Blog / Historical Archive

Bitcoin's Fourth Halving and Runes (April 2024)

Block 840,000.

Block 840,000

The fourth halving occurred at block 840,000 on April 20, 2024, mined by ViaBTC. The subsidy dropped from 6.25 to 3.125 BTC, cutting daily new issuance from about 900 to 450 BTC.

Runes launch

Casey Rodarmor's Runes protocol activated at the same block, letting users etch fungible tokens using OP_RETURN outputs. Demand to etch early runes pushed the block's fees to about 37.7 BTC, far more than the subsidy.

Fee surge, then fade

Average fees exceeded $100 per transaction on halving day, but runes activity fell sharply within weeks. Fees returned to under $5, leaving miners reliant on subsidy again.

Miner economics

Hashprice fell to around $45 per PH per day by mid-2024. Miners with older machines such as the Antminer S9 became unprofitable, while public miners including Marathon and CleanSpark expanded with S21 rigs near 17.5 J/TH and some pivoted to AI hosting.

Supply impact

After the halving annual inflation was about 0.85 percent, below gold's estimated 1.5–2 percent growth. About 19.7 million BTC had been mined, leaving under 1.3 million to issue over the next 116 years.

By the numbers

For Bitcoin's Fourth Halving and Runes, the reference figures are date of April 20, 2024, block of 840,000, subsidy of 3.125 BTC, fees of 37.6 BTC. The comparison table below lines up metric, before, after — Subsidy: 6.25 BTC / 3.125 BTC; Daily issuance: ~900 BTC / ~450 BTC; Annual inflation: ~1.7% / ~0.85%; Block 840,000 fees: — / ~37.7 BTC.

Modeling Bitcoin's Fourth Halving and Runes with the Bitcoin Halving Subsidy Schedule Calculator

The Bitcoin Halving Subsidy Schedule Calculator takes three inputs — Halvings from genesis, BTC price ($), Blocks per day. Daily issuance = 50 ÷ 2^halvings × blocks × price. With its default inputs (Halvings from genesis = 4; BTC price ($) = 65000; Blocks per day = 144) it returns 29,250,000 $; swap in the figures from Bitcoin's Fourth Halving and Runes above to reproduce the scenario yourself.

Modeling Bitcoin's Fourth Halving and Runes with the Bitcoin Hashprice Difficulty Estimator

The Bitcoin Hashprice Difficulty Estimator takes three inputs — BTC price ($), Network hashrate (EH/s), Fees per block (BTC). Hashprice = (subsidy + fees) × 144 × price ÷ network TH. With its default inputs (BTC price ($) = 65000; Network hashrate (EH/s) = 650; Fees per block (BTC) = 0.2) it returns 0.05 $/TH; swap in the figures from Bitcoin's Fourth Halving and Runes above to reproduce the scenario yourself.

Data Table

For educational and informational purposes only. Not financial, investment, tax or legal advice. Figures are approximate and historical; crypto assets are volatile and you may lose capital. Do your own research.