How much bitcoin do I need to retire?

You need enough bitcoin today that selling a slice each year, from retirement through the year you reach life expectancy, pays for spending that grows with inflation — if the price follows a cautious long-term trend. Bitcoin’s price has historically followed that kind of trend, and the default sits below it. With $100,000 a year, 7% inflation, and a plan through age 100, a 25-year-old needs about 7.93 BTC to retire in 2026 and about 2.24 BTC to retire in 2036. A crash in a year you sell can use up more bitcoin than this total. Taxes are not included. This is not financial advice. Free, no login.

Formula

price(d) = A × d^B, where d is days since the genesis block (2009-01-03 UTC). BTC needed today = the sum from the retirement year through the life-expectancy year of annual spend × (1 + inflation)^(year − this year) / price(year), with price evaluated on today’s calendar date in that year. Conservative A = 2.967e-18, B = 5.8829.

Worked example

Pinned to 2026-09-25, spend $100,000, inflation 7%, life expectancy 100, conservative curve: age 25 retiring in 2026 needs about 7.93 BTC; retiring in 2031 needs about 3.75 BTC; retiring in 2036 needs about 2.24 BTC. Age 75 retiring in 2026 needs about 7.07 BTC. Age 5 retiring in 2026 needs about 8.19 BTC. The same curve is about $78,000 on 2026-09-25, about $1.09 million in 2036, and about $208 million in 2076.

Source

Conservative A and B are the 5th-percentile power law used by this calculator. Planning against that support line follows Sminston With’s Bitcoin retirement guide (https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1917605539279954391.html). Center is Harold Christopher Burger, “Bitcoin’s natural long-term power-law corridor of growth,” 3 September 2019 (https://hcburger.com/blog/powerlaw/): log10(price) = -17.01593313 + 5.84509376 × log10(days), R² = 0.93139763. Burger’s market-top slope 5.02927337 has no published intercept, so there is no Optimistic preset.

Frequently asked questions

How much bitcoin do I need to retire?

It depends on what you spend, inflation, when you retire, and how long the plan lasts. With $100,000 a year in today’s dollars, 7% inflation, and a plan through age 100, a 25-year-old needs about 7.93 BTC to retire in 2026 and about 2.24 BTC to retire in 2036. A 75-year-old retiring in 2026 needs about 7.07 BTC. Those figures use the cautious trend and prices on the September 25, 2026 calendar date. Change the inputs for your own plan. This is not financial advice.

What price curve does the retirement calculator use?

Bitcoin’s price has historically followed a long-term growth trend. Cautious, the default, assumes a slower version of that trend. Middle of the trend uses Harold Christopher Burger’s 2019 study of the same growth. Your own numbers are under Show the math. There is no optimistic option, because a published upper line was missing one of the numbers it would need.

Does the bitcoin retirement number include taxes or crashes?

No. Taxes are not included. The number also assumes you can sell at the trend price every year. Real prices have stayed below it for long stretches. Selling during a crash can use up more bitcoin than this total. This is not financial advice.

How do I read the retirement chart?

The chart shows how much bitcoin to hold today for each retirement year. The orange line is your age. Every other color is a different age, using the same spending. Hover or tap a year to see the bitcoin needed and the trend price that year. If you enter bitcoin you already hold, a line marks it and the label is the first retirement year that stack covers.