In this article
- TL;DR
- What the Bitcoin halving is
- What Actually Happened at Block 840,000
- Hash price crashed and difficulty climbed
- How spot ETFs changed the post-halving equation
- Industrial scale mining took over
- Bitcoin crossed 100k in seven months
- Where this cycle sits in the four phase map
- What 2028 brings
- What the 2024 Halving Proved
Every four years the same three questions come back at me. Will the halving pump Bitcoin. What happens to miners. When does this end. I work in the crypto self-custody space, and the 2024 cycle answered the first two in ways no prior cycle could.
On April 19, 2024, at block 840,000, the network did what the code told it to do. The block reward dropped from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. Miners kept hashing. Blocks kept coming. Everything around that block was different from any cycle before it.
Here is what happened, and what 2028 sets up.
TL;DR
Every 210,000 blocks (~4 years) Bitcoin's block reward drops by 50%. That rule enforces the 21-million supply cap. The 4th halving fired April 19, 2024 at block 840,000. The reward dropped from 6.25 to 3.125 BTC, and daily issuance fell from ~900 to ~450 BTC. The 5th halving lands around 2028. The 2024 event was the first to collide with spot ETFs absorbing daily issuance several times over. As of 2026-05-20 the chain sits at block ~950,000 with roughly 100,000 blocks to go before the next halving in 2028 (MEXC news).
What the Bitcoin halving is
The bitcoin halving is a built-in rule that cuts the reward miners receive for producing a new block by exactly 50% every 210,000 blocks, roughly every four years.
Bitcoin's total supply is capped at 21 million. The halving enforces that cap by shrinking the rate at which new BTC enters circulation. No central bank can override it. No committee can vote it away. The rule lives in every node's consensus code, so changing it would mean every operator on Earth agreeing to a different Bitcoin.
Per Binance Academy, the full schedule reads like a compression timetable:
| Halving | Block | Date | Reward Before | Reward After | Price at Block |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Genesis | 0 | 2009-01-03 | n/a | 50 BTC | n/a |
| 1st | 210,000 | 2012-11-28 | 50 BTC | 25 BTC | $12.35 |
| 2nd | 420,000 | 2016-07-09 | 25 BTC | 12.5 BTC | $650.53 |
| 3rd | 630,000 | 2020-05-11 | 12.5 BTC | 6.25 BTC | $8,821.42 |
| 4th | 840,000 | 2024-04-19 | 6.25 BTC | 3.125 BTC | $63,652.80 |
| 5th | 1,050,000 | ~2028 | 3.125 BTC | 1.5625 BTC | TBD |
| 6th | 1,260,000 | ~2032 | 1.5625 BTC | 0.78125 BTC | TBD |
| 7th | 1,470,000 | ~2036 | 0.78125 BTC | 0.390625 BTC | TBD |
Daily issuance roughly halves at each step, from ~900 BTC/day before April 2024 to ~450 BTC/day after. That compression is the whole point.
What Actually Happened at Block 840,000
Block 840,000 arrived on April 19–20, 2024 (April 19 in the US, April 20 UTC). It was the most consequential block in four years.
The reward halved on schedule. At the same block, the Runes protocol launched, a fungible token standard built directly on Bitcoin's base layer and part of the broader Bitcoin Ordinals ecosystem. The rush to inscribe was massive. Block 840,000 generated over $2.4 million in transaction fees alone, which briefly made fees a bigger revenue source than the block subsidy itself.
For miners that block was a preview of what a fee-funded network looks like.
Daily Bitcoin production then shifted from roughly 900 BTC/day to 450 BTC/day.
Hash price crashed and difficulty climbed
One number reveals the real stress test the mining industry took in 2024. The hash price fell roughly 60% since April 2024.
By May 2025, miners were earning around $0.049 per terahash per second, the lowest hash price in years. Smaller operations with aging hardware and expensive energy contracts faced a margin squeeze they could not engineer their way out of.
Yet Bitcoin's mining difficulty hit 84.37 trillion at the time of the halving and kept climbing. The 30-day mean hash rate and difficulty grew about 40% in the year following the halving. By May 2025, global mining difficulty had pushed past 136 trillion (difficulty is dimensionless, not a hashrate unit).
Two forces explain that divergence. Bitcoin's price rose sharply in the same window. The miners who survived the shakeout were already scaled and tuned. Hash price measures revenue per unit of hash, so if Bitcoin doubles you can add more hardware even as hash price falls. Total hash rate climbed even as per-machine economics tightened.
At the halving itself, Bitcoin's total hash rate had reached 613 exahashes per second, a pre-halving peak that set the baseline for everything since. By May 2026 the network was running at roughly 980 exahashes per second with difficulty above 136 trillion, around 60% above that pre-halving peak (blockchain.info/q/hashrate).
How spot ETFs changed the post-halving equation
Every previous halving played out with the same cast. Retail speculators, early adopters, a thin institutional layer. The 2024 halving broke that pattern.
The Bitcoin spot ETF launched in the United States in January 2024, three months before the halving (see Bitcoin ETFs for the full breakdown). BlackRock's IBIT and Fidelity's FBTC became the fastest-growing ETF products in history. Bitcoin spot ETFs took in more than $68 billion in net inflows, and US spot ETFs alone absorbed roughly five times daily issuance through net inflows during the post-halving window.
You had a supply shock from the protocol crashing into an institutional demand surge. In 2020, the halving cut daily issuance from ~1,800 to ~900 BTC/day against mostly retail demand. In 2024, ETFs alone pulled hundreds of BTC per day off the market through net inflows. That collision, not the halving alone, drove the post-halving price move.
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Industrial scale mining took over
The post-halving environment sped up a structural shift that had been building since 2020. Bitcoin mining went fully industrial.
Smaller miners who could not cut energy costs or upgrade hardware got squeezed out. Energy costs can now make up as much as 80% of operational expenses for miners post-halving. Operations in Oman and the UAE benefit from subsidised energy at $0.035 to $0.07/kWh, a structural cost advantage smaller Western miners cannot match.
Public miners showed how tight margins had become. Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT) sold $38.8 million in BTC in December 2024 to cover operational costs. Marathon Digital (NASDAQ: MARA) kept buying up operations as smaller miners sold. CleanSpark expanded hard.
Bitmain's Antminer S21+ and MicroBT's WhatsMiner M66S+ became the critical post-halving machines. Miners running older S19-era hardware found the economics no longer worked.
One adaptation matters. Some operations began repurposing infrastructure for AI computing. The same large-scale power and cooling that runs Bitcoin mining can serve GPU clusters for AI training. The halving accelerated a diversification that had been quietly building.
Bitcoin crossed 100k in seven months
In every previous halving cycle, the supply reduction took 12 to 18 months to show up in price. The 2024 cycle moved faster.
Bitcoin crossed $100,000 for the first time in late 2024, less than seven months after the halving. The drivers were unusually legible. Reduced daily issuance hit a market with $68B+ in institutional inflows against improving macro conditions.
In 2020, the same supply reduction with minimal institutional demand drove the run to $69,000 over 18 months. The ETF compressed that timeline.
The 2012 halving preceded an 11,000% gain. 2016 produced ~2,850%. 2020 yielded roughly 700%. Returns compress as the market cap grows. The 2024 cycle, with a $100,000 milestone, was huge in absolute terms even as percentage gains shrank.
Where this cycle sits in the four phase map
Erik Anderson's four-year cycle cheatsheet splits Bitcoin into four roughly one-year phases. Accumulation is when media calls Bitcoin dead and smart money builds positions quietly. Early growth is when the recovery starts and the crowd has not noticed. Expansion is when the headlines turn euphoric and everyone you know is talking about it. Contraction is when the cycle resets and sitting in cash beats holding anything.
Map the 2024 era onto that. 2024 to 2025 was recovery and growth, ETF approval, halving event, Bitcoin past 100k. 2026 sits between expansion and an early contraction signal depending on which on-chain indicator you trust. The 2028 halving probably catches the next accumulation low rather than a top.
The framework is not for predicting price. It is for positioning. If you know which phase you are in, you stop reacting to headlines and start acting on a plan.
What 2028 brings
The fifth Bitcoin halving lands at block 1,050,000, roughly in 2028. The block reward drops from 3.125 BTC to 1.5625 BTC. Daily issuance falls to ~225 BTC/day.
Several dynamics from 2024 will define how 2028 plays out:
- ETFs are structural, not cyclical. BlackRock and Fidelity's products will not disappear. Institutional demand enters 2028 from a much larger base.
- Miner consolidation is effectively complete. The 2024 shakeout left fewer weak hands. By 2028, a smaller number of large-scale operations dominate.
- Transaction fees have to carry more weight. At 1.5625 BTC per block, the subsidy is a fraction of Bitcoin's early years. The Runes launch at block 840,000 already hinted at what a fee-dominant future looks like.
2028 also arrives against a backdrop of clearer global Bitcoin regulation, and an institutional landscape much more developed than what existed when the ETF launched.
What the 2024 Halving Proved
Two years on, the 2024 halving leaves you with one lesson. Bitcoin's monetary policy is not theoretical. It is a working, self-executing system that has now survived four supply reductions without exception or override.
The reward halved. Miners adapted. The network kept going. Hash rate grew. Bitcoin's first supply reduction in the institutional era showed something prior cycles never could. Even with $68B+ in ETF demand crashing into reduced issuance, the protocol stayed indifferent. It runs no matter what.
2028 will prove it again.
This post is a market retrospective and a positioning framework, not investment advice. Past halving cycles do not predict future Bitcoin price action. Hash rate, difficulty, ETF flows and miner economics change daily. Verify every figure against the cited primary sources before acting on them. Talk to a FINMA-registered advisor or Swiss-licensed Steuerberater before deploying material capital.
Thinking about holding Bitcoin in Switzerland? Read Bitcoin and Swiss taxes before you decide on size.
Sources:
- ProShares: Bitcoin Halving 2024
- Forbes Advisor CA: Bitcoin Halving Event 2024
- CoinGeek: Bitcoin Halving Aftermath
- Fidelity Digital Assets: 2024 Bitcoin Halving One Year Later
- Investopedia: Bitcoin Halving
- WorldMetrics: Bitcoin Mining Statistics
- AInvest: Bitcoin Price Outlook 2025–2026
- Binance Academy: Bitcoin Halving Date
- MEXC News: Bitcoin Halving Nears With 100,000 Blocks Left
- Erik Anderson: Four-Year Cycle Cheatsheet PDF
- blockchain.info hashrate
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