DeFi Intel
Home · Guides · Bitcoin Halving 2024 to 2028 — The Complete Guide (April 2026)

Bitcoin Halving 2024 to 2028 — The Complete Guide (April 2026)

TL;DR

  • The bitcoin halving is a hard-coded event that cuts the new BTC issued to miners in half every 210,000 blocks (~four years); the fourth halving on April 19/20 2024 reduced the block subsidy from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.
  • Bitcoin halving 2024 coincided exactly with the launch of Runes Protocol at block 840,000, producing the largest single-block fee total in Bitcoin history (37.6 BTC) and a record average fee of $128.
  • The bitcoin halving price impact played out on schedule — BTC crossed $100,000 on December 4 2024 and printed an ATH of $109,114 on January 20 2025, lifted by spot ETF inflows, the US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve executive order, and the Trump inauguration.
  • The next bitcoin halving is projected for April 2028 at block 1,050,000, when the subsidy drops to 1.5625 BTC; by then over 20.34 million of the 21 million total BTC will already be in circulation.

Table of contents

What is the Bitcoin halving?

The bitcoin halving (sometimes called the "halvening") is a deterministic, pre-programmed event in the Bitcoin protocol that cuts the block subsidy — the new BTC paid to miners for finding a valid block — exactly in half every 210,000 blocks. Because Bitcoin targets a ten-minute block interval through its difficulty adjustment algorithm, 210,000 blocks corresponds to approximately four calendar years.

The halving was coded into the original Bitcoin client by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009. It is the mechanism that enforces Bitcoin's hard cap of 21 million BTC by reducing the rate of new issuance over time. The first block subsidy was 50 BTC. After the first halving (2012) it became 25. After the second (2016): 12.5. After the third (2020): 6.25. And after the fourth halving — the bitcoin halving 2024 — it became 3.125 BTC per block. By halving 32 around the year 2140, the subsidy will round down to zero satoshis and Bitcoin will rely entirely on transaction fees to pay for security.

In monetary terms, each halving cuts Bitcoin's annual inflation rate roughly in half. Pre-2024, BTC was issued at about 1.7 percent per year. After the 2024 halving the rate fell to about 0.85 percent — already lower than gold's roughly 1.5 percent annual mined supply growth. This is why analysts often describe Bitcoin halvings as a programmable monetary policy: the supply schedule is known in advance, transparent on-chain, and impossible to alter without a contentious hard fork.

The four bitcoin halvings — full history

Halving 1 — November 28, 2012 (block 210,000)

The first bitcoin halving occurred at block 210,000, dropping the subsidy from 50 BTC to 25 BTC. BTC traded near $12. Twelve months later it briefly crossed $1,000 — a ~80x move that established the post-halving bull-market pattern, though the network was still tiny (hash rate in TH/s).

Halving 2 — July 9, 2016 (block 420,000)

The second halving cut the subsidy from 25 BTC to 12.5 BTC at block 420,000. BTC was trading near $650; eighteen months later it peaked near $20,000 in December 2017. This cycle introduced ICOs, the first institutional curiosity (CME Bitcoin futures launched December 2017), and sustained mainstream coverage.

Halving 3 — May 11, 2020 (block 630,000)

The third halving reduced the subsidy from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC. BTC was near $8,500, recovering from the COVID-19 crash. Eighteen months later BTC printed its 2021 ATH of $69,000. The cycle was defined by macro liquidity, MicroStrategy under Michael Saylor pioneering BTC treasuries, and El Salvador adopting BTC as legal tender.

Halving 4 — April 19/20, 2024 (block 840,000)

The fourth halving — the bitcoin halving 2024 — landed at block 840,000 on April 19/20, 2024. The subsidy fell from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. BTC traded near $63,000, and within nine months printed an ATH of $109,114 on January 20, 2025. The 2024 halving broke the template in three ways: (1) it coincided exactly with the launch of Runes Protocol; (2) it was the first halving to follow US spot Bitcoin ETF approvals (January 2024); and (3) it preceded the US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve by less than a year.

Bitcoin halving 2024 — block 840,000 in detail

Block 840,000 was mined by ViaBTC at 00:09 UTC on April 20, 2024. The block contained the first Runes etching (UNCOMMON•GOODS, etched by Casey Rodarmor) and earned the mining pool a record fee total of 37.6 BTC in fees alone — more than 12x the new 3.125 BTC subsidy. The block also contained the so-called "epic satoshi" — the first satoshi of the post-halving subsidy — which was later sold for 33.3 BTC in an Ordinals auction (event: epic-sat-sold-apr-2024).

Three things made 2024 unlike prior halvings:

  1. Spot ETF backdrop. The SEC approved 11 US spot Bitcoin ETFs on January 10, 2024 — three months before the halving. BlackRock IBIT and Fidelity FBTC absorbed BTC at a pace far exceeding new miner issuance. ETFs had already accumulated ~$50B AUM by halving day, and IBIT alone reached the $50B AUM milestone in January 2025.
  2. Runes Protocol activation. Runes Protocol was scheduled by Casey Rodarmor — also the creator of Ordinals Protocol — to activate exactly at block 840,000. The result: the Runes fee spike on halving day drove the average Bitcoin transaction fee to $128 and the network's daily miner revenue to a record $107.8 million (event: halving-fee-record-2024-04-20).
  3. Hash rate ATH. The network had already crossed 600 EH/s heading into the halving, and reached 725 EH/s in October 2024 (event: hashrate-ath-oct-2024) before climbing past 800 EH/s in 2025.

The 2024 halving aftermath: Runes, fees, hash rate, price

Runes vs BRC-20 transition

Before 2024, the dominant Bitcoin fungible-token standard was BRC-20, built on Ordinals inscriptions. BRC-20 bloated the UTXO set and required indexers for arbitrary text. Rodarmor designed Runes Protocol as a UTXO-native alternative gated to start at block 840,000. Within weeks BRC-20 volume collapsed and Runes captured most of the market. The largest Rune by market cap became DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON (a Runestone airdrop that briefly hit $1B+ FDV), while UNCOMMON•GOODS — Rune #0, Rodarmor's reference token — was hardcoded into the protocol as an open mint that anyone could mint until its 2025 cutoff.

Halving block fees

Block 840,000 produced 37.6 BTC of pure fees — more than 12x the new 3.125 BTC subsidy and the highest single-block fee total in Bitcoin history — with a fee storm persisting through the blocks that followed. After ~72 hours, fees normalized (halving-fees-normalize-apr-2024) — but the event proved fee-driven blocks are economically viable, a critical data point for the long-term security-budget debate.

Hash rate, miner capitulation, and AI pivot

Within four to six weeks Bitcoin's hash rate dropped ~10% as marginal S19-class miners on >$0.07/kWh power switched off. Hash price fell to a record ~$44/PH/s/day in summer 2024 (hashprice-record-low-2024). Fleet upgrades to the Bitmain Antminer S21 Pro and MicroBT Whatsminer M66S restored hash rate by Q3 2024 and pushed it to 725 EH/s in October 2024, then over 800 EH/s in 2025. A defining trend was the miner pivot to AI/HPC — Core Scientific (which emerged from bankruptcy January 2024), Iren, and Cipher Mining signed multi-billion-dollar AI compute contracts. Core Scientific announced its CoreWeave merger valuing the combined entity over $9B.

Bitcoin to $100K and ATH

Post-halving price action: April-August 2024 BTC ranged $54K-$72K. Trump won the US election November 5, 2024 and BTC broke $80K within days. December 4, 2024: BTC crossed $100,000 for the first time at $103,900 (btc-100k-milestone-2024 / bitcoin-100k-milestone). January 20, 2025: BTC printed an ATH of $109,114 on Trump's inauguration (btc-ath-jan2025); the same day the Trump digital-assets EO was previewed and formalized into the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve EO on March 6, 2025. The full recovery from the August 2024 low (~$53K) to $109K is logged as btc-price-recovery-post-halving.

Stock-to-flow and the supply-shock thesis

The stock-to-flow (S2F) model, popularized by pseudonymous analyst PlanB in his March 2019 paper "Modeling Bitcoin's Value with Scarcity," argues that Bitcoin's market capitalization is a function of its scarcity, measured as stock / annual_flow. Each halving cuts annual flow in half and therefore doubles the S2F ratio. PlanB's original model predicted six-figure BTC by 2021. It under-delivered in 2022 — BTC fell to $15,500 — but was redeemed when BTC crossed $100,000 in December 2024.

Critics, most prominently Vitalik Buterin, call S2F "pseudoscience" because the regression treats demand as exogenous and assumes scarcity alone determines price. Academic critiques echo this concern: the BIS working papers on crypto adoption (BIS WP-1013, BIS WP-1049) emphasize demand-side factors — institutional adoption, retail flows, regulatory clarity — far more than supply schedules.

The synthesis most institutional desks now use: halvings are a real supply shock (mechanical reduction in sell pressure from miners), but the price trajectory is dominated by demand. In 2024, that demand came from spot ETFs, treasury companies, and sovereign accumulation — none of which were modeled in the original S2F equation.

Bitcoin halving cycle theory

The empirical Bitcoin halving cycle, observed across 2012, 2016 and 2020 and now arguably 2024, follows a four-phase template:

  1. Pre-halving accumulation (12-18 months prior): Bottoming after the prior bear, slow grind upward.
  2. Halving event: Brief volatility, rarely a top or bottom in itself.
  3. Post-halving bull (12-18 months): Supply tightening + macro and narrative tailwinds drive a new cycle ATH.
  4. Blowoff top → bear (~12 months): Price corrects 60-80%, miners capitulate, hash rate falls, narrative collapses.

The 2024-2028 cycle is currently in phase 3-4 transition. After the January 2025 ATH of $109,114, BTC has traded in a $85K-$120K range through April 2026, with multiple swing highs but no clear blowoff. Whether the cycle plays out symmetrically — a 2026 blowoff and 2027 bear — or whether spot ETFs and treasury-company demand have permanently dampened cyclicality is the central debate in crypto research desks heading into the 2028 halving.

Mining economics post-halving 2024

Subsidy compression

The block subsidy is no longer the dominant component of miner revenue on a per-block basis on busy days. The miner revenue composition shifted in 2024 such that fees occasionally exceeded 50 percent of total miner revenue (versus historical norm of 1-5 percent). Outside Runes-fee storms, the post-halving baseline is roughly 90/10 subsidy-to-fees.

ASIC efficiency frontier

Surviving the halving requires modern hardware:

Older S19 generation rigs (29-32 J/TH) became unprofitable below ~$60K BTC + $0.06/kWh after the halving and were largely retired or relocated to ultra-cheap power (Ethiopia, Paraguay, Bhutan).

Top public miners (April 2026)

Mining pools (April 2026 distribution)

Hash rate and hash price

Hash rate crossed 800 EH/s in 2025 — more than 1,000x the level at the 2012 halving. Hash price (revenue per PH/s/day) recovered from the $44 floor of summer 2024 to roughly $55-65 in 2025 and 2026, with intraday spikes during fee storms. The benchmark data source is Luxor's Hashrate Index.

Bitcoin treasury company impact

A category that barely existed before 2020 has become a major post-halving demand sink:

Cumulative treasury-company holdings now exceed 800,000 BTC, structurally absorbing post-halving issuance.

Spot Bitcoin ETF flows post-halving

The 11 US spot Bitcoin ETFs approved in January 2024 became the dominant post-halving demand vehicle. BlackRock IBIT was the fastest ETF in history to reach $50B AUM (ibit-50b-aum milestone, January 2025) and now exceeds $90B in early 2026; Fidelity FBTC is second at ~$25B; the rest of the cohort (Bitwise BITB, ARK 21Shares ARKB, Grayscale GBTC + mini BTC, Invesco BTCO, VanEck HODL, WisdomTree BTCW, Valkyrie BRRR, Franklin EZBC) splits another ~$50B.

In 2024 alone, spot ETFs absorbed roughly 500,000 BTC of net inflows — more than 2.5x the new BTC issued under the combined 6.25 + 3.125 BTC subsidies for the year. This is the mechanical core of the "ETF supply shock" thesis.

Sovereign and nation-state context

United States — Strategic Bitcoin Reserve

On March 6, 2025, President Donald Trump signed the EO Establishing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and US Digital Asset Stockpile (us-sbr-executive-order). The order creates the US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve — ~200,000 BTC of forfeited assets that may not be sold absent Congressional authorization — plus a parallel "US Digital Asset Stockpile" for non-BTC tokens. The companion legislative effort, Senator Cynthia Lummis's BITCOIN Act of 2025, proposes a budget-neutral acquisition of 1 million BTC over five years (~5% of supply), funded by revaluing Federal Reserve gold certificates.

El Salvador — IMF reform

El Salvador, which adopted BTC as legal tender in September 2021, agreed in December 2024 to a $1.4B IMF stand-by arrangement that softened BTC's mandatory legal-tender status. The El Salvador Bitcoin Law Reform under the IMF deal made BTC use voluntary for private merchants while preserving the country's ~6,000 BTC reserve. The El Salvador government continues to dollar-cost-average ~1 BTC per day.

Bhutan and others

The Kingdom of Bhutan, via Druk Holding & Investments, runs hydro-powered state mining estimated at over 13,000 BTC (bhutan-btc-mining-halt reflected monsoon-related operational pauses). The UAE offers VAT exemption on virtual-asset transactions (Nov 2024) plus VARA/FSRA licensing; Hong Kong approved spot BTC ETFs April 2024 (one week pre-halving); and Argentina, Russia, and Iran have formally recognized crypto mining for energy-export purposes.

The next halving (5th, 2028)

The next bitcoin halving will be the fifth in Bitcoin's history. Key parameters:

Pre-cycle research from Galaxy Crypto Predictions for 2026 and Galaxy Crypto Predictions for 2025 suggests the 2028 halving will face dramatically different conditions: a mature spot ETF complex, a US sovereign reserve, dozens of treasury companies, and arguably a fee-driven block economy at margin. The "halving as supply shock" narrative may be diluted by the fact that subsidy issuance is already near-zero in macro terms.

Long-term issuance and the path to 21 million

Halving Year Cumulative BTC supply % of 21M
Genesis – 1st 2009-2012 10,500,000 50.0%
1st – 2nd 2012-2016 15,750,000 75.0%
2nd – 3rd 2016-2020 18,375,000 87.5%
3rd – 4th 2020-2024 19,687,500 93.75%
4th – 5th 2024-2028 ~20,343,750 ~96.875%
5th – 6th 2028-2032 ~20,671,875 ~98.4%
... ... ... ...
32nd ~2140 20,999,999.9769 BTC ~100%

By the 2028 halving, more than 20.34 million BTC will be in circulation. The remaining ~0.66 million BTC will be mined gradually over the next 112 years. The final block subsidy (rounded down to zero satoshis) is mined around block 6,929,999 in approximately the year 2140.

The fee-market transition and the security budget

The central long-term economic question for Bitcoin is the security-budget transition: as the subsidy decays toward zero, can fees alone fund a hash rate sufficient to deter 51 percent attacks?

The 2024 halving provided the most encouraging data point yet. On halving day, fees in block 840,000 alone reached 37.6 BTC — a 12x multiple of the new subsidy — proving that high-fee blocks are economically possible. Sustained fee revenue will require sustained on-chain demand from one or more of:

If fee demand fails to scale, the alternative outcomes are: (a) hash rate stagnates and Bitcoin's security budget compresses in dollar terms, or (b) BTC price must continue to appreciate to keep dollar-denominated security flat. Most current research treats (b) as a soft-floor mechanism — there is some BTC price at which any subsidy decline is offset.

Major industry reports

The canonical research stack for Bitcoin halving and mining analysis as of April 2026:

Academic complements: BIS WP-1013 and BIS WP-1049 on institutional/retail adoption, arxiv-2501.10888 on selfish mining analysis for PoW, and eprint-2026-141 on compressed-block representations.

Comparison table: all four halvings

# Date Block Subsidy before → after BTC price at halving BTC ATH within 18m Hash rate at halving Hash rate ~12m later Cycle ATH date
1 Nov 28 2012 210,000 50 → 25 BTC ~$12 ~$1,150 ~25 TH/s ~10 PH/s Nov 2013
2 Jul 9 2016 420,000 25 → 12.5 BTC ~$650 ~$19,800 ~1.6 EH/s ~5 EH/s Dec 17 2017
3 May 11 2020 630,000 12.5 → 6.25 BTC ~$8,500 ~$69,000 ~120 EH/s ~180 EH/s Nov 10 2021
4 Apr 19/20 2024 840,000 6.25 → 3.125 BTC ~$63,000 $109,114 ~620 EH/s ~800 EH/s Jan 20 2025 (so far)
5 (proj.) ~Apr 2028 1,050,000 3.125 → 1.5625 BTC TBD TBD TBD TBD TBD

Risks and debates

Security-budget concerns

The most cited long-term risk is that miner revenue will collapse as the subsidy decays toward zero. Skeptics including academic researchers and some Ethereum proponents argue Bitcoin will need to develop a robust fee market by the late 2030s or face hash-rate compression. Bitcoin proponents counter that fee demand from inscriptions, rollups, and L2 anchoring is already proving viable.

Miner death spiral (debunked)

The "miner death spiral" theory — that a price crash triggers miner shutoffs, slowing block intervals, raising fees, accelerating shutoffs — has been repeatedly debunked by Bitcoin's difficulty-adjustment algorithm. Difficulty re-targets every 2016 blocks (~14 days), which mechanically restores block intervals after even severe hash-rate drops (e.g., the 50% China mining ban drop in summer 2021).

ASIC manufacturing centralization

The vast majority of new ASIC supply comes from two firms: Bitmain and MicroBT, both Chinese-headquartered. This creates a single point of geopolitical risk for the global mining industry. New entrants — Auradine (US), Block (Proto), Intel's Blockscale (now discontinued) — have struggled to take meaningful market share.

Energy debate

Bitcoin's energy use (~155-180 TWh annually as of 2025-2026 per CBECI) remains controversial. Industry data (Bitcoin Mining Council, CoinShares) places the sustainable-energy share at ~52-75 percent (depending on methodology), versus Cambridge's lower estimates. Beyond renewables, post-2024 miners have also become major buyers of stranded/flared natural gas and demand-response grid services — an emerging "Bitcoin as grid balancer" narrative.

Pool-level concentration

Foundry USA + AntPool together control more than half of the total network hash rate. Proponents of OCEAN and miner-side block construction (Stratum V2) argue this is a censorship vector that needs structural mitigation.

How to track the halving

A short list of canonical tools every halving-watcher should bookmark:

  1. mempool.space — live block height, mempool, fee estimates, halving countdown widget.
  2. blockchain.com/explorer — historical block data including the famous block 840,000.
  3. hashrateindex.com — hash price, ASIC pricing, pool distribution.
  4. ccaf.io/cbeci — Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index.
  5. coinmetrics.io/state-of-the-network — weekly on-chain analytics.
  6. Farside Investors — daily ETF flow data.
  7. Glassnode / CryptoQuant — supply distribution and exchange flow heuristics.
  8. bitcoinhalving.com and buybitcoinworldwide.com/halving — community countdown sites.

To track the next halving specifically, subtract the current block height from 1,050,000 and divide by 144 (blocks/day). At ~945,000 (April 2026) you have ~105,000 blocks remaining and ~730 days — landing in the projected April 2028 window.

FAQ

What is the Bitcoin halving in simple terms?

A pre-programmed event that cuts the new BTC issued to miners in half every 210,000 blocks (~four years). Satoshi Nakamoto coded this in 2009 to enforce the 21 million BTC cap. After the April 2024 halving, the block subsidy fell from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. Halvings reduce Bitcoin's inflation rate and historically precede multi-month bull markets, though the price impact is debated.

When is the next Bitcoin halving?

The next (fifth) halving is projected for April 2028 at block 1,050,000. The block subsidy will drop from 3.125 BTC to 1.5625 BTC. After that, Bitcoin's annual issuance rate falls below 0.4 percent.

What was the Bitcoin price at each halving?

H1 (Nov 2012): ~$12. H2 (Jul 2016): ~$650. H3 (May 2020): ~$8,500. H4 (Apr 2024): ~$63,000. Each cycle peaked 12-18 months later — $1,000 (2013), $20,000 (late 2017), $69,000 (Nov 2021), and $109,114 on January 20 2025.

Did the 2024 Bitcoin halving cause the price to go up?

Correlation, not causation. BTC traded sideways then fell to $53,000 by August 2024, then rallied on spot ETF flows and the US election. BTC crossed $100,000 on December 4 2024 and printed its $109,114 ATH on January 20 2025. Every historical halving has been followed by a new cycle peak.

How many Bitcoin halvings will there be?

32 halvings total. The final one occurs around 2140 at block 6,929,999, after which miners earn only transaction fees. By the 2028 halving, more than 20.34 million of 21 million BTC will already be in circulation.

What is the Runes Protocol and why did it launch on the halving?

Runes is a UTXO-native fungible-token standard for Bitcoin designed by Casey Rodarmor (creator of Ordinals) to replace the inefficient BRC-20. Rodarmor activated it at exactly block 840,000 — the same block as the 2024 halving — driving the average fee to $128 and producing the largest single-block fee total in Bitcoin history. DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON became the largest Rune by market cap; UNCOMMON•GOODS (Rune #0, the open-mint reference token from Rodarmor) could be minted by anyone until its 2025 cutoff.

Will Bitcoin mining still be profitable after future halvings?

It depends on price, hash rate and electricity cost. Post-2024, hash price hit a record low of ~$44/PH/s/day, forcing inefficient rigs offline. Survivors run modern ASICs (Antminer S21 Pro at 15 J/TH, Whatsminer M66S at 18 J/TH) on sub-$0.04/kWh power. As subsidies decay, fees and secondary revenue (AI/HPC hosting, demand response) must rise to fund the security budget.

What is the stock-to-flow model and is it still valid?

PlanB's S2F model values BTC as stock divided by annual flow. Each halving doubles the ratio. The 2019 model predicted six-figure BTC by 2021 — it underperformed in 2022 but was vindicated when BTC crossed $100,000 in December 2024. Vitalik Buterin and academic critics call it pseudoscience because it ignores demand. Most desks now use it as one signal among many.

Is the US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve real?

Yes. Trump signed the EO on March 6, 2025. It folds ~200,000 BTC of forfeited assets into a permanent reserve that can't be sold. Cynthia Lummis's BITCOIN Act of 2025 proposes to expand it to 1 million BTC over five years through budget-neutral purchases. As of April 2026 the bill is in committee with bipartisan momentum.

How can I track the next halving?

Bookmark mempool.space, blockchain.com/explorer, and bitcoinhalving.com for block-count and date projection. Add hashrateindex.com for hash price, ccaf.io/cbeci for energy data, and Farside Investors for daily ETF flows. The next halving block is 1,050,000.

Glossary

Related reading (internal links)

Sources and further reading

About the author

DeFi Intel Research is an independent crypto research desk covering on-chain analytics, MEV infrastructure, and institutional adoption. Our analysts maintain a continuously updated knowledge graph of more than 50,000 entities — chains, protocols, companies, papers, regulators, and events — sourced from primary documents, on-chain data, regulatory filings, and academic research. Author profile: /about. For commercial research engagements: /research.

Last updated: 2026-04-26

Related entities

Related guides

Stay current on this topic

Get the weekly DeFi Intel brief — entity-graph intelligence on bitcoin halving, what is bitcoin halving, bitcoin halving 2024, free to your inbox.

Subscribe free See Pro →