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.
