This URL went live on 23 April 2020 as a two-sentence stub. We kept the address and rewrote the page in August 2026, then expanded it in October 2026. By then the 2020 and 2024 halvings had already happened. None of that is a reason to buy or sell anything. Your own bitcoin balance does not halve, and it does not double.
What is being halved?
Bitcoin creates new coins as a reward to whoever adds the next block of transactions. That reward is called the subsidy. About every 210,000 blocks — roughly four years, not a calendar appointment — the subsidy is cut in half. The code is public. The date of the next cut is an estimate, because blocks are not a metronome. If machines find blocks faster than ten minutes on average, the cut arrives sooner. If they slow down, it arrives later. Difficulty retunes about every two weeks so the average stays near ten minutes. Mining is a lottery for the next page is that machine.
The schedule, in coins per block:
50, from the start in 2009.
25, from 2012.
12.5, from 2016.
6.25, from block 630,000 on 11 May 2020.
3.125, from block 840,000 in April 2024.
1.5625, expected around 2028, then half again every 210,000 blocks.
The code aims at a cap of 21 million coins, reached far in the future as the subsidy tends toward zero. Already-issued coins are not burned to get there. A halving slows the tap. It does not claw coins back from wallets.
What happens to the coins you already hold
Nothing, on the protocol. A stock split cuts a share into smaller shares and the company adjusts the price. Bitcoin does not do that. If you hold keys to one bitcoin the day before a halving, you hold keys to one bitcoin the day after. An exchange that shows a different number has a database problem, not a halving. You do not need to move coins, upgrade a wallet, or “claim” anything. Anyone who says you do is asking for a phrase or a fee.
What it is not
It is not a coupon. It is not a guarantee that the price will rise. Markets can ignore a well-advertised supply change, or they can spend a year pricing it in early. “Number go up because halving” is a slogan. Issuance going down is a fact about miner revenue and new coins, not about your rent. The 2024 cut happened with spot ETFs already listed. The ETFs did not write the rule. A spot ETF is a wrapper, not a new bitcoin.
Why miners care more than holders
Miners spend electricity and hardware. Their paycheck is the subsidy plus the fees users attach to transactions. When the subsidy halves, some machines become unprofitable until the bitcoin price or the fees make the sums work again. Those operators unplug. Difficulty then falls, and the remaining machines find blocks again. That can change who is mining, and where. It does not stop the chain. China telling miners to leave in 2021 moved trucks. The notebook kept a clock.
Fees matter more as the subsidy shrinks, because they become a larger share of the paycheck that makes rewriting history expensive. That is a long argument about security budgets. It is not a reason to time a purchase to a countdown. On-chain fees are an auction is the user’s side of the same block.
How to check you are reading the real event
A block explorer can show the coinbase transaction — the miner’s reward, not the company Coinbase — and the subsidy in it. After block 840,000 that subsidy is 3.125 bitcoin plus whatever fees were in the block. If a chart starts the story at a round price instead of a block height, it is selling a mood. If it tells you what to do with money, it is not a guide.
For Bitcoin without the trading floor, start with what Bitcoin is in plain language. This page is the issuance schedule. Nothing here is an instruction to buy, sell, hold, or move bitcoin because a countdown exists.
