Overview
The next Bitcoin halving will happen in mid-April 2024. This event will cut in half the amount of bitcoin awarded to miners for validating transactions. Halvings are an important feature of the Bitcoin network’s design that are meant to limit inflation by reducing the supply of new bitcoins entering circulation.
Halvings take place each time 210,000 blocks have been mined, which happens roughly every four years. The upcoming halving will be the fourth in Bitcoin’s history. Because the halving takes place automatically when a specific block is mined, in this case the 840,000th block, the exact timing is variable (dependent upon the network’s hash rate). When the next halving takes effect, miners’ block rewards will drop from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.
Halvings will continue to take place on the same schedule until all 21 million bitcoin have been mined, which is estimated to happen sometime around the year 2140. The fixed halving schedule affords bitcoin its unique status as a programmatically disinflationary asset.