July 28, 2025

13 min

What is Bitcoin Halving?

If you are even slightly familiar with Bitcoin, you’ve probably heard about Bitcoin halving. But what is Bitcoin halving? And why does every Bitcoin halving event send ripples through the crypto world?

In simple terms, a Bitcoin halving is a major moment when the rewards for mining a new block are slashed by 50%. This system of halving Bitcoin rewards occurs roughly every four years, with each BTC halving designed to keep Bitcoin scarce and valuable. We will cover all this in the following article.

Why Do We Call Them Bitcoin Miners?
How Do Bitcoin Miners Dig For Bitcoins?
Does Bitcoin Halving Increase Price?
Is Bitcoin’s Code Designed to Make It More Valuable?
Bitcoin Halving Schedule
When is The Next Bitcoin Halving After 2024
FOMO & BTC: A Volatile Love Stor
HODLing Through the Bitcoin Halving: How Bitcoin’s Community Keeps Its Cool
Is Too Late To Mine Bitcoin Before Its Price Hit the Moon?
Why Bitcoin Halving Matters

Why Do We Call Them Bitcoin Miners

How did Bitcoin miners get that name? Because, like traditional gold miners, they work hard to extract something valuable—but instead of pickaxes, they use chips and computers. For every block they process, they earn a reward.

A Bitcoin transaction is just someone sending Bitcoin to someone else—a digital transfer of value. “I’m sending 0.01 BTC from me to you” — that’s all.

Each transaction includes the sender, the receiver, the amount, and a digital signature to prove it’s legit.

A block is a bundle of these transactions waiting to be confirmed. If dozens of people are sending Bitcoin at the same time—those payment records get grouped together into one tidy file. That file is the block.

When a miner successfully adds the block to the blockchain, all those transactions become official, locked in, and visible to everyone. The blockchain acts like a public ledger, recording every move. The miner who solves the puzzle, confirms the transactions, and adds the block to the chain earns the Bitcoin reward for their work.

In the early Bitcoin days anyone could mine with a basic computer as there was plenty of “low‑hanging fruit”. But as time progressed, a thing called “halving” takes place, which contributes to making mining for Bitcoin more challenging.

Halving squeezes the supply of new Bitcoins making them scarce, turning Bitcoin into something precious. This carefully timed scarcity is engineered through a mechanism called Bitcoin halving, which cuts the reward miners receive roughly every four years.

Can you imagine what it was like to be the Bitcoin gold prospectors starting with a pan in a river, and then with the gold you found, investing in heavy-duty drills to tunnel deeper and get even more gold?

How Do Bitcoin Miners Dig For Bitcoins?

So what is a “halving” and how does it affect Bitcoin? In order to understand what Bitcoin halving is, it is important first to understand Bitcoin mining in a little more detail, and specifically what is Proof-of-Work and what a hash attempt is.

Bitcoin uses a Proof-of-Work system where miners race to solve a cryptographic puzzle before anyone else. The puzzle is to guess the right number. Each guess at the puzzle is called a hash attempt—each hash attempt is like scratching a lottery ticket: most won’t win, but one will eventually hit the jackpot.

Every time the miner’s hardware tries a new combination, that’s one hash attempt. When a miner’s computer finally guesses the right number—hits the jackpot—they get to add a new batch of transactions (a “block”) to Bitcoin’s public ledger.

As a reward for this work, the miner earns freshly created Bitcoins plus any fees users paid to have their transactions included. Check this video for a visual demo of mining.

Miners measure the power of their mining rigs in hashrates. A hashrate is the number of hash attempts per second. These days miners have to invest in equipment in the magnitude of several terahashes, that’s trillions of blind guesses per second, because rigs with the highest “hashrate”are the ones that can make the most guesses, and are therefore the ones with the best odds of “striking gold”.

In gold mining analogy terms: Let’s say we have a crew of gold miners each armed with a single pickaxe (one guess at a time, chipping away at the earth. Now picture swapping those pickaxes for industrial drills—and not just one, but hundreds whirring away simultaneously (each drill making millions of guesses - all of them together trillions of guesses per second!). Just as in a gold rush where only the fastest, most powerful drills secure the richest veins. In this way, hashrate and digging difficulty dance together: more drills → tougher rock to break → need for stronger drills → cycle repeats.

So now that the terms terahash (one trillion guesses a second) and proof of work don’t sound like words out of somebody’s computer science PhD, and there is an understanding of the challenges of mining Bitcoin, let’s see how Bitcoin halving creates a shortage in the supply of Bitcoins and contributes to a rise in its price.

Does Bitcoin Halving Increase Price?

Bitcoin halving squeezes miners’ revenues. Overnight, their rigs earn half as much and their income is slashed in half

But there’s another challenge: mining difficulty. Bitcoin’s code constantly adjusts the “puzzle hardness” to keep new blocks coming at a steady ten-minute pace, no matter how much mining power joins the network. No, this is not some kind of bug! - it is a security feature, so that there won’t be any devious miners using their huge amounts of terahashes to hack the network and do something sinister like create Bitcoins out of thin air. Only one block can be mined per 10 minutes, no matter how many terahashes are sloshing away. In other words, it’s like turning up the heat on a video game boss: the more players showing up, the tougher the boss becomes so the fight still lasts the same length of time.

The rise in the price of Bitcoin raises the allure to become a Bitcoin miner. So people, instead of buying shovels, like in an old fashioned gold rush, rush to buy motherboards. As a consequence of more miners and computer power hopping on board, a computer on a Bitcoin rig will have to make more guesses, and therefore need more electricity and better hardware in order to mine blocks and gain Bitcoins. This results in more expensive electricity bills and urgency to purchase better equipment.

These two factors together: losing half their income with each halving and the increase in costs as more miners invest in Bitcoin rigs, puts a lot of financial strain on miners. If they can still earn a profit they can continue to mine. But miners with old and out- of-date rigs, who have not invested in better equipment, cannot compete with those who have more powerful and efficient computers running their Bitcoin rigs.

This double squeeze of reduced payouts and tougher mining puzzles means some miners leave the game altogether, while those who stay are earning just half as much as before. But the demand for Bitcoin is still great, even though fewer of them are being produced, thus shooting up its price.

It’s like shutting down half the chocolate factories while more and more people out there are starting to crave for that chocolate. With fewer coins trickling out and plenty of buyers circling, the pressure builds.

This engineered scarcity mirrors gold’s finite nature: as new coins become harder to extract, miners must dig deeper (and invest more) to maintain their share.

Is Bitcoin’s Code Designed to Make It More Valuable?

From the data in the chart, it is clear that there has been a significant rise in the price of BTC one year after each halving. As discussed above, this is a result of fewer Bitcoins being mined and fewer miners staying in the game because of mining difficulty.

It is an artificial scarcity created by Bitcoin’s protocol specifically reflecting gold’s characteristics, which is a precious rare resource that is also difficult to mine and is a store of value. This is why many investors eagerly await the next BTC halving, as each BTC halving event historically sparks speculation and market activity.

Why Only 21 Million Bitcoins?

However, another key factor contributing to Bitcoin’s rising value is scarcity. Just as there’s only a limited amount of gold on the planet, there will only ever be 21 million Bitcoins. Scarcity is baked into Bitcoin’s very design.

No Money‑Printing Authority

With dollars or euros, a central bank can decide to crank up the presses. Bitcoin’s code doesn’t let anyone do that. There’s no CEO or government that can change the rules. Everybody—from developers to miners to you—relies on the same unbreakable promise. This is why Bitcoin is decentralized.

Built‑in Rarity

Gold is valuable because there’s only so much in the ground. Bitcoin works the same way—there will never be more than 21 million coins. That guaranteed limit means each coin can’t be watered down or “printed” away, so the more people want Bitcoin, the more valuable each coin becomes. People who worry about inflation or shady money‑printing often turn to Bitcoin as a safe place to park their wealth.

Open Access for Everyone

Life‑changing access to people in places with shaky banking systems or high inflation that can offer a fairer way to save and spend. Because the rules are transparent and unchangeable, anyone with an internet connection can join in—no bank account or permission needed.

One may ask: So what happens once all 21 million Bitcoins are mined? Today, miners earn brand-new BTC for their mining. But after the last coin is issued (around 2140), those rewards drop to zero. Instead, every Bitcoin transaction will include a small fee—and those fees become the miners’ paycheck. That fee market ensures miners stay motivated to keep the network secure and process transactions, even when there are no new coins left to mine.

Bitcoin Halving Schedule

Bitcoin halving occurs every 210,000 blocks, when the Bitcoin protocol cuts block rewards in half. This roughly works out to be every four years, if the time required to process a single block is 10 minutes. If you look at the chart, in 2012 miners got 50 Bitcoins for every block they mined, but in 2016 that went down to 25. Fast forward to 2024 that has gone down to 6.25 Bitcoins. It’s like a gold mine suddenly yields half as many ounces per ton of ore, demanding twice the effort and more powerful equipment.

Bitcoin Halving Dates:

Over time, there have been several Bitcoin halvings, each one impacting supply and sparking debate about Bitcoin’s future. These Bitcoin halving dates are hard-coded into the network, ensuring a regular Bitcoin halving schedule that shapes supply and investor sentiment every cycle.

Bitcoin Halving 2012: BTC rose from ~$12 to over $1,000 within a year.
Bitcoin Halving 2016: A 4,200% surge took prices to nearly $20,000 by late 2017.
Bitcoin Halving 2020: Prices climbed from around $8,500 to over $60,000 in 2021.

When Was the Last Bitcoin Halving?

The last Bitcoin halving was in April 2024. The 2024 halving has been supercharged by spot‑Bitcoin ETFs and interest from Wallstreet, which has injected fresh momentum heading into 2025. However, it is too early to tell the full impact that the 2024 Bitcoin halving had on the price of Bitcoin.

When is The Next Bitcoin Halving After 2024

We have already mentioned that Bitcoin’s last halving date was in 2024. However, it’s not easy to give an exact date on when the next halving is going to happen. As mentioned, halving happens every 210,000 blocks. So the key factor is the speed required to mine one block. However, if one block is mined every 10 minutes and things continue at this rate, the next Bitcoin halving is expected to occur in 2028.

FOMO & BTC: A Volatile Love Story

Bitcoin halving has contributed to its increase in value, but it has not been smooth, rather it has been a wild roller-coaster ride. Partly to blame for this has been what is commonly known as FOMO, a fear of missing out.

FOMO is not based on careful market strategy, but on peoples’ irrational fear that they are being left out of some amazing get-rich-quick scheme. In other words - Halving is code. FOMO is chaos. FOMO is the negative psychology behind crypto investments.

Unlike halving, which follows predictable, on-chain rules hardcoded into Bitcoin’s protocol—triggered precisely every 210,000 blocks—FOMO is pure chaos. It erupts on a whim: sparked by a viral tweet, a headline like “Man Purchases Dumpsite to Find His Lost Bitcoins”, the story of James Howells, whose ex-girlfriend dumped his hard drive with Bitcoins on them. Now an estimated 700 million dollars. James has gone as far as to make plans to purchase the dumpsite where his hard drive lays. All this creates a herd mentality, as peoples’ FOMO is ramped up and they feel as if they are watching on the sidelines while influencers and social media figures jump onboard the Bitcoin gravy train to show off their newly found crypto spoils.

Though it sounds a bit odd, there is a strange symbiosis between halvings and FOMO. Halvings tend to ignite historic price rallies that fuel even more FOMO.

FOMO, one could say, is the undesired consequence of halvings — the embarrassing relative at the family reunion. Creating a scene, driving chaos into the markets, making prices soar up and down, thus causing anxiety to investors.

Halving by contrast is like a lighthouse that’s built on a steady bedrock of economic principles, such as: supply and demand.

HODLing Through the Bitcoin Halving: How Bitcoin’s Community Keeps Its Cool

Bitcoin has gone through multi‑year slumps—so‑called “crypto winters”—when prices stay stubbornly low. During those frosty stretches, pundits rush to write Bitcoin’s obituary, only to be stunned when it rockets to fresh highs. As Mark Twain famously quipped, "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,".

And the biggest winners? Investors who refuse to panic‑sell. Rather than chasing every hot meme coin or trying to catch the exact top and bottom, they stick to Bitcoin’s unshakeable fundamentals: a hard cap on supply and no central authority to dilute its value.

That conviction fuels their belief that one day Bitcoin will anchor a more stable, global financial system—when “the sky’s the limit” really kicks in. A world where one's wealth lives on an immutable digital ledger—secure, transparent, and capped by code, not by central banks.

These steadfast holders are known as HODLers (a happy typo from “hold”)—or as the community says, “hold on for dear life.” Even after every halving, which often sparks big rallies, true HODLers just smile and let the protocol just do its thing.

Is Too Late To Mine Bitcoin Before Its Price Hits the Moon?

Worried that the Bitcoin revolution has already sailed without you? Think again! Bitcoin mining profitability is still in reach. Because now there are other options that offer you the chance to mine at scale without making a huge investment, such as being a digital miner. If you were to pick between being a digital miner vs. cloud mining , the digital miner path will offer you greater transparency as to where your investment goes.

GoMining gives you a shortcut to the action.Instead of fussing with physical hardware, you simply purchase an NFT, which represents your own digital mining rig. Their digital miners are directly tied to real hashpower in a professional data center, and start earning daily BTC rewards for you from the moment you own one of them.

You can estimate your returns using GoMining’s integrated Bitcoin mining calculator, which factors power, efficiency, difficulty, and maintenance costs.This intuitive setup not only democratizes mining but also offers full transparency—miners are blockchain-tracked, tradable, and linked to verifiable data-center performance

GoMining breaks it all down in their handy guide, showing you whether your Bitcoin mining app is really the smarter way to mine BTC. It’s all about making mining accessible, transparent, and—dare we say—actually fun. Indeed for those looking for some fun on the side, you can jump into Miner Wars—a GameFi experience where you deploy your NFT miner’s hashpower in battles against other players. Real Bitcoin block rewards are up for grabs, and gameplay mirrors the real competition happening inside the Bitcoin network.

Their Digital Miner Collection showcases all available digital avatars, each digital avatar has unique features and bonus functionalities and privileges within the GoMining platform. These aren't just pretty pictures; each GoMiner hero comes with exclusive perks that directly boost your BTC rewards and unlock special privileges within the GoMining platform. Think of them as your secret weapon for more efficient mining and an enhanced experience.

Finally, central to the ecosystem is the GOMINING token, it is a platform with its own crypto tokenomics. GOMINING isn’t merely a tradable coin—it’s your all‑access pass within GoMining. By holding it, you unlock mining discounts, in‑game boosts, weekly rewards, voting rights, and help regulate token supply to ensure long‑term value.

In short, GoMining makes it easier (and a lot more interesting) to mine Bitcoin before its next moonshot—without the stress, the hardware headaches, or the fear of missing out.

Why Bitcoin Halving Matters

Understanding Bitcoin halving shows why each cycle sharpens the network, primes the market, and reinforces Bitcoin’s role as a deflationary store of value—one block at a time. However, if only things were that simple—and all you had to do was wait for the next Bitcoin halving to watch its value grow, until one fine morning it becomes the king of finance. It would be dangerously naïve to assume this. It is going to be more than just a walk in the park—more like a marathon through the blockchain.

The world’s largest banks and cash-printing powers try to slow Bitcoin adoption down with regulations. Still, Bitcoin’s supporters are growing louder, pushing for laws that will open the door to mass adoption. At the same time, Bitcoin faces technical hurdles. Its main network can only process a handful of transactions per second, so as more people jump in, fees rise and delays follow. But “add-on” networks (like Lightning Network) and software upgrades are already rolling out to unclog the system.

There’s also the human challenge: teaching billions to guard their private keys, manage crypto wallets, and actually use digital money in daily life. Fortunately, mainstream apps—PayPal, Revolut, Stripe—are weaving crypto into their platforms, making it ever easier to spend Bitcoin alongside dollars or euros.

We are living in the middle of a technological revolution. Technology is being adopted in almost every aspect of our lives. In our increasingly digital world, almost everything nowadays happens online. And there are many tech entrepreneurs who believe that the core principles in Bitcoin’s blockchain technology can make a true difference to the world.

Bitcoin’s halving mechanism, capped supply of 21 million coins, and transparent issuance schedule make it the ultimate e‑gold. Just as nowadays we trust the cloud and not museum pieces, like physical photo albums, that were filled with photographs from analogue film. We might one day trust a financial system that uses Bitcoin's protocol to secure our digital wealth.