Central banks decide how much new money to create. Bitcoin's new supply is decided in advance by a rule no one can override. Drag through time and watch what that rule does.
Every 210,000 blocks (~4 years), the reward for mining a block is cut in half. That single rule produces the entire curve below.
A central bank can expand the money supply by any amount, at any time, in response to events — useful in a crisis, but it means no one can know future supply with certainty. Bitcoin's schedule is the opposite: future supply is fully known, but the rule can't bend when a bend might help. That's the trade. It also means the issuance was front-loaded — half of all coins existed by 2013 — and that long-term network security must increasingly come from transaction fees rather than the shrinking subsidy. Fixed supply removes discretion; it doesn't remove every hard question.
Every figure here is computed from Bitcoin's consensus rules — a 50 BTC starting subsidy, halved every 210,000 blocks, summing toward just under 21,000,000 coins. This is protocol math, not a forecast: block timing averages ~10 minutes so the years are approximate, but the quantities are exact. Current era subsidy is 3.125 BTC (the April 2024 halving). No price is shown or implied here — supply and price are different things.
Bitcoin whitepaper · Bitcoin developer docs · block height and current supply: mempool.space (verify live). Education, not financial advice.