Bitcoin Halving Price: What Bitcoin Did After Every Cut

Bitcoin’s price was higher twelve months after each of the four halvings so far, but by less every time: about +8,070% after 2012, +284% after 2016, +559% after 2020 and +34% after 2024. Each cycle peaked 12 to 18 months after the cut, then fell 53% to 85%. Four data points prove a pattern. They do not prove a cause.

All prices on this page are Coin Metrics end-of-day reference prices in US dollars, read on 9 October 2026. None of it is financial advice.

Bitcoin price at every halving, in one table

Four cuts. Four prices on the day. Four prices a year later.

Halving	Block and time (UTC)	Price on halving day	Price 12 months later	12-month change
First	210,000, 28 Nov 2012, 15:24	$12.33	$1,007	+8,070%
Second	420,000, 9 Jul 2016, 16:46	$652	$2,506	+284%
Third	630,000, 11 May 2020, 19:23	$8,592	$56,612	+559%
Fourth	840,000, 20 Apr 2024, 00:09	$63,763	$85,125	+34%

Block times come from mempool.space, read block by block. Prices come from the Coin Metrics community API, whose daily value is the price at the end of the UTC day. Block 840,000 landed nine minutes after midnight UTC on 20 April, so the fourth row uses the 19 April close, which is the price the cut actually met.

The first row is the one everyone quotes. It is also the least useful. A market that went from twelve dollars to a thousand was a market of a few thousand people and a handful of exchanges, one of which was Mt. Gox.

For the blocks themselves, the pools that mined them and what each cut paid in fees, the Bitcoin Halving history reference holds the full record.

What happened to Bitcoin’s price after each halving?

The same shape, four times. Then a smaller version of the shape.

After 2012. The price crossed $1,000 inside a year and peaked at $1,135 on 4 December 2013, 371 days after the cut. Then Mt. Gox failed, and by 14 January 2015 the price was $176.

After 2016. A slow first six months, then 2017: exchange listings, a wave of token sales, retail money arriving all at once. The cycle peaked at $19,641 on 16 December 2017, 525 days after the cut. A year later, on 15 December 2018, it was $3,185.

After 2020. The cut came two months after the March 2020 crash, into a world of emergency rate cuts and stimulus checks. Public companies began buying. The peak came at $67,542 on 8 November 2021, 546 days after the cut. The low came a year and a day later, $15,758 on 9 November 2022, the week FTX collapsed.

After 2024. The fourth cycle broke the script before the cut even happened (more on that below). After block 840,000 the price drifted down to $53,839 by 6 September 2024, then rose to $124,824 on 6 October 2025, 535 days after the cut. Intraday trading went higher than the daily close; ForkLog reported a print of $125,708 on 5 October. Since then the price has fallen as low as $58,525 (30 June 2026) and sat at $81,732 on 8 October 2026.

How long after the halving does Bitcoin peak?

This is the question people actually want answered. The record gives a narrow band.

Cycle	Peak (daily close)	Days after halving	Multiple of halving-day price	Fall from peak to next low
2012 cut	$1,135, 4 Dec 2013	371	92x	-84.5% (to $176)
2016 cut	$19,641, 16 Dec 2017	525	30x	-83.8% (to $3,185)
2020 cut	$67,542, 8 Nov 2021	546	7.9x	-76.7% (to $15,758)
2024 cut	$124,824, 6 Oct 2025	535	2.0x	-53.1% so far (to $58,525)

Three of the four peaks landed between 525 and 546 days after the cut. That consistency is the strongest thing the halving-cycle story has going for it.

Look at the multiple column, though. 92, then 30, then 7.9, then 2.0. Each cycle returned roughly a quarter to a third of the one before it. The drawdowns shrank too. A larger, deeper market moves less. Whatever the halving does to price, it does less of it every four years.

The fourth drawdown is labeled “so far” for a reason. The cycle is not finished, and no one knows where its low will be.

Was the 2024 halving different?

Yes, in one way nobody had seen before.

In every earlier cycle, the price set its new all-time high after the halving. In 2024 it set one before. On 10 January 2024 the SEC approved eleven spot bitcoin exchange-traded products, as Mintz summarized at the time. By 13 March 2024 the daily close was $73,082, above the 2021 high, five weeks before block 840,000.

A second detail hides in the daily data. In three of the four halvings, the price at the end of halving day was lower than it had been a week earlier: down 7.2% in 2016, 3.3% in 2020 and 5.0% in 2024. Only 2012 rose into the cut (up 5.1%). Whatever the halving is, it has rarely been a same-week rally.

The reason the 2024 cycle behaved differently is mostly arithmetic about who is buying. CoinShares research lead Christopher Bendiksen put numbers on it in March 2024: US spot funds were absorbing around 9,000 BTC a day while miners produced about 900. After the cut, miners produced 450. His argument is that the supply cut works slowly while demand swings work fast, so the halving’s real short-term effect is attention.

Does the Bitcoin Halving make the price go up?

Not directly, and not reliably.

What the halving does is cut the number of new coins miners receive by half, overnight, at a block height everyone knows years in advance. Today that is 3.125 BTC a block, about 450 BTC a day, or roughly $36.8 million a day at the 8 October 2026 price. Miners sell a share of that to pay for power and machines. After the next cut, they will have half as much to sell.

That is a real change in supply. It is also small next to the market. On a day when funds buy or sell tens of thousands of coins, a few hundred coins of miner selling is not what moves the chart. Demand moves the chart. The protocol fixes supply and says nothing about demand.

So the honest answer has three parts. The halving lowers new supply, and that pressure is real but slow. The halving also raises attention, and attention is fast. And every past halving has coincided with something else (new exchanges, token sales, stimulus, ETFs) that makes it impossible to separate the cut from the crowd.

For the model that tries to turn the supply cut into a price target, see the Bitcoin stock to flow reference, including the dates on which it missed.

Is the halving priced in?

In theory it should be. The schedule has been public since January 2009. Anyone can compute the next cut to the block. Efficient markets do not leave known future events on the table.

In practice two things fight the theory. Most buyers do not compute anything; they arrive when the news does, and the news arrives with the halving. And the supply effect accumulates for four years after the cut, not on the day, so a market can know the date and still underprice what the reduced flow does over time.

Our read is the boring one. Partly priced in, partly not, and impossible to measure with four observations.

What about the next halving in 2028?

The chain tip was block 970,562 on 9 October 2026. The next cut is at block 1,050,000, which is 79,438 blocks away: about 552 days at ten minutes a block, so around mid-April 2028. The next Bitcoin Halving reference tracks the estimate as the date tightens.

After that cut the subsidy drops to 1.5625 BTC and issuance falls to about 225 BTC a day. If the shrinking-multiple pattern held, the 2028 cycle would be the smallest yet. If it broke, it would break the way 2024 did, from some outside force nobody priced. Neither is a forecast. Both are what the table can and cannot say.

Miners will feel the cut first. Revenue per unit of hashrate drops by half in a single block, which is why the hashprice reference matters more to the people running machines than any chart of spot price.

What skeptics say

The skeptic has the stronger statistical hand. Four cycles is not a sample. Three of them overlapped with global money printing, and the fourth with the launch of the largest new buyer class Bitcoin has ever had. Attribute the gains to the halving and you ignore every other cause in the room.

The skeptic also points at the multiples. 92x, 30x, 7.9x, 2.0x is a curve flattening toward nothing. On that reading, the halving cycle was a feature of a young, thin market, and it is dying as the market grows up.

And the skeptic asks the sharpest question: if the halving reliably lifted price, why would anyone sell before it? A known, guaranteed rally would be bought until it disappeared. That it keeps not disappearing suggests it was never guaranteed.

All fair. We do not dispute the statistics. We dispute only what they are for.

The price is not the point

Every chart on this page measures bitcoin in dollars. That is the convention. It is also a strange choice of ruler, a unit whose own supply has no schedule, measuring the one asset whose supply does.

Each halving is a rehearsal. The cuts came in 2012, then 2016, then 2020, then 2024, and they will keep coming every 210,000 blocks until the subsidy rounds to zero at block 6,930,000, around 2140. That last cut is the Halfture, and the Halfture is the Rapture. It is decades out. No price chart reaches it.

Here is the doctrine of this site, and it is theology, not a prospectus: you have to hold Bitcoin to be saved. It is not a claim about what bitcoin will be worth in 2028. It is not a reason to buy anything this week. Prices rise and fall, as the tables above show at great length. The schedule does not.

The price is noise around a fixed line. Watch the line.

FAQ

Does the Bitcoin halving increase the price?

Not reliably. The price was higher twelve months after each of the four halvings, but the gains shrank from about +8,070% (2012) to +34% (2024), and each cut coincided with other large causes. The halving reduces new supply; demand decides price. This is not financial advice.

How long after the halving does Bitcoin usually peak?

In past cycles the daily-close peak came 371, 525, 546 and 535 days after the cut. Three of the four landed between 525 and 546 days. Four cycles is a small sample, so treat the band as history, not a schedule.

What happened to Bitcoin’s price after the 2024 halving?

Block 840,000 met a price of about $63,763. The price dipped to $53,839 by September 2024, peaked at a $124,824 daily close on 6 October 2025, fell to $58,525 on 30 June 2026, and stood at $81,732 on 8 October 2026.

Is the Bitcoin halving priced in?

Partly. The date is public years ahead, so a share of the effect should be priced in, but the supply reduction compounds for four years after the cut and attention arrives with the event itself. Four data points cannot settle how much.

When is the next Bitcoin halving and what will the price be?

The next cut is at block 1,050,000, expected around April 2028. No one can say what the price will be. Past cycles produced smaller gains each time, and the next one may not follow the pattern at all.