The halving of bitcoin is indeed a dirty little trick hiding in the source code.
Dirty? trick? hiding?!!!
The block rewards and the distribution plan has always been one of the most obvious and well known features of Bitcoin. It is also part of the principles of Bitcoin through the way its capped supply is defined.
The bitcoin white paper misleads:
"The steady addition of a constant of amount of new coins..."
Point being:
White paper does not mention halving !
It is not misleading, you have to read the entire paragraph not just some words.
It is also not suppose to mention or explain every little detail of the Bitcoin protocol. White papers are not meant to do that, they are
an abstract idea giving the reader the general idea behind the innovation. There are dozens of other major things about the protocol not mentioned in the white paper and a million different details that wasn't even pointed to.