Bitcoin halving explained: at block 1,050,000 the reward drops to 1.5625 BTC

The Bitcoin halving is the cut, hard-coded into the protocol, in the reward miners receive for each new block. It happens every 210,000 blocks, roughly every four years. Since the last halving in April 2024, each block has created 3.125 new Bitcoin; from block 1,050,000, at today's pace in spring 2028, it will be only 1.5625 BTC.

This explainer shows how the halving works technically, works through issuance per epoch up to the cap of just under 21 million BTC and sets out what the halving means for miners and for the market. It contains no price promise.

What is the Bitcoin halving? The block reward is cut in half every 210,000 blocks

New Bitcoin are created in only one way: a miner finds a valid block and may credit itself a fixed amount of new coins for it. This amount is called the block subsidy or block reward. In the 2008 Bitcoin whitepaper, Satoshi Nakamoto described how a predetermined number of coins would enter circulation, after which fees would pay the miners.

This is implemented as a simple rule in the Bitcoin Core code: the block height is divided by 210,000, and the result indicates how many times the original reward of 50 BTC has already been halved. The rule knows no calendar date. That is why the halving can be predicted to the exact block, but only approximately to the day.

The block height is the sequential number of a block since the first block of January 3, 2009, the genesis block. On Sunday evening it stood at 975,101, as the block explorer mempool.space shows.

Block reward and the coinbase transaction: how new Bitcoin are created

Every block contains as its first transaction the so-called coinbase transaction. It has nothing to do with the trading platform of the same name: as the only transaction in the block, it has no sender and credits the miner with the subsidy plus all fees from the other transactions in the block. If a miner claims more than the rule allows, all other nodes in the network reject the block.

In the latest block on Sunday evening, this came to around 3.15 BTC: 3.125 BTC in subsidy and about 0.025 BTC in fees. Fees therefore made up less than one percent of revenue. It is exactly this ratio that each halving shifts, because the subsidy falls while fees depend on demand in the network.

To keep a block being created every ten minutes on average, the network adjusts the mining difficulty every 2,016 blocks. If computing power rises, finding a block gets harder; if it falls, it gets easier. This adjustment keeps the halving roughly on a four-year rhythm despite fluctuating computing power.

Four halvings since 2012: from 50 to 3.125 BTC per block

There have been four halvings so far. On November 28, 2012, the reward fell at block 210,000 from 50 to 25 BTC; on July 9, 2016, at block 420,000, to 12.5 BTC; on May 11, 2020, at block 630,000, to 6.25 BTC; and on April 20, 2024, at block 840,000, to 3.125 BTC. The intervals ranged from just under four to a little over three and a half years, because blocks came faster than every ten minutes during phases of rapidly growing computing power.

Each halving also halves daily issuance. With around 144 blocks a day, about 450 new Bitcoin currently enter circulation every day. After the next halving it will be around 225. The annual inflation rate of the Bitcoin supply is therefore below one percent today and will fall to around 0.4 percent in 2028.

An overview with a countdown and the history of past halvings is available on our Bitcoin halving chart page.

Next halving at block 1,050,000: the calculation with the current block time

As of Sunday evening, 74,899 blocks remain until block 1,050,000. At exactly ten minutes per block, that would be around 520 days, putting the halving in mid-April 2028. Since the last difficulty adjustment, however, the average block time has been a little over ten and a half minutes. At that pace it would be around 550 days, or mid-May 2028.

Both figures are estimates. If computing power grows faster again than the difficulty adjustment can follow, the date moves forward. If miners leave the network, for instance because their machines are no longer profitable, it moves back. Only the block height is reliable.

Issuance per epoch: why the supply ends at just under 21 million BTC

An epoch is the stretch of 210,000 blocks between two halvings. Because every epoch has the same number of blocks and the reward is half as large as before, each epoch produces only half as many new coins as the previous one. The first epoch created 10.5 million BTC, the second 5.25 million, the third 2.625 million. Our own calculation across all epochs gives this series:

Around 20.1 million BTC have been mined today, just under 96 percent of the total supply. The reward is calculated in satoshis, the smallest unit at one hundred millionth of a Bitcoin, and rounded down at each halving. After the 32nd halving it amounts to just one satoshi; with the 33rd it drops to zero. That happens at block 6,930,000, mathematically around the year 2140.

Because of the rounding down, the total does not end at exactly 21 million but at 20,999,999.9769 BTC. Even less is actually available: the 50 BTC from the genesis block cannot technically be spent, and coins on addresses with lost keys remain untouched forever.

Bitcoin miners after the halving: hashrate, power costs and transaction fees

For miners the halving is a hard cut: overnight, most of their revenue is halved while electricity bills and equipment costs stay the same. The hashrate, the total computing power in the network, shows how many miners carry on regardless. After previous halvings, older, less efficient machines went offline, but the hashrate recovered within a few months each time.

Whether mining pays after 2028 depends on three variables: the Bitcoin price, the electricity price and the efficiency of the machines. For private miners in Germany on household electricity, operation is usually not profitable even today. Large mining companies are located where power is cheap and lock in electricity prices through long-term contracts.

In the long run, transaction fees are meant to replace the subsidy. Whether that will be enough is an open question among developers and economists: if fees stay below one percent of revenue, as they are now, either the price would have to rise sharply or demand for block space would have to increase markedly for the network's security to remain as high.

The halving and the Bitcoin price: what history shows and what it does not

Around every halving so far, the Bitcoin price rose sharply over the following twelve to eighteen months. At the first halving in 2012 a Bitcoin cost around $12, at the second in 2016 around $650, at the third in 2020 around $8,600 and at the fourth in 2024 around $64,000. On Sunday the price stood at around $75,800.

No law follows from this. With four events, cause and chance can hardly be separated, and other factors such as interest rates, ETF inflows or regulation act at the same time. On top of that, the effect on supply is shrinking: in 2012 daily issuance fell by 3,600 Bitcoin, in 2028 it will fall by only around 225. Measured against exchange turnover of many billions of dollars a day, that is small.

Many investors still watch the four-year rhythm because it focuses expectations. How this rhythm works and what changes it is explained in our piece on the Bitcoin cycle.

Halving in Litecoin and other coins compared

Bitcoin is not the only coin with a halving. Litecoin adopted the rule in 2011 with different numbers: there the reward is halved every 840,000 blocks, and because a Litecoin block takes only two and a half minutes, this also produces a four-year rhythm. Our article on the Litecoin halving sums up where things stand ahead of the next one.

Other networks regulate issuance differently. Ethereum has no halving; there, new issuance depends on the amount of staked Ether, and part of the fees is burned. For many younger tokens, a project's issuance schedule determines when new coins are released. The fixed halving in the code, which anyone can verify, remains a distinctive feature of Bitcoin and its offshoots.

In Germany, the halving changes nothing about taxation. Gains from selling Bitcoin are tax-free after a holding period of one year; for shorter holding periods, an exemption limit of €1,000 a year applies to all private sales gains combined. If you want to build up Bitcoin over the long term, you will find providers' costs in our comparison of where to buy Bitcoin.

Bitcoin halving: around 75,000 blocks until the next cut

The key points in brief: the halving cuts the block reward in half every 210,000 blocks, most recently in April 2024 to 3.125 BTC. The next comes at block 1,050,000, at today's pace between mid-April and mid-May 2028, when the reward drops to 1.5625 BTC. At the end there will be 20,999,999.9769 BTC, mathematically around 2140. If you want to factor the halving into your planning, you can proceed as follows:

1. Compare providers' fees and spreads before you buy in our Bitcoin buying comparison.
2. Spread purchases over time rather than betting on a single date, for example with one of the Bitcoin savings plans.
3. Track hashrate, fees and supply yourself with one of the crypto analytics platforms.

(As of November 8, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)