The XBT coinbase unlock is about three weeks away. Here's what changes.
Since late September, every new XBT block reward has been locked for 6,480 blocks, about 45 days. The lock window ends at block 979,920, around the end of October. When it does, miners go from having almost no newly mined coins to spend to having a steady flow of them, unless the community votes to extend the lock first.
How the lock works
Normally a miner can spend a block reward 100 blocks after mining it. A soft fork, enforced by about 85% of reachable XBT nodes, raised that to 6,480 blocks for rewards mined between blocks 973,440 and 979,920. That's 6,480 blocks of rewards at 3.125 XBT each: about 20,250 XBT, roughly $17 million at today's price.
What happens at block 979,920
Two things start at about the same time:
- The locked rewards begin to unlock, one block's worth at a time, in the order they were mined. That's about 450 XBT a day for roughly 45 days.
- New rewards go back to normal. Blocks mined after 979,920 return to the usual 100-block wait, so fresh rewards become spendable within about a day. That's roughly another 450 XBT a day.
Put together, coins miners are free to sell could go from close to zero a day to roughly 900 a day for about six weeks, then settle back to about 450. How much of that actually gets sold is up to miners. Many mine to hold.
When, exactly?
The unlock starts at a block height, not a date. At the current pace of about 8.5 minutes per block, it lands around Oct 30. The difficulty increase expected around Oct 17 should slow blocks toward 10 minutes, which would push it closer to Nov 1. The live countdown updates with every block.
The vote could change all of it
A community poll is weighing an extension of the lock until the RDTS soft fork expires, about a year from now. If a new rule activates before block 979,920, the unlock could be pushed back by months. The vote, explained.
Not financial advice. Estimates assume the current lock rules, a 3.125 XBT subsidy and about 144 blocks a day; fees and block timing will move the numbers. As of Oct 11, 2026.