Bitcoin Halving History: Every Halving Since 2012

Bitcoin has undergone four halvings since the network launched in 2009 — in November 2012, July 2016, May 2020, and April 2024 — each one cutting the block subsidy paid to miners exactly in half, reducing it from an original 50 BTC per block down to the current 3.125 BTC per block.

Each halving is a fixed, code-enforced event triggered at a specific block height rather than a calendar date, which is why the exact day of each halving has varied slightly depending on how quickly blocks were actually mined in the years leading up to it. For the underlying mechanics of why halvings happen at all, see our companion guide on what a Bitcoin halving is.

The first halving: November 28, 2012

The first halving occurred at block 210,000, cutting the block subsidy from 50 BTC to 25 BTC. At this point Bitcoin was still a niche technology, with a relatively small mining base and limited mainstream awareness. This halving is mostly notable as proof that the mechanism described in the original whitepaper explained actually worked exactly as coded, with no manual intervention required from developers.

The second halving: July 9, 2016

The second halving, at block 420,000, reduced the subsidy from 25 BTC to 12.5 BTC. By this point, Bitcoin mining had industrialized significantly compared to 2012, with specialized hardware (ASICs) largely replacing the general-purpose computers that dominated in Bitcoin's earliest years. The network's hashrate — the total computing power securing the chain — had grown substantially, and the difficulty adjustment mechanism smoothly absorbed the reduced miner revenue without any disruption to block timing.

The third halving: May 11, 2020

The third halving, at block 630,000, cut the subsidy from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC. This halving occurred during a period of considerable macroeconomic uncertainty, coinciding with the early stages of a global pandemic and unprecedented monetary stimulus from central banks worldwide — circumstances that many in the crypto community pointed to as reinforcing the appeal of an asset with a fixed, disinflationary supply schedule, in contrast to currencies subject to discretionary issuance decisions.

The fourth halving: April 20, 2024

The fourth halving, at block 840,000, reduced the subsidy from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. By this point Bitcoin mining was a large-scale global industry, and the network's security budget (the combination of block subsidy and transaction fees paid to miners) had become an increasingly discussed topic, since each halving mechanically shrinks the subsidy component of that budget, placing more long-term weight on transaction fees to sustain mining incentives — a dynamic explored further in our piece on the Bitcoin 21 million supply cap.

Halving timeline at a glance

Halving	Date	Block height	Subsidy before	Subsidy after
Genesis (no halving)	Jan 3, 2009	0	—	50 BTC
First	Nov 28, 2012	210,000	50 BTC	25 BTC
Second	Jul 9, 2016	420,000	25 BTC	12.5 BTC
Third	May 11, 2020	630,000	12.5 BTC	6.25 BTC
Fourth	Apr 20, 2024	840,000	6.25 BTC	3.125 BTC
Fifth (projected)	~2028	1,050,000	3.125 BTC	1.5625 BTC

What stayed consistent across all four halvings

Despite occurring in very different market and macroeconomic environments, every halving so far has shared the same core characteristics: it triggered automatically at the predetermined block height with no need for developer intervention, mining difficulty adjusted afterward to maintain roughly 10-minute block times, and no halving has ever required a hard fork or contentious rule change to execute — a notable contrast with other, more disputed protocol changes in Bitcoin's history.

Miner behavior around each halving has also shown some recurring patterns: less efficient mining operations, particularly those paying higher electricity costs, have historically shut down or been acquired shortly after each halving, since their revenue is cut in half overnight while their costs remain the same. This is a normal part of the competitive dynamics inherent to proof-of-work mining, discussed further in our /blog/pow-vs-pos comparison of consensus mechanisms.

Why the schedule was never adjusted

Some proposals over the years have suggested altering Bitcoin's monetary policy — for example, removing the cap entirely or changing the halving cadence — but none have gained meaningful traction within the Bitcoin community. The fixed, predictable schedule is widely regarded as one of Bitcoin's core value propositions, and changing it would require overwhelming consensus among node operators, miners, and users that has never materialized for proposals of this kind. This resistance to changing core monetary rules mirrors the broader theme in the /blog/bitcoin-whitepaper-explained of removing discretionary control from any single party.

Bottom line

Four halvings in, Bitcoin's issuance schedule has executed exactly as coded in 2009, cutting the block reward from 50 BTC down to 3.125 BTC with no exceptions or interventions. The next halving is projected for around 2028, continuing the march toward the fixed 21 million supply cap explored in our dedicated guide on /blog/bitcoin-21-million-supply-cap.