Halving
a.k.a. Halvening, Bitcoin halving
The scheduled event, roughly every four years, when the number of new bitcoins paid to miners per block is cut in half.
The halving is written into Bitcoin's code. Every 210,000 blocks, about every four years, the new-coin part of the block reward drops by half. It started at 50 BTC per block, and after four halvings (2012, 2016, 2020 and 2024) it's 3.125.
That's how Bitcoin slowly approaches its 21 million cap: fewer and fewer new coins enter the world each cycle. Miners' income from new coins halves overnight, which squeezes the least efficient ones out.
Past halvings were followed by big rallies, and that pattern gets a lot of airtime. But a handful of examples isn't a law of nature, and the event is known years in advance, so plenty of traders try to price it in early.
Treating the halving as a guaranteed buy signal. A few past cycles are a small sample, and markets change.
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