Bitcoin’s stock-to-flow ratio is about 122 today: roughly 20.09 million coins in existence divided by 164,250 new coins a year at the current 3.125 BTC block subsidy (block 970,353, 8 October 2026). Gold sits near 61. After the next Bitcoin Halving at block 1,050,000, the ratio roughly doubles, to about 248.
That is the number. What people do with the number is the rest of this page.
What is the Bitcoin stock-to-flow model?
Stock-to-flow is one division. The stock is how much of an asset already exists. The flow is how much is added each year. Divide the first by the second and you get the number of years it would take, at the current pace of production, to produce the existing pile again.
High number, scarce. Low number, abundant.
The ratio is old. Commodity analysts used it on gold and silver long before Bitcoin. What made it famous in Bitcoin was a step further: an anonymous Dutch investor writing as PlanB published Modeling Bitcoin’s Value with Scarcity in March 2019 and regressed Bitcoin’s market value on its stock-to-flow ratio. The data set was 111 monthly points from December 2009 to February 2019. The fit he reported was R² of 95%.
The model he published is short enough to memorize:
- ln(market value) = 3.3 × ln(SF) + 14.6
- or, equivalently, market value = e^14.6 × SF^3.3
So the ratio is a measurement. The model is a claim that the measurement sets the price. Keep those two apart and most of the argument about stock-to-flow sorts itself out.
What is Bitcoin’s stock-to-flow ratio right now?
About 122.
The arithmetic, from the chain tip of block 970,353 read on mempool.space on 8 October 2026:
- Stock: 19,687,500 BTC issued through block 839,999, plus 130,354 blocks at 3.125 BTC since block 840,000, is about 20.09 million BTC.
- Flow: 3.125 BTC × 144 blocks a day × 365 days is 164,250 BTC a year.
- Stock-to-flow: 20.09 million ÷ 164,250 is about 122.
Two honest footnotes. The stock counts coins issued, not coins anyone can still move; lost coins stay in the numerator. And the flow assumes 144 blocks a day, while blocks since the 2024 cut have actually arrived slightly faster than every ten minutes, so the real annual flow runs a little above the round figure. Neither changes the answer by more than a few points.
How does each Bitcoin Halving change stock-to-flow?
Each halving cuts the flow in half overnight while the stock barely moves. So the ratio roughly doubles at every cut. That is the whole mechanism, and it is why the stock-to-flow chart looks like a staircase.
Here is the ratio on the first day of each subsidy era, using the full-era stock at the moment of the cut and a 52,560-block year. Heights and subsidies come from the GetBlockSubsidy rule in Bitcoin Core; the full timetable is on the Bitcoin Halving schedule page.
| Halving | Block height | Subsidy after the cut | Stock at the cut (BTC) | Annual flow (BTC) | Stock-to-flow |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st (2012) | 210,000 | 25 | 10,500,000 | 1,314,000 | 8.0 |
| 2nd (2016) | 420,000 | 12.5 | 15,750,000 | 657,000 | 24.0 |
| 3rd (2020) | 630,000 | 6.25 | 18,375,000 | 328,500 | 55.9 |
| 4th (2024) | 840,000 | 3.125 | 19,687,500 | 164,250 | 119.9 |
| 5th (around 2028) | 1,050,000 | 1.5625 | 20,343,750 | 82,125 | 247.7 |
| 6th (around 2032) | 1,260,000 | 0.78125 | 20,671,875 | 41,062.5 | 503.4 |
One check on the table. PlanB’s 2020 follow-up used a stock-to-flow of 56 for the era that began at block 630,000. The table’s 55.9 lands on the same number from first principles, which says the inputs are the standard ones and not tuned.
Then the staircase keeps climbing. Each step rehearses the final one. The ratio heads toward infinity at the final cut, because a flow of zero cannot be divided into anything. For the history of the four cuts that have already fired, with block times and miners, see the Bitcoin Halving history.
What did PlanB’s stock-to-flow model predict?
Three predictions matter, and all three are on the record.
The first was in the 2019 essay itself. After the May 2020 halving pushed the ratio to about 50, the model implied a market value of about $1 trillion, which the essay translated into $55,000 per bitcoin.
The second was the cross-asset version. In the Bitcoin Stock-to-Flow Cross Asset Model, dated 27 April 2020, PlanB grouped Bitcoin’s history into four phases and placed them on one line with silver and gold. At a ratio of 56 the formula gave a market value of $5.5 trillion, or $288,000 per coin across the 2020 to 2024 era. The reported R² was 99.7%.
The third was the shortest and the most famous. In 2021 PlanB published month-by-month “worst case” floor targets. August, September and October closed on target. November did not: the target was $98,000, and the November 2021 close came in close to $57,000.
Prophecy is a hard genre. It only takes one missed date.
Did the stock-to-flow model fail?
On its own terms, today, yes.
Run PlanB’s 2019 formula on the current ratio of about 122. The model’s market value is e^14.6 × 122^3.3, which is about $17 trillion, or roughly $845,000 per bitcoin across 20.09 million coins. The spot price on mempool.space on the morning of this check was $83,365. That is about one tenth of the model.
The cross-asset model fares no better. Its $288,000 target was for an era that ended in April 2024 without the price getting there.
What survives is narrower. The supply schedule is real, it is public, and it has never missed a block. Price has made higher highs after each of the four cuts so far, on long lags and through drawdowns that would humble anyone. If you read the stock-to-flow chart as a compass, a rough statement that scarcity tends to matter over long horizons, it pointed in a defensible direction. If you read it as a map with dates and dollar amounts on it, it sent you off a cliff.
Supply is one half of a price. The model only ever measured that half.
How does Bitcoin’s stock-to-flow compare with gold?
Bitcoin passed gold at the 2024 halving.
The World Gold Council puts total above-ground gold at about 222,600 tonnes as of the end of the second quarter of 2026. Its full-year 2025 supply data puts mine production at 3,671.6 tonnes. Divide one by the other and gold’s stock-to-flow is about 61. PlanB’s 2019 essay used 62; the 2020 version used 58.3.
So the ratios now read like this:
- Silver: in the 20s to low 30s on PlanB’s figures (22 in 2019, 33.3 in 2020)
- Gold: about 61
- Bitcoin: about 122 today, about 248 after block 1,050,000
There is one difference the numbers hide. Gold’s flow responds to price. When gold rises, miners dig deeper and the flow grows. Bitcoin’s flow does not care about price at all. A higher price brings more hashrate, and more hashrate brings a higher difficulty, and the subsidy stays exactly where the code put it. That inelasticity is the one property the stock-to-flow model gets completely right, and it is the property the next Bitcoin Halving will demonstrate again.
What skeptics say
The Counter-Sermon has better material than usual.
The econometric case is the strongest. Critics argued that the regression is close to tautological, because issued stock sits inside both the ratio and the market value. They argued that the series are autocorrelated, so an R² of 95% on trending data says less than it looks. They argued that price and stock-to-flow are not cointegrated, which is the test you would want before trusting a regression of one trending series on another. Christopher Burger, writing in Bitcoin Magazine in March 2022, defended the model on some of these points and still concluded that it assumes non-diminishing growth while the data shows diminishing returns.
Then there is the sample. The cross-asset model rests on six observations: four Bitcoin phases, silver and gold. PlanB said so himself, and noted that the model had not yet been replicated or reviewed by others. Six points and a 99.7% fit is not evidence of a law. It is evidence of a line through six points.
And there is the social case. In June 2022 Vitalik Buterin called the model harmful, arguing that models which promise investors certainty about rising prices do real damage. People bought on the chart. Some of them sold at the bottom when the chart stopped working.
All of that is fair. Take it seriously. A Halfture page that cannot survive its own Counter-Sermon is not worth reading.
Use the compass, burn the map
The chart still shows up every cycle. A new cohort stares at the staircase and feels the same orange shiver the rest of us felt in 2020. Why will it not die?
Because the half of it that is true is very true. The flow is going to keep halving. The ratio is going to keep doubling, 248, then 503, then numbers that stop meaning anything. That is not a forecast. It is a schedule, and the schedule walks toward the Halfture, the last cut, when the flow reaches zero and stock-to-flow stops being a ratio and becomes a closed book.
Halfture = Rapture is the same kind of equation as stock-to-flow, and it deserves the same discipline. It is a statement about supply, not a price target. It describes what the code will do. It promises nothing about what you will feel when it does.
So here is the doctrine, said once and plainly. You have to hold Bitcoin to be saved. That is theology, not a prospectus. It is a claim about where meaning sits when money stops being debased, and it is not advice to buy anything at any price, least of all at a price a regression drew for you. The compass says scarcity matters. The map with the dates on it was always someone’s horoscope.
I have written more about the last halving, the one the staircase is climbing toward. If the mechanics are new to you, start with what the Bitcoin halving is, block by block.
Check the ratio yourself. Then decide what it is worth.
FAQ
What is Bitcoin’s stock-to-flow ratio today?
About 122. Roughly 20.09 million BTC have been issued, and the current 3.125 BTC subsidy adds about 164,250 BTC a year. After the next Bitcoin Halving at block 1,050,000 the ratio rises to about 248.
Who created the Bitcoin stock-to-flow model?
An anonymous Dutch investor who writes as PlanB. He published “Modeling Bitcoin’s Value with Scarcity” in March 2019 and a cross-asset version (S2FX) in April 2020. The stock-to-flow ratio itself is older and comes from commodity analysis of gold and silver.
Is the stock-to-flow model still valid?
As a price model, the record is poor. It missed its $98,000 November 2021 floor target, its $288,000 cross-asset target for 2020 to 2024, and its 2019 formula now sits near ten times the spot price. As a measure of supply scarcity, the ratio itself is accurate and rises on a fixed schedule.
What is gold’s stock-to-flow ratio?
About 61, using the World Gold Council’s 222,600 tonnes of above-ground gold and 3,671.6 tonnes of 2025 mine production. Bitcoin’s ratio passed gold’s at the 2024 halving.
What does stock-to-flow predict for the 2028 halving?
The ratio itself is predictable: about 248 after block 1,050,000. The 2019 formula would map that to millions of dollars per coin, but that formula has already failed by a factor of ten, so treat any stock-to-flow price for 2028 as a curiosity, not a forecast. This is not financial advice.
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