Halving

A halving is the moment bitcoin's block subsidy, the new coins created with each block, is cut by 50 percent. It happens every 210,000 blocks, approximately every four years, and the schedule is embedded in the protocol. Four halvings have occurred, taking the subsidy from 50 BTC at launch to 3.125 BTC since April 2024.

Why it matters

The halving schedule is bitcoin's entire monetary policy, executed by code rather than committee. The geometric series it creates is striking: the first 210,000 blocks issued half of all bitcoin that will ever exist, and each subsequent epoch issues half of what remains, so the total converges on 21 million with the last fraction arriving around 2140. Halvings arrive at a known block height that anyone can verify and no one can postpone, which makes bitcoin the only major asset whose future supply is public knowledge. Each event also stress-tests mining economics, since revenue from subsidies drops by half overnight while costs do not.

In the gold vs bitcoin debate

Nothing in the gold market resembles a halving. Gold's flow is governed by discovery, extraction cost, and price incentives, and it has trended upward as technology improved. Bitcoin's flow drops on a timetable regardless of any incentive, which is why its stock-to-flow ratio now exceeds gold's and will keep rising. Gold advocates caution that a supply schedule is only half the equation, since value requires enduring demand, and that is the half where gold's record is unmatched. Each halving is also a live test of the network's fee market, which must eventually replace the subsidy entirely.