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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.
Why the doomsday math doesn’t add up
Bitcoin’s difficulty adjustment mechanism recalibrates every 2,016 blocks (roughly two weeks), automatically adjusting how hard it is to mine a block. If miners drop off the network, difficulty falls, making it cheaper for remaining miners to operate. If miners flood in, difficulty rises.
Fidelity notes that while temporary hash rate dips have occurred after halvings, none have resulted in significant security breaches. The report also finds that even in projected low-subsidy environments beyond 2040, the cost of mounting a 51% attack on the network remains disproportionate to any potential gains from doing so.
Transaction fees as the long-term bridge
During the April 2024 halving, transaction fees in a single block reached approximately 12 times the block subsidy. That spike was partly driven by the Runes protocol launch, which created unusual demand for block space.
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