• Bitcoin halving completed
• 840,000 block set
• This is how the BTC price reacts
It’s the event the crypto community has been looking forward to for months: the Bitcoin halving. The event, firmly anchored in the code of the cryptocurrency, will see the reward that Bitcoin miners receive for continuing the blockchain and verifying transactions for each new block set reduced by half. The mechanism is triggered every time 210,000 new blocks are placed on the chain. The recent halving is the fourth in the history of Bitcoin. From now on, miners will only receive 3,125 BTC when they add a new block to the chain. However, the total Bitcoin supply is limited to 21 million coins, after which no new tokens will be issued.
On the night of Friday to Saturday the time had come and the 840,000 block was added to the Bitcoin blockchain. The Bitcoin price initially reacted to the halving with a plus, then fell again over the course of the day, but has now gained 0.57 percent again to 64,731.75 US dollars.
Bitcoin at record high before halving
In the run-up to the Bitcoin halving, Bitcoin rallied. Since the beginning of the year alone, there has been an increase of 52.05 percent; looking at the last twelve months, an increase of 134.21 percent has been recorded. The cryptocurrency reached the preliminary peak of the rally mode on March 13, 2024, when Bitcoin set a new record high at $73,558.81.
And say goodbye quietly
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In fact, Bitcoin has already taken another leap towards greater awareness and adoption this year. At the beginning of this year, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved Bitcoin spot ETFs for the first time, making it much easier for numerous investors to invest in the cryptocurrency. This development also contributed to the positive performance of the BTC price this year.
This is how halving affected the price in the past
It is expected that the halving will also have a positive impact on the price in the long term. In the past, the event was usually followed by an upward movement in the cyber currency. This is shown by a look at the price history of Bitcoin on the day of the reward halving and 365 days afterwards.
The BTC price was quoted at $12.35 during the first halving in 2012. A year later he had broken the $1,000 mark. During the halving in 2016, Bitcoin was trading at $650.53, and 365 days later it had climbed to $2,518.44, as Bitpanda shows in a table. In 2020, during the third halving, the Bitcoin price was at $8,821.42. A year later, one coin was worth almost $56,000. How far Bitcoin could rise after this year’s halving remains uncertain.
Next halving expected for 2028
The next reward halving is expected to take place in 2028. The block reward is then reduced from 3.125 to 1.5625 BTC. The aim of lowering the reward is to ensure that the maximum amount of 21 million Bitcoins is not reached too quickly. In addition, the halving is intended to avoid price inflation, as the amount of available coins increases more slowly, but demand remains the same or even increases. The inflation rate of Bitcoin after the most recent halving is an average of 0.84 percent, as BTC-ECHO calculates. It is currently assumed that the last Bitcoin will be mined in 2140. Until then, there will be 25 more halvings.
Bitcoin price predictions
In the run-up to the halving, various crypto experts made predictions about how Bitcoin could develop after the event. Youwei Yang, chief economist at the Bitcoin mining company BIT Mining, can imagine that Bitcoin could reach the $75,000 mark over the course of the year, as CNBC reports. Meanwhile, the crypto exchange CoinShares believes an increase to $80,000 is possible. Antoni Trenchev, co-founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Nexo, sees Bitcoin even reaching around 100,000 US dollars, and Standard Chartered also foresees the same, according to the news portal.
But that’s not all of the bullish forecasts: The analysis company Matrixport believes that the Bitcoin price could climb to $125,000 by the end of the year. Crypto bull Tim Draper believes a rise to $250,000 is possible. The most optimistic is probably Seth Ginns from CoinFund. According to CNBC, he has the “reasonable expectation” that the cryptocurrency could reach a price of between $250,000 and $500,000 in 2024. However, in “this next cycle” a price of one million US dollars per coin is also conceivable.
Editorial team finanzen.net
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