How long does it take to mine one bitcoin?

How long it takes to mine 1 bitcoin depends on how much of the network's total computing power you control. The network as a whole produces a block about every 10 minutes, but a single machine only earns its proportional share of those rewards. The math below is an estimate under stated assumptions, not a profit forecast.

How long does it take to mine a bitcoin block?

Bitcoin is designed to produce blocks at a steady pace. The Bitcoin developer guide explains that every 2,016 blocks the network compares how long they took against a two-week target and adjusts difficulty to match. Two weeks divided by 2,016 works out to 10 minutes per block. The difficulty adjustment guide covers this in detail.

Each block's reward is the block subsidy plus transaction fees. The subsidy fell from 6.25 to 3.125 bitcoin at the April 20, 2024 halving, at block 840,000. Halvings happen every 210,000 blocks, so the next one is due at block 1,050,000. So about 3.125 new bitcoin are created every 10 minutes for the whole network, plus fees.

How long to mine bitcoin with one ASIC?

The Bitcoin Wiki gives a simple formula. The average time for one machine to find a block equals the difficulty times 2 to the power of 32, divided by the machine's hashes per second.

Here are the assumptions for this example:

• Difficulty: 148.36 trillion, set at the October 29, 2026 adjustment, according to Hashrate Index. That is roughly 1,060 exahashes per second of network power.
• Machine: Bitmain's air-cooled Antminer S21, listed by Hashrate Index at 200 terahashes per second.
• Reward: subsidy only, ignoring fees, pool fees and downtime.

Mining alone, that machine would find a block about once every 100 years on average. Its share of the network is about 0.00002%. In a mining pool, where payouts track your share of the work, that share comes to roughly 0.000085 bitcoin a day, or about 32 years to reach 1 bitcoin. Solo mining is a lottery, so a lucky block could come much sooner or never.

How long to mine bitcoin on a PC?

Far longer. Old benchmarks in the Bitcoin Wiki show the best graphics cards of 2011 and 2012 reaching under 1 gigahash per second, and the Wiki notes that GPU mining became impractical once ASICs arrived. Even assuming a generous 1 gigahash per second, the same formula gives an average of about 20 million years per block, and more than 6 million years to earn 1 bitcoin in a pool. See can you mine bitcoin on a laptop for why.

Why do these numbers keep changing?

Every input moves. Difficulty resets every 2,016 blocks, and Hashrate Index reported it rising 5.54% in the October 29, 2026 adjustment alone. The subsidy halves at block 1,050,000, which doubles the time needed for the same hashrate. Fees add a little on top. To turn time into money, including electricity, see how is bitcoin mining profitability calculated.