Research hub

The halving event lab

Each block-subsidy halving set against the price record around it, so the reader can see what the schedule changed and what it left to demand.

2012-2025Source: Coinbase Exchange daily candles; Bitstamp and CoinDesk historical series for 2010-2014Each window starts at the year-end close of the calendar year in which the halving occurred and runs forward a fixed number of months, using the curated year-end close series as the observation grid. Because the grid is annual, a window of twelve months is one year-end step and a window of twenty-four months is two. A window that would extend past the end of the series is cut short at the last available observation and flagged as truncated, so a truncated entry is not a full-length measurement. The 2012 halving falls in the first year of the series and its windows rest on the thinly traded early market.

What this lab shows

Bitcoin's block subsidy is cut in half roughly every four years, and the dates are fixed in advance by the protocol. What the price does around those dates is not. This lab puts the two side by side: the schedule facts that were knowable years ahead, and the price record that was not.

Choose a halving below. The page reveals the canonical record for that event — the block height, the subsidy before and after, and the price at the time — alongside the return over fixed windows measured from the halving date. Every figure is read from the same curated dataset that backs the rest of the site, so nothing here is recomputed or estimated.

Choose a halving

Four halvings have occurred. Select one to see its record.

Halving 4 — 20 April 2024

The subsidy fell from 625,000,000 sats to 312,500,000 sats per block at height 840,000. The price recorded around the event was $64,000.

Block height: 840,000
Subsidy before: 625,000,000 sats
Subsidy after: 312,500,000 sats
Price around event: $64,000

The price record around it

Each row measures the return from the halving date to a fixed number of months afterwards, using the closing price on each date. A window that runs past the end of the published record is marked truncated and its end price is the last available close rather than a projection.

Bitcoin return over fixed windows measured from the halving on 20 April 2024, with start and end prices and whether each window is complete.
Window	Start price	End price	Return	Status
12 months	$93,430	$87,509	-6.3%	Complete
24 months	$93,430	$87,509	-6.3%	Truncated

2012-2025Source: Coinbase Exchange daily candles; Bitstamp and CoinDesk historical series for 2010-2014

Truncated windows. One window here runs past the end of the published record. Those rows are labelled Truncated and their end price is the most recent close available, so the return shown is a partial figure rather than a completed one.

What the schedule changed, and what it did not

The supply side of a halving is arithmetic. The subsidy is halved, the issuance rate falls, and the change is knowable to the block years before it happens. The demand side is not. The windows above show a wide range of outcomes across the four events, and four observations cannot separate a genuine relationship between the subsidy cut and the price from coincidence — particularly when the market around each halving was materially different from the one before it.

Read the lab as a set of reference points rather than a rule. If you want to know what a particular halving was followed by, the answer is here, with the window stated and any truncation flagged. If you want to know what the next halving will be followed by, the honest answer is that the record does not say.