Bitcoin security budget · the annual figure
How much does Bitcoin spend on security per year?
About $14.03B over the trailing 365 days to 2026-09-27. On a spot run-rate basis, $13.90B a year. That is 0.82% of a $1.69T market capitalisation, or $0.0082 a year for every $1 of market cap.
Why there are two numbers
$14.03B is a nominal cash sum: each day’s miner revenue valued at that day’s price, which is what miners were actually paid over a year that is now gone. $13.90B is a run rate: the last 1,008 blocks, annualised and valued at today’s price, which answers what Bitcoin pays now. Neither is wrong; they answer different questions, and mixing them is the most common error in this arithmetic.
The same figure in other units
| Unit | Value |
|---|---|
| Per year, trailing 365 days | $14.03B |
| Per year, spot run rate | $13.90B |
| Share of market capitalisation | 0.82% |
| Per $1 of market cap, per year | $0.0082 |
| Of which fees, per block | $1.7K |
Three bases
| Basis | Ratio | Gap / yr | Market cap to cover it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trailing-year revenue over spot market cap | 0.83% | $2.86B | $54.91B |
| Trailing-year revenue over average market cap | 0.86% | $2.32B | $44.58B |
| Spot run-rate revenue over spot market cap (published) | 0.82% | $2.98B | $57.38B |
Three ways to measure the same ratio, all published. None of the three closes the gap.