given the current market price.