Bitcoin: block 970,000 marks the countdown to the April 2028 halving

Hurry slowly, and without losing courage. This is what Boileau advised in Poetic Art. Bitcoin applies the instructions to the letter until its next halving, one block every ten minutes.

Monday October 5, 12:45 p.m. in Paris. The Bitcoin network validates its block number 970,000 and no one is popping the champagne. The figure is nevertheless worth a look, because there are now 80,000 blocks left before the next halving, this division by two of the reward paid to miners which has been the life of the protocol since 2012. You therefore have a little more than eighteen months ahead of you. The countdown is on.

What Block 970,000 says

The block in question was mined by Luxor, a pool, that is to say a group of miners who pool their computing power. It contains 5,612 transactions and brought in 3,129 BTC to its author, according to data from the mempool.space explorer consulted this Monday.

Look at this amount closely. Of these 3,129 BTC, 3,125 come from the monetary creation planned by the protocol and barely 0.004 from fees paid by users. The costs weigh 0.14% of the total, which is like 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 in each cycle. Bitcoin’s fourth cycle is therefore 62% complete.

Next halving of Bitcoin: 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 represents approximately 555 days, which places the event around mid-April 2028.

Simple estimate. Miners are currently going a little faster than expected, with an average time of 9.9 minutes per block, and the network is expected to correct this on October 17 by increasing its difficulty by around 1.1%. The difficulty is the cursor that Bitcoin adjusts every 2,016 blocks to maintain its pace.

When the day comes, the reward will increase from 3.125 to 1.5625 BTC per block. The daily emission will fall from 450 to 225 BTC, a shortfall of around $19 million per day for all miners, with bitcoin at $86,000 like this Monday.

After the halving, Bitcoin miners with dry bread

We tell you every cycle that halving raises prices. However, the argument of scarcity wears out over time, since 20,093,750 BTC are already in circulation, or 95.7% of the 21 million planned. The next 80,000 blocks will only add 250,000. The 2028 supply shock will be in crumbs.

The miners have reason to worry. They now deploy nearly 965 exahashes per second, the unit that measures the network's computing power, and live almost entirely from the subsidy. With fees at 0.004 BTC per block, the next generation is not ready. If nothing changes by 2028, their bitcoin turnover will be halved overnight, and only an increase in the price or an awakening of activity on the chain will be able to compensate.