Bitcoin’s Halving Clock Is Ticking With Fewer Than 80,000 Blocks Left

Bitcoin’s Fifth Halving Moves Into View

As of today, according to timechainstats.com, Bitcoin stands at around 18 months from its fifth halving. Bitcoin’s pseudonymous inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, introduced a rule set that shrinks the block subsidy by 50% every 210,000 blocks.

The amount of time to mine those blocks typically takes around four years, and the network has undergone four halvings so far, with the last one in 2024 bringing the block reward down from 6.25 BTC to the current 3.125 BTC.

As of Oct. 5, 2026, 61% of the 210,000 blocks have been mined, and there are about 79,950 blocks left as of the current block height. The supply change will be wild when it dips from 3.125 BTC to 1.5625 BTC. For instance, after that change at block 1050000, it will be the last four-year span where bitcoin miners get a full bitcoin in a block reward. That’s because when the 2032 halving happens, block rewards will shrink to 0.78125 BTC.

Bitcoin’s Supply Squeeze Gets Tighter

Prior to the 2032 halving and after the 2028 event, daily issuance will fall from 450 BTC to 225 BTC. Instead of mining around 164,000 BTC during a 12-month span, bitcoin miners will only get 82,000 BTC after mining for a year. When block height 1050000 is mined, the number of BTC in circulation will be around 20.34 million BTC, compared to today’s 20,093,613.63 BTC. With all of this said, by 2028, after the fifth halving, annual supply inflation will be 0.4%, well below gold’s typical rate.

Will Bitcoin’s Four-Year Rhythm and T-500 Window Hold?

As of Monday, bitcoin’s price is hovering around the $86,000 range, and typically, BTC prices rise ahead of halvings. Moreover, there are 55 days left until the infamous T-500 period, which marks 500 days before the next halving. Some analysts and bitcoiners believe the T-500 period is the best timeframe to purchase BTC.

The web portal btc500.net explains BTC’s 500-day cycle, noting that “four completed windows in this archive finished higher at T+500 than at T-500. The simple average of those window returns is +1959%.” However, the site is careful to note that the “average is a description of a small sample, not a forecast.”

Historically, diminished new bitcoin supply has helped propel prices higher over the following year, but the lingering question is whether history will rhyme once again. A great deal of bitcoiners certainly believe it will, though plenty of skeptics argue this cycle could finally snap the pattern.

Even amid bitcoin’s shallow bear market, die-hard BTC proponents contend that the four-year cycle is already over or “dead.” Whether they are right remains to be seen.

Strategy added another 334 BTC for $28.7 million, bringing its bitcoin holdings to exactly 848,000 BTC as of Oct. 4.…