What the market expects
From real-money bets on Polymarket, live. Hover for the numbers.
Monthly returns
Green dots went up, red went down; the bigger the dot, the bigger the move. Hover or tap any month for its number.
Halving cycle
Each cycle’s price from its halving day, as a multiple of that day’s price. The bold line is the current cycle.
How the halving cycle works
What it is. About every 4 years, the amount of new Bitcoin paid to miners is cut in half. The April 2024 halving cut it from about 900 to 450 new BTC a day. The next one is expected around April 2028.
Why it moves prices. Miners sell much of what they earn. After a halving, about half as much new Bitcoin gets sold each day while demand stays the same, so prices have tended to rise for the next 12–18 months.
The cycle. The rise draws in hype and new buyers, so it overshoots into a peak (Dec 2017, Nov 2021, Oct 2025). Then comes about a year of falling prices (2018, 2022), and a recovery year before the next halving.
Other coins. Only Bitcoin has halvings, but ETH, SOL and most other coins follow Bitcoin, so their peaks and bottoms have come at about the same times. They usually fall harder in the down years.
On this page. Each year in the monthly table is tagged with its place in the cycle (halving, then +1, +2 and +3 yrs after it), with a gap between cycles; ◆ marks the halving month. Hatched boxes are a projection for the next 12 months, based on past years at the same point in the cycle and on all years. The chart below lines every cycle up from its halving day, so you can see where this one stands.
It’s a tendency, not a rule: there have only been four halvings, people now trade on the pattern, and each halving cuts a smaller share of the supply than the last.