Every four years, Bitcoin cuts its mining rewards in half. Fidelity Digital Assets has spent the last two years building a detailed case for why concerns about network security are overblown.
The firm’s June 2026 report, titled “Bitcoin’s Programmed Security: Part Two,” is a follow-up to its March 2024 analysis and digs into the economic mechanics that keep Bitcoin resilient even as miners earn fewer coins per block. The core argument: the combination of rising hash rates, automatic difficulty adjustments, and growing transaction fee revenue creates a self-reinforcing security model that doesn’t collapse when subsidies decline.
The numbers behind the argument
Since the 2016 halving, Bitcoin’s hash rate has surged by over 8,000%. Since 2020, it has climbed 394%. Both of those stretches included halvings that cut miner rewards in half.
The most recent halving occurred in April 2024, dropping block rewards from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. The next one, expected around 2028, will reduce rewards further to 1.5625 BTC.
