Bitcoin halving cycles compared: price, peaks and crashes after all four halvings (2012–2026)

What the halving is

Bitcoin's code pays miners a fixed reward for each new block, and that reward is cut in half every 210,000 blocks – roughly every four years. It started at 50 BTC per block in 2009 and has been halved four times: to 25 BTC on 28 November 2012, 12.5 BTC on 9 July 2016, 6.25 BTC on 11 May 2020 and 3.125 BTC on 20 April 2024. The next halving, to 1.5625 BTC, is expected around spring 2028.

Because the halving reduces the flow of new coins, it is often described as the engine of a regular "four-year cycle": a run-up, a peak about a year and a half after the halving, a long bear market and a recovery into the next halving. We tested that story against daily Bitcoin prices on Bitstamp, one of the oldest continuously running exchanges, which gives us an unbroken daily record from August 2011 – early enough to include the very first halving.

Four cycles on one chart

The chart puts all four halvings on a common scale: every line starts at the same point on halving day (1×), and the log scale makes a doubling look the same size whether it happens at $12 or $65,000. Three things jump out immediately: the shape repeats, the peaks keep shrinking, and the latest cycle (the 2024 line) is much flatter than the rest.

The timing has repeated

The most surprising regularity is not the size of the moves but their timing.

After the second, third and fourth halvings, Bitcoin set its cycle high 525, 546 and 534 days later – within three weeks of each other across eight years:

• 17 December 2017 – about $19,190 on Bitstamp, 525 days after the 2016 halving.
• 8 November 2021 – about $67,560, 546 days after the 2020 halving.
• 6 October 2025 – about $124,730, 534 days after the 2024 halving.

The first cycle was faster: Bitcoin peaked at about $1,130 on 4 December 2013, 371 days after the 2012 halving, when the market was tiny and moved in weeks rather than months.

Three data points are not a law of nature. The regular timing may have as much to do with the shared rhythm of the global credit cycle, investor psychology and the fact that so many traders watch the same calendar as with miner supply. But as a description of what has happened, it is unusually consistent.

The peaks keep getting smaller

While the timing repeated, the size of each boom did not. From the price on halving day to the cycle top, Bitcoin rose 92.6× after 2012, 29.6× after 2016, 7.9× after 2020 and just 1.9× after 2024.

This is the clearest change across the cycles, and it makes sense. Each halving removes a smaller share of new supply relative to the coins already in circulation – the 2024 halving cut new issuance by about 164,000 BTC a year, under 1% of the 19.7 million coins then mined. At the same time, Bitcoin's market value has grown from a few hundred million dollars to well over a trillion, so each extra dollar of demand moves the price less.

The crashes after the peaks

Every cycle top has been followed by a deep bear market. Taking the lowest close within 500 days after each peak:

• 2013 peak: −85% to about $171 in January 2015, 406 days after the top.
• 2017 peak: −83% to about $3,180 in December 2018, 364 days after the top.
• 2021 peak: −77% to about $15,770 in November 2022, 378 days after the top.
• 2025 peak: −53% so far, to about $58,500 on 30 June 2026, 267 days after the top. This window stays open until February 2027.

The drawdowns are getting smaller as well – from more than 80% in the early cycles to about half in the current one. On the latest data (2 November 2026, about $76,700), Bitcoin is 926 days past the fourth halving and roughly 38% below its October 2025 high.

More of the move now happens before the halving

The table shows a quieter change. In the year before the 2020 halving, Bitcoin rose only 23%. In the year before the 2024 halving it rose 139% – and 97% in the final six months alone, after US spot Bitcoin ETFs began trading in January 2024. In the 2024 cycle, Bitcoin set a new all-time high in March 2024, before the halving, something that had never happened in earlier cycles.

So the last cycle was "front-loaded". The year after the 2024 halving brought a 31% gain – compared with 286% after 2016 and 562% after 2020. A market that knows exactly when the halving will happen, and now includes large institutions, has increasingly priced it in early.

Volatility does not fall after a halving

One theory says that cutting miner selling pressure should make the price steadier. The data does not support that. Annualised volatility of daily returns in the year after the halving was 135% after 2012 (92% before), 60% after 2016 (59% before), 67% after 2020 (92% before, a year that included the March 2020 COVID crash) and 51% after 2024 (46% before). Long-term Bitcoin volatility has fallen a lot – but that is a story about the market maturing, not about halvings.

What this means

The four Bitcoin halvings show a pattern that is partly real and partly fading:

1. The timing of the cycle has repeated remarkably well – peaks about 17–18 months after the last three halvings.
2. The size of each boom and bust has shrunk sharply, from 90× gains and 85% crashes to 2× and about 50%.
3. More of the price move now happens before the halving, as more traders and funds plan around a date everyone knows.

With only four halvings, every conclusion is based on a handful of examples, and the current cycle is not finished. We will update this study as the 2024 cycle completes and before the 2028 halving. For today's Bitcoin price levels, support and resistance and volatility ranges, see our live Bitcoin market data.