What is the halving?
- Author
- CRYPTO PORT Editorial
- Published
- Updated
- Reading time
- 4 min
In short
A halving is the point at which the amount of new currency issued to miners is cut in half. On Bitcoin it happens roughly every four years — precisely, every 210,000 blocks. Issuance slows, but what price does afterwards is not knowable in advance.
Key points
- New issuance is cut in half
- On Bitcoin, every 210,000 blocks
- The mechanism that enforces the supply cap
- It shifts the composition of miner revenue
Definition
A protocol rule that halves the newly issued block reward at predetermined intervals.
Bitcoin's block reward started at 50 BTC and halves every 210,000 blocks: 25 in 2012, 12.5 in 2016, 6.25 in 2020 and 3.125 in 2024. With a block roughly every ten minutes, that works out to intervals of about four years.
The rule is what makes total issuance converge on 21 million coins. Once issuance ends, miner revenue consists solely of transaction fees. So the halving both enforces the cap and gradually reshapes how the network pays for its own security.
Halvings are often discussed alongside price, but the schedule has been public since the beginning and every market participant knows the dates. Past price behaviour is not a guarantee of future behaviour, and a halving cannot be used to forecast price.
Watch out for
- · Price forecasts and sales pitches built on the halving have no evidential basis
- · Lower rewards can push marginal miners out of operation