The Bitcoin Halving Cycle: Four Cycles, Measured
The clock has kept time. The cycles keep getting smaller.
By Pavel Penev, MScFounder, TradeWize · 10+ years trading the marketsThe short answer
About every four years, the number of new bitcoins created each day is cut in half. That's the halving. All four cycles so far peaked in their second year, 371 to 546 days after the halving. But each cycle has been smaller than the last. From halving day to peak, bitcoin rose 93x, then 30x, then 7.9x, then 1.9x. The supply cut shrinks too: each halving removes half as many new coins as the one before, and a smaller share of the supply.
Ask anyone in crypto how bitcoin's price works and you'll hear about the four-year cycle. The halving cuts new supply, price runs up for a year or so, it peaks, it crashes, and it bottoms before the next halving.
That story is based on four halvings. So we took every daily close of bitcoin on Bitstamp from 2011 to 2026, 5,507 days, and measured each cycle the same way.
What the halving is
New bitcoins are created as a reward for adding a block to the blockchain. A block comes about every 10 minutes, so about 144 a day. Every 210,000 blocks, which takes about four years, that reward is cut in half. It's written into bitcoin's code.
The reward started at 50 bitcoins a block. It's been cut four times, and it's now 3.125. That's 450 new coins a day, down from 7,200 before the first halving. The halvings keep going until the total supply reaches 21 million, around the year 2140.
The next one is at block 1,050,000. On 29 September 2026 the chain was at block 969,105, 80,895 blocks away, which puts it around April 2028.
| Halving | Block | Reward per block | Bitcoin's close that day |
|---|---|---|---|
| 28 November 2012 | 210,000 | 50 → 25 | $12.22 |
| 9 July 2016 | 420,000 | 25 → 12.5 | $648 |
| 11 May 2020 | 630,000 | 12.5 → 6.25 | $8,572 |
| 20 April 2024 | 840,000 | 6.25 → 3.125 | $64,990 |
Dates are the UTC day each halving block was mined. Closes are Bitstamp BTC/USD.
Finding 1: the timing has held
Here's the part of the story that checks out. Every cycle peaked in its second year. The first peaked 371 days after its halving, then 525, 546 and 534.
Each line is a cycle's price over its halving-day price, on a log scale. The shaded band is the second year after the halving.
The crashes kept time too. In the three finished cycles, the low came 364 to 406 days after the peak. That's 777 to 924 days after the halving, in the cycle's third year.
The year-by-year returns are messier. Only the first year after the halving was up every time. The other three years went both ways.
| 2012 cycle | 2016 cycle | 2020 cycle | 2024 cycle | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | +8,190% | +286% | +562% | +31% |
| Year 2 | −63% | +166% | −49% | −11% |
| Year 3 | −5% | +89% | −7% | +10% so far |
| Year 4 (to next halving) | +82% | −32% | +141% | not yet |
Bitcoin's change over each year after the halving, Bitstamp daily closes. The 2024 cycle's third year runs to 28 September 2026.
Finding 2: every cycle has been smaller
The timing repeats. The size doesn't. From halving day to peak, bitcoin rose 93x in the first cycle, 30x in the second, 7.9x in the third and 1.9x in the fourth.
Left: the rise from halving day to the cycle's peak. Right: the fall from that peak to the lowest close after it.
Each peak also beat the one before by less. The 2016 cycle's peak was 17x the 2012 one. The next was 3.5x, then 1.8x.
The crashes got smaller too. Bitcoin fell 85% after its 2013 peak, 83% after 2017 and 77% after 2021. After its October 2025 peak of $124,728, its lowest close so far is $58,526, on 30 June 2026. That's a 53% fall.
That June low also broke a record in the other direction. In every earlier cycle, even the bottom was well above the halving-day price: 14x, 4.9x and 1.8x. This time it went below it. The $58,526 close was under the $64,990 bitcoin traded at on halving day.
Learn it by doing
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Try the free lesson →Finding 3: each halving cuts less
The halving always cuts new coins by half. What shrinks is how much that matters. In 2012, new coins were adding 25% a year to the supply, and the halving took that to 12.5%. In 2024, new coins were adding 1.7% a year, and the halving took it to 0.8%.
A year of new bitcoin as a share of all bitcoin mined, just before and just after each halving.
So the first halving removed 12.5 points of yearly supply growth. The latest removed 0.8 of a point. In 2024 the cut came to 450 fewer coins a day, about $29 million a day at the halving-day price.
Meanwhile, more things move bitcoin's price than in 2012, like the US spot bitcoin ETFs, interest rates and leveraged futures. A shrinking supply cut is the simplest explanation for shrinking cycles. It isn't the only one. A bigger market also takes more money to move.
Finding 4: 2024 broke the order
In the old pattern, bitcoin reached a new all-time high after the halving. In the 2016 cycle it first closed above its old peak 229 days after the halving. In the 2020 cycle it took 203 days.
In 2024 it happened 47 days before the halving. The US spot bitcoin ETFs had opened in January 2024. By halving day the price had already run. The year after the halving then rose only 31%, against 286% and 562% in the two cycles before.
What people assume
The halving sets the cycle, and every cycle is a boom.
- Price runs after the halving.
- Each peak is a huge multiple of the last.
- The bottom is still far above the halving price.
What the data says
The clock has held. The size hasn't.
- All four peaks came 371-546 days after the halving.
- The rise shrank from 93x to 1.9x.
- In 2026 the price fell below its halving-day close.
Where this cycle is now
On 28 September 2026, the 2024 cycle was 891 days old. Bitcoin closed at $83,462, 33% below its peak.
At the same age, the earlier cycles were 72% to 82% below their peaks. Their lows came 777 to 924 days after the halving. This cycle's lowest close so far came on day 801, inside that window.
If the old timing still holds, the low of this cycle is already in, or close. That's a big if. The pattern has four examples, and this cycle has already broken it once.
| Cycle | Peak close | Days to peak | Rise | Low after peak | Fall |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | $1,132 (December 2013) | 371 | 93x | $171 (January 2015) | 85% |
| 2016 | $19,188 (December 2017) | 525 | 30x | $3,180 (December 2018) | 83% |
| 2020 | $67,559 (November 2021) | 546 | 7.9x | $15,766 (November 2022) | 77% |
| 2024 | $124,728 (October 2025) | 534 | 1.9x | $58,526 (June 2026) so far | 53% |
Bitstamp BTC/USD daily closes. Rise is peak over the halving-day close. Fall is the low over the peak.
How to read it
- Treat the timing as history, not a schedule. Four peaks landed 371-546 days after the halving, but four is a small number, and the 2024 cycle already broke part of the pattern.
- Don't size your expectations off the early cycles. The rises went 93x, 30x, 7.9x, 1.9x. Each one was a fraction of the one before.
- Expect the supply cut to matter less each time. The next halving takes yearly supply growth from 0.8% to about 0.4%.
- Watch what's changed. ETF flows, interest rates and leverage now move bitcoin day to day. A four-year story can't tell you what those will do.
- Remember that the falls have been deep in every cycle. Even the smallest so far is 53%.
What is the bitcoin halving?
Every 210,000 blocks, about every four years, the reward for adding a block to bitcoin's blockchain is cut in half. That halves the number of new bitcoins created each day. It's been cut four times, from 50 to 3.125 bitcoins a block.
When is the next bitcoin halving?
At block 1,050,000. At the pace of about 144 blocks a day, that's around April 2028. The exact date depends on how fast blocks are found.
How long after the halving does bitcoin peak?
In all four cycles, between 371 and 546 days, in the cycle's second year. The peaks came in December 2013, December 2017, November 2021 and October 2025.
Does the halving make bitcoin go up?
The year after the halving was up in four of four cycles, but the gains shrank from +8,190% to +31%. Other things happened at the same time in every cycle, so four examples can't prove the halving was the cause.
Is the four-year cycle over?
Nobody can say from four examples. The timing held again in 2024: the peak came 534 days after the halving. But the rise was only 1.9x, the new high came before the halving, and the price later fell below its halving-day level.
Method, and what this cannot tell you
We took every daily close of bitcoin on Bitstamp, in US dollars, from 1 September 2011 to 28 September 2026. It's the longest unbroken dollar price record that starts before the first halving. We dated each halving by the day its block was mined. For each cycle we found the highest close in the 1,000 days after the halving (the peak), then the lowest close after that peak and before the next halving (the low). We split each cycle into its four years and measured the change in each one. The supply numbers are arithmetic: a year of new coins at 144 blocks a day, over the coins already mined.
- There have been four halvings, and the fourth cycle isn't finished. Four data points can't prove a cycle. They can only show what happened.
- The halving isn't the only thing that happened on this clock. The 2013, 2017 and 2021 peaks also lined up with a Chinese buying boom, the coin-offering boom and pandemic stimulus. This study can't separate the halving from those.
- Closes only. Wicks are left out, so the peaks and lows here are a little below and above the intraday extremes you'll see quoted elsewhere.
- This is one exchange. Bitstamp was a small exchange in 2012-2013, and prices from those years differ from one exchange to the next. From 2017 its closes are within 1% of Binance's at every peak and low.
- The fourth cycle's low is the lowest close so far. It can still be beaten before the next halving.
- The timing pattern is famous, so traders act on it. That could make it self-fulfilling, and it could stop working for the same reason.
Learn how bitcoin's supply works
Our crypto track covers the supply rules written into bitcoin's code, and what they do and don't mean for the price.