The Bitcoin Halving Explained Simply

What is the bitcoin halving? In the bitcoin halving, the reward miners receive for a new block is cut in half. It happens automatically every 210’000 blocks, roughly every four years. Since April 2024 the reward has been 3.125 bitcoin per block; from the next halving in spring 2028 it will be 1.5625. So fewer and fewer new bitcoin are created.

Every four years you read it in every newspaper: "The halving is coming, is bitcoin set for its next jump?" Then it goes quiet until the next time. What really happens on that day, and what of it affects you if you hold bitcoin for years? This article explains it without jargon and with real figures. If you are just starting out, read the beginner's guide What is bitcoin? first.

What is the bitcoin halving?

New bitcoin are created in only one way: a miner finds a new block and may pay itself a fixed amount of new bitcoin for it. This reward is called the block subsidy. On top come the fees of the payments in the block.

The halving is the moment this subsidy drops to half. It works like this:

1. Every block has a number, the block height. Roughly every ten minutes a block is added, about 144 a day.
2. Every 210’000 blocks an epoch ends. At ten minutes per block that is just under four years.
3. The first block of the new epoch brings only half as many new bitcoin as the last block of the old one. There is no vote and no date in the calendar, only the block number.

Bitcoin started on January 3, 2009 with 50 bitcoin per block. Because each epoch brings only half as many new bitcoin as the previous one, the total never exceeds 21 million. Why it adds up exactly like that is explained in Why there are only 21 million bitcoin.

All bitcoin halvings at a glance

The gaps were never exactly four years: 1’319 days from the first to the second halving, 1’402 to the third, 1’440 to the fourth. Because computing power usually grows, blocks came on average a little faster than every ten minutes. The difficulty adjustment still keeps the pace close to plan.

The chart shows how the supply grows more slowly with each halving. Move your mouse or finger over it to see the supply at any point in time:

When is the next halving?

The fifth bitcoin halving comes with block 1’050’000. On Nov 13, 2026 the blockchain stood at block 975’637. So 74’363 blocks are still missing.

At exactly ten minutes per block, that would be on April 12, 2028. If blocks come as fast as their average since 2009, every 9.6 minutes, it would already be around March 22, 2028. No one knows the exact day in advance, only the block. A few weeks before, mempool.space shows an estimate that gets more precise with every block.

What the halving means for miners

For miners, the halving is the hardest day of the epoch. The subsidy currently makes up almost all of their income. When it is halved, their revenue halves overnight, while electricity and machines cost just as much. How mining works in detail is shown in Bitcoin mining explained.

What happens next has repeated after every halving: miners with old machines or expensive electricity switch off. Computing power drops briefly, the difficulty adjusts downward, and the remaining miners earn a little more again. The network keeps running without interruption.

Fees can absorb part of the loss. In halving block 840’000 on Apr 20, 2024, users paid 37.6 BTC in fees in total, twelve times the new subsidy. That was an exception. How fees come about is explained in Understanding transaction fees and the mempool.

Whether your own machine still pays off after the next halving is worked out by the mining calculator with your electricity price. It takes the halving into account automatically:

What the halving meant for the bitcoin price

The best-known idea about the halving: less new supply with the same demand drives the price. Let's check. Today around 450 new bitcoin are created per day. Miners sell a large part of them to pay for electricity and machines.

This is how it looked after the previous halvings. All prices are daily closing prices in US dollars:

"High vs. trend" means: the high as a multiple of the Power Law trend on that day. "Low afterwards" is the fall from the high to the lowest daily close after it.

Three things stand out:

• A high came every time, twelve to eighteen months after the halving. Each time a deep crash followed.
• The rise got smaller each time: from ×92 to ×1.9. The 2025 high reached just 1.5 times the long-term trend, the "hot" zone, but not the top band.
• Four cases are not statistics. The date is known years in advance, and markets price in what is known. At the same time, interest rates, money supply and new buyers such as ETFs and treasury companies were at work each time. What of it is a pattern is examined in the bitcoin four-year cycle fact check.

The halving through the lens of the Power Law

The Power Law model needs no halvings at all. It describes the price purely through the time since bitcoin started. The halving cycles show up in it as swings around a trend that get smaller from cycle to cycle. On Nov 13, 2026, the price of $68’235 was at 0.63 times the trend, just above the floor. This is how it looks in the chart:

The current state with all zones is on the Power Law page, the formulas in the methodology.

What the halving means for you as a saver

If you hold bitcoin for years, the halving affects you mainly in one place: the supply grows more slowly. Today around 164’000 bitcoin are added each year to the 20.11 million, that is 0.82%. From 2028 it will be around 0.4%, from 2032 around 0.2%. Gold grows by around 1.7% a year through new mining; euros and francs have no fixed limit at all. More on this in Inflation and loss of purchasing power.

The halving does not make your bitcoin more or fewer. Your share of all bitcoin is just diluted more slowly.

Timing a purchase around a halving has brought little so far: the high only came more than a year later, and in between there were often months of losses. A fixed savings plan takes this decision off your hands. Work out how a monthly amount would have developed over several halvings:

What happens after the last halving?

Bitcoin has 33 epochs. Around the year 2140 the subsidy falls to zero, after which no new bitcoin are created. Miners then live on fees alone.

This doesn't happen suddenly. As early as the 2030s the subsidy will be so small that fees make up a growing share of income. Whether they will be enough in the long run to keep the network as secure as today is an open question that developers and economists seriously debate. Only one thing is clear: every halving makes this question a little more pressing.