Coinbase lock · Oct 19, 2026

1,908 blocks to XBT’s unlock: what happens at block 979,920

By xbt.live · 4 minute read

About 1,900 blocks from now, most likely early on Nov 1 (UTC), XBT's coinbase lock ends. At block 979,920, about 20,250 XBT of mining rewards becomes spendable at once by consensus. Here's what happens, who holds those coins, and what could still change.

Timeline from Oct 19 at block 978,012 to the unlock at block 979,920, likely Oct 31 to Nov 1, with a difficulty adjustment at block 979,776 about a day before

When

Block 979,920, 1,908 blocks after today's block 978,012.
At the current pace of about 9 minutes 43 seconds per block, that's around Nov 1, 09:00 UTC. Block speed varies, so anywhere from Oct 31 to late Nov 1 is realistic. Our live countdown updates every block.
A difficulty adjustment comes first, at block 979,776, about a day earlier. It's tracking close to flat right now.

What unlocks, block by block

Block 979,919: every reward mined since block 973,440 is still locked. No valid block can spend them.
Block 979,920: the lock is gone for all of them at once, about 20,250 XBT across 6,480 blocks of rewards. Any miner can include a spend of any of them in a block.
After that, through Knots mempools: Knots nodes only relay spends of rewards that are at least 6,480 blocks old. Each lock-window reward reaches that age one block at a time, so through normal relay about one block's reward (around 3.1 XBT) frees up per block, roughly 450 XBT a day.
Pools that build their own blocks don't need relay. They can put their own spends straight into blocks they mine. Why it's a cliff, not a drip

Who holds the locked rewards

Our tracker has counted the first third of the lock window so far (blocks 973,440 to 975,551). By the XBT locked there:

Pool	Share of locked XBT counted so far
AlphaPool	34%
Lazarus	25%
DxPool	10%
B2Pool	7%
Omega Pool	5%
CONVOY	3%
Everyone else	16%

Much of it sits in coinbase outputs paid directly to individual miners: the counted rewards are split across more than 168,000 outputs. The full table updates on the tracker as counting continues.

What could still change it

Three competing Bitcoin Knots proposals are open. None is merged or released, and any of them would need to be running on most of the network before block 979,920 to matter.

PR #429: lock rewards from block 973,440 until Sept 1, 2027, plus a one-year relay hold. Explained
PR #434: release the locked rewards in four stages instead of all at once.
PR #467, opened Oct 19: keep a rolling 45-day lock by consensus until Sept 1, 2027. Each reward would unlock about 45 days after it was mined, which would turn the Nov 1 cliff into a daily trickle.

Reviewers are split. If none ships in time, the cliff happens as scheduled.

What we'll publish

Live: the Lock Pressure chart and tracker follow every block after 979,920.
First hour and first day: reports on how much actually moved, and from which pools.
Context: miners have already moved about 72% of their pre-lock rewards, and most "old XBT" moving on chain is a copy of a bitcoin transaction. Miners · Inherited coins

Live countdown Lock Pressure chart

Sources: xbt.live lock tracker and chain data at block 978,012, Oct 19, 2026; Bitcoin Knots pull requests #429, #434 and #467 on GitHub. Timing is an estimate from recent block speed. Not financial advice.

Have an XBT story? Write for xbt.live.

Life support

So the patient was moved to the emergency room. In August, the SHA-256 miners left on their own chain, and the nodes enforcing BIP-110's rules kept going without them. At the end of the month, the rule-keeping chain switched its mining to BLAKE2b so the captured SHA-256 hash couldn't take it over. That chain is XBT. The full story is in How Bitcoin kept its rules and moved to BLAKE2b.

Patients on life support don't look healthy, and XBT doesn't either. About 102 XBT buy one BTC. It has had three bear markets in six weeks. That's what a rescue looks like from the outside. The people in the ER right now, the node runners, the miners, the builders shipping wallets and pools every week, are doing the work while the outcome is anything but certain. If the patient makes it, they're the ones who saved it.

The strangest part: you already own it

If you held bitcoin before Aug 8, 2026, you hold XBT. Same coins, same addresses, same keys. The proof of work that secured your coins for 17 years secures them on both chains, because the history is identical up to block 961,631. Every UTXO that existed before the split exists on XBT. The XBT you hold cost you exactly what your BTC cost you.

Since the split, the two histories have gone different ways. XBT's blocks follow BIP-110's rules: less data that isn't money, a cleaner chain going forward. Not sure what you hold? Check an address.

Two places at once

The body is still on the old chain: the brand, the network effect, the exchange listings, the ticker everyone knows. That doesn't disappear overnight, and we won't pretend it does.

But the thing that made Bitcoin worth caring about was never the brand. It was the idea: money that no state, no company and no small group of operators can change on users without their consent. That idea now lives on the chain whose users enforced their rules when it mattered. The body stayed. The soul moved.

Bitcoin was always a quiet way to separate money from the state. It still is. It just lives somewhere new.

Opinion. Not financial advice. XBT trades on thin markets and can lose most of its value quickly. Price figures as of the evening of Oct 10, 2026 (US Eastern).