Block Reward

The block reward is a combination of the block subsidy and all transaction fees paid by transactions in a specific block. When miners mine a block, they receive a block subsidy in the form of newly minted bitcoin. All transactions also include a fee, which miners collect. The block reward is the sum of these two amounts. As block subsidies are cut in half every four years, fees will slowly become a greater portion of the block reward. The term block reward and block subsidy are occasionally used interchangeably.

The block reward is paid out in the coinbase transaction of each block. This special transaction is the first transaction in every block, and it has no inputs. The output of a coinbase transaction cannot be spent for 100 blocks, so miners can only spend their block reward after a 100 block cooldown.