When Bitcoin was first released in 2009, 50 BTC were awarded for each new block added to the blockchain. However, the BTC block reward is programmed to halve every 4 years. After 3 halving events, the current block reward for miners stands at 6.25 BTC. However, due to the competitiveness of mining, most individual miners cannot mine a full Bitcoin block on their own. As a result, miners often rely on Bitcoin mining pools that consolidate the mining power of individuals. Bitcoin block rewards are then shared between all mining pool participants, which means that the amount of BTC earned per block reward is often far less than the current 6.25 BTC.