Bitcoin: Over 80,000 Blocks Until the Next Halving

Hasten slowly, and without losing courage. This is what Boileau advised in L'Art poétique. Bitcoin applies this advice literally until its next halving, one block every ten minutes.

On Monday, October 5, at 12:45 PM in Paris, the Bitcoin network validated its block number 970,000, and no one is popping the champagne. However, the figure deserves a glance, as there are now only 80,000 blocks left before the next halving, the division by two of the reward paid to miners that has been a rhythm of the protocol since 2012. So you have just over eighteen months ahead of you. The countdown has begun. Key points of this article:

• Bitcoin has validated its block number 970,000, marking the start of the countdown to the next halving expected in about 18 months.
• The next halving, which will halve the miners' reward, is anticipated around mid-April 2028, raising economic concerns for them.

What Block 970,000 Tells Us

The block in question was mined by Luxor, a pool, which is a grouping of miners who pool their computing power. It contains 5,612 transactions and yielded 3.129 BTC to its creator, according to data from the mempool.space explorer consulted this Monday.

Take a close look at this amount. Of these 3.129 BTC, 3.125 come from the monetary creation provided by the protocol and barely 0.004 from fees paid by users. Fees account for 0.14% of the total, which is to say a drop in the bucket.

Since the halving of April 2024, which occurred at block 840,000, the network has produced 130,000 blocks out of the 210,000 that each cycle contains. The fourth cycle of Bitcoin is therefore 62% complete.

Next Bitcoin Halving: See You in April 2028

The halving will trigger at block 1,050,000, regardless of the date displayed that day. At a rate of one block every ten minutes in theory, 80,000 blocks represent about 555 days, placing the event around mid-April 2028. The countdown to the next Bitcoin halving, recorded on October 5, 2026. Source: mempool.space

Simple estimation. Miners are currently going a bit faster than expected, with an average time of 9.9 minutes per block, and the network should correct this on October 17 by raising its difficulty by about 1.1%. Difficulty is the slider that Bitcoin adjusts every 2,016 blocks to maintain its pace.

On the day, the reward will drop from 3.125 to 1.5625 BTC per block. Daily issuance will fall from 450 to 225 BTC, resulting in a loss of about 19 million dollars per day for all miners, with Bitcoin at 86,000 dollars as of this Monday.

After the Halving, Bitcoin Miners on Dry Bread

You are told every cycle that the halving drives prices up. However, the argument of scarcity wears thin over time, as 20,093,750 BTC are already in circulation, which is 95.7% of the 21 million planned. The next 80,000 blocks will only add 250,000. The supply shock of 2028 will be about crumbs.

Miners, on the other hand, have reason to worry. They are currently deploying nearly 965 exahashes per second, the unit that measures the network's computing power, and almost entirely live off the subsidy. With fees at 0.004 BTC per block, the outlook is not promising. If nothing changes by 2028, their revenue in bitcoins will be halved overnight, and only a rise in price or a revival of activity on the chain could compensate.

Eighteen months is long for a trader and very short for an industrialist who must amortize their machines. We wondered back in April if it was too early to prepare for the 2028 halving. The next symbolic milestone will be block 1,000,000, expected around May 1, 2027.

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