Bitcoin halving countdown and cycle performance overlay

All Bitcoin halving dates (past and future)

When is the next Bitcoin halving?

The next Bitcoin halving (the 5th in history) will happen when block 1,050,000 is mined: 15 April 2028 on the countdown, or around 15 April 2028 at the last six months' pace of 10.05 minutes per block. At that point the block reward drops from 3.125 BTC to 1.5625 BTC per block. The exact date can move by weeks depending on actual block-production speed vs the 10-minute target. The halving happens automatically at the protocol level - no vote, no fork required - and reduces the annualised new-supply rate by 50 percent.

How does the halving affect Bitcoin's price?

Historically, Bitcoin's strongest gains have come in the 12 to 18 months FOLLOWING each halving, not on the halving day itself. The "post-halving summer" phase is the most-cited 4-year cycle pattern:

• 2012 halving (Nov 2012): BTC ~$12 → $1,150 by Nov 2013 (~96x in 12 months)
• 2016 halving (Jul 2016): BTC ~$650 → $19,800 by Dec 2017 (~30x in 17 months; A$864 → A$25,033 in AUD closes)
• 2020 halving (May 2020): BTC ~$8,800 → $69,000 by Nov 2021 (~7.8x in 18 months; A$13,113 → A$91,345)
• 2024 halving (Apr 2024): BTC ~$64,000 (A$99,332) → highest AUD close so far A$187,780 on 13 August 2025 (~1.9x in 16 months)

Each cycle's gain magnitude has been smaller than the prior (diminishing returns as market cap grows), but the directional pattern - post-halving rally peaking 12-18 months later - has held across all three completed halving cycles, and the 2024 cycle's high so far came 16 months after its halving. Caveats: sample size is only 3 cycles, the 2024 cycle has been distorted by ETF inflows starting BEFORE the halving (an unprecedented dynamic), and Bitcoin's market structure has matured significantly since 2012.

What is the Bitcoin halving?

Bitcoin's consensus rules define a fixed issuance schedule. Each block (mined roughly every 10 minutes) creates a fixed number of new bitcoin, called the block subsidy. The subsidy started at 50 BTC per block in January 2009 when the network launched. Every 210,000 blocks (roughly every four years), the subsidy is cut in half. This is the halving.

The halving is hardcoded into Bitcoin's reference implementation and has been preserved in every node version since 2009. Every Bitcoin Core release, every alternative client (btcd, Knots, Bitcoin Knots, etc.) honours the schedule. There is no mechanism to skip, delay, or modify a halving; the rule is enforced by every node on the network.

Four halvings have occurred:

• First halving (28 November 2012). 50 BTC to 25 BTC. Bitcoin was trading at roughly 12 USD; about 10.5 million BTC had been issued.
• Second halving (9 July 2016). 25 BTC to 12.5 BTC. Bitcoin was trading at roughly 650 USD; about 15.75 million BTC had been issued.
• Third halving (11 May 2020). 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC. Bitcoin was trading at roughly 8,500 USD; about 18.375 million BTC had been issued.
• Fourth halving (19 April 2024). 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. Bitcoin was trading at roughly 64,000 USD; about 19.7 million BTC had been issued.

The next halving (fifth, expected in late March or April 2028 at block 1,050,000) will cut the subsidy to 1.5625 BTC per block.

Supply schedule and the 21 million cap

The halving schedule is the mechanism that enforces Bitcoin's fixed 21 million supply cap. The total amount of bitcoin that will ever exist is the sum of a geometric series:

Total supply = 210,000 × (50 + 25 + 12.5 + 6.25 + 3.125 + ...)
= 210,000 × 100
= 21,000,000 BTC

The sum converges because each term is half the previous one. By the time the subsidy rounds to zero (around 2140), roughly 20,999,999.9769 BTC will have been issued. The fractional shortfall is an artefact of integer rounding in Bitcoin's satoshi accounting (1 BTC = 100 million satoshis).

As of block 969,696 (3 October 2026), about 20.09 million BTC have been issued, or 95.7 percent of the total supply. The remaining 4.3 percent will be issued over roughly the next 114 years, with the issuance rate halving every four years. The 2024 halving cut new issuance to about 0.8 percent of supply a year; the 2028 halving takes it to about 0.4 percent and the 2032 halving to about 0.2 percent. These are far lower issuance rates than gold's annual production (roughly 1.5 percent of above-ground supply added per year) or the US dollar money supply (a few percent per year).

Halving cycle theory

The "halving cycle" thesis is the observation that Bitcoin's price has historically traced a similar pattern in the 4 years following each halving: a roughly 12 to 18 month bull market peaking in a cycle top, then a roughly 12 to 24 month bear market bottoming, then a roughly 12 to 18 month accumulation phase leading into the next halving.

The cycle overlay chart above plots this directly: each line is Bitcoin's AUD price from one halving date forward, with the halving month indexed to 100. The overlay lets you compare how each cycle progressed at the same point post-halving.

Three points worth noting when looking at the overlay:

• Cycle tops have all occurred within 12 to 18 months after the halving. The 2013 top was 12 months after the 2012 halving; the 2017 top 17 months after the 2016 halving; the 2021 top 18 months after the 2020 halving. The 2024 cycle's highest close so far came 16 months after its halving.
• Cycle gains have decreased each cycle. The 2013 cycle gained roughly 96x from the halving level (USD). In AUD closes the 2017 cycle gained about 29x, the 2021 cycle about 7.0x and the 2024 cycle 1.9x so far. The diminishing-returns pattern reflects Bitcoin's growing market-cap base: doubling a smaller market is easier than doubling a larger one.
• The 2024 cycle is still in progress. The gold line on the chart represents the cycle following the April 2024 halving. Its high so far (A$187,780, 13 August 2025) is well below the prior cycles on the indexed scale, and BTC has since fallen as much as 54.9 percent from it.

The cycle theory is empirical, not deterministic. There is no causal mechanism that says Bitcoin must pump after a halving. The thesis is that halved supply growth combined with continued (or growing) demand shifts the supply-demand balance enough to drive cyclical bull markets. If demand softens, or if other variables (macro liquidity, ETF flows, halving expectations already priced in) dominate, the pattern could weaken or break. Past cycle behaviour is one input, not a forecast.

Halving history

The full history of Bitcoin halvings, including the next estimated event:

Australian tax angle

Bitcoin halvings do not directly trigger any Australian tax event for the holder. The halving cuts the rate of new BTC minted by miners; existing holders see no change to their holdings, cost base, or capital gains position from the protocol event itself.

Tax exposure comes from what you do around the halving, not the halving itself:

• Selling or disposing during the post-halving bull market. Capital gains tax (CGT) applies on the difference between disposal proceeds and your cost base. Held for over 12 months, an Australian-resident individual gets the 50 percent CGT discount. The Crypto CGT Calculator applies the discount to a specific disposal.
• Rebalancing during the cycle. Selling part of a Bitcoin position to take profits and rotating into AUD or another asset is a CGT event on the portion sold. Same rules apply.
• Tax loss harvesting in the post-halving bear market. If the cycle later draws down, realising losses on positions you no longer want to hold can offset other capital gains in the same financial year. The ATO treats selling and quickly buying back the same asset just to crystallise a loss (a wash sale) as tax avoidance, so the sale needs to be a genuine change of position. The Tax Loss Harvesting Calculator estimates EOFY savings.
• Mining or staking rewards. Mining rewards are ordinary income at the AUD value on the day received (and added to your cost base for future CGT). The halving cuts the AUD value of mining rewards by 50 percent (assuming Bitcoin's AUD price stays flat at the halving moment, which it never does).

The ATO's guidance on crypto tax has been stable since 2014: Crypto asset investments. Treat each disposal as a CGT event. Keep records of every buy, sell, swap, and reward.

Related tools

• Bitcoin Logarithmic Regression Bands (AUD) - long-run fair value and ±σ bands. Complements the halving overlay by giving an absolute (vs indexed) reference.
• Bitcoin Rainbow Chart (AUD) - sentiment-labelled version of the log regression. Easy at-a-glance cycle-phase classification.
• Bitcoin Pi Cycle Top Indicator (AUD) - cycle-top signal; on AUD prices it fired in December 2017, 17 months after the 2016 halving.
• Bitcoin Risk Metric (AUD) - 0/100 risk gauge based on the regression deviation. Updates with every monthly close.
• Bitcoin Dominance Chart - rotation context through each halving cycle.
• Altcoin Season Index - alt rotation typically follows the post-halving BTC-led leg.
• Bitcoin Monthly Returns Heatmap (AUD) - month-by-month colour-coded returns across every Bitcoin year.
• Crypto Fear and Greed Index - the daily sentiment indicator most-cited alongside the halving cycle thesis.
• Crypto CGT Calculator - apply the ATO 50 percent discount to a Bitcoin disposal during the post-halving bull or bear.

Frequently asked questions

About the author

Govind Satoshi

Former Institutional Trader. Founder, SatoshiMacro.

Traded allocated institutional capital at a Sydney proprietary trading firm.