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Bitcoin’s halving is fast approaching—and some are estimating that it could arrive on 4/20. (Yes, you read that right.)
Although it can be hard to predict the exact time, CoinGecko—citing Blockchair data—has been showing that the Bitcoin halving could take place on April 20 or April 21.
If the long-awaited event does indeed land on the cannabis community’s celebratory “weed day,” it would surely spur lots more memes in an already meme-heavy sphere.
But will its price hit its November 2021 all-time high of $69,044? Some in the crypto world are saying that when the halving comes around, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) will sit still.
Others, meanwhile, have told Decrypt that BTC will reach new heights.
April’s halving will mean that miners—those who keep the network in check and mint new coins—will have their rewards slashed from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC for each block they process as a means to keep Bitcoin’s inflation in check.
In the asset’s 15-year history, it has undergone three halvings. Each event has led to a price surge. Before the first halving of 2012, BTC was priced at $12.35. One year later the price of the coin stood at $964.
Before the next halving in 2016, BTC was trading hands for $663. Just one year later, it had shot up in value to $2,500.
The latest halving, which took place on May 11, 2020, BTC was valued at $8,500. A bull run followed the next year and the biggest digital coin exploded to its $69,000 all-time high the next year.
The biggest digital asset has certainly surged this year already: the price of Bitcoin is $49,800 as of this writing, after breaking above $50,000 yesterday for the first time since December 2021.
Mining stocks have also surged. But it may take time for BTC to actually reach new all-time highs. “It’s too soon to tell,” trader Alex Kruger told Decrypt, adding that traders would have to take other factors into account before we reach the April date.
Scott Norris, co-founder of Bitcoin miner LSJ Ops, said that other macroeconomic factors—such as whether the Federal Reserve is cutting interest rates—could play a part.
“The chances of BTC hitting the moon by April are low,” he said, adding that the launch of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and demand from institutions is causing the price surge now, but that might not continue past the halving in April.
Not immediately, anyway. BTC’s price surge after previous halvings always happened way after the event.
That means you can't count on the current upward trajectory to necessarily continue in the short term.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.