Celebrating 11 Years Since Bitcoin's First Halving: A Review and Look Toward April 2024
Summary:
Marking the 11th anniversary of Bitcoin's first-ever halving, this article takes a look back at Bitcoin's key historical milestones, while anticipating the next halving in April 2024. It discusses the first Bitcoin transaction, first halving event, and subsequent halvings, showing how they've impacted Bitcoin's prices historically. The article also envisions a bullish future for Bitcoin around 2024 due to potential regulatory approvals, and it notes that Bitcoin's miner reward is expected to reduce to zero once all 21 million bitcoins are mined around 2140.
Today marks the 11-year anniversary of the first halving of Bitcoin (BTC), the most valuable cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization. The next anticipated halving event, due in April 2024, prompts a reflection on BTC's notable moments in history. The introductory transaction of Bitcoin took place nearly a decade and a half ago, on January 3, 2009. This occurred a few months post-Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin's unidentified creator, released the Bitcoin white paper in October 2008. On November 28, 2012, approximately three years and 10 months since the commencement of Bitcoin’s first-ever block, the initial halving event unfolded. At this stage, BTC sold for merely around $12 as indicated by StatMuse data, which is roughly 308,200% lower than the existing price of Bitcoin, as per CoinGecko data. Even though Nakamoto's white paper does not explicitly describe concepts like Bitcoin halving and the 21 million limit on BTC, it mentions certain processes related to controlling new BTC production. The white paper states that to adjust for advancements in hardware speed and fluctuations in interest in operating nodes over time, the proof-of-work difficulty is adjusted by a moving average that targets a particular number of block generation per hour. If blocks are created too swiftly, the difficulty level amplifies. The Bitcoin source code, unlike the white paper, talks about halving. As shown in the Bitcoin Core GitHub repository's validation.cpp file, miners' block subsidy experiences a half reduction every 210,000 blocks, which happens every four years. Bitcoin halving was integrated into the BTC mining mechanism to combat inflation by preserving scarcity. Before the inaugural halving, miners could earn up to 50 BTC per block. Post the 2012 halving, this reward was cut down to 25 BTC, and reductions to 12.5 BTC and 6.25 BTC followed in the 2016 and 2020 halving events, respectively. Since halvings contribute to the scarcity of Bitcoin, halvings have historically influenced the price cycle of the cryptocurrency. Following the first and second halving events, Bitcoin saw a rise to almost $1000 and a 350% growth respectively, with the latter event leading to all-time highs of nearly $20,000 in December 2017. Post the third halving, BTC hit a peak of $69,000 in November 2021. As the crypto community anticipates the fourth Bitcoin halving due on April 17, 2024, Bitcoin enthusiasts hold a particularly optimistic view about Bitcoin's price in 2024. This optimism is fueled by increasing speculations that US security regulators might finally give a nod to a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund. The 2024 halving won’t be Bitcoin’s final one; the miner reward is projected to experience halving 34 times until it flatlines at 0 BTC post the mining of all 21 million Bitcoin. As per the existing plan, the entire supply of 21 million bitcoins shall be reached around 2140.
Published At
11/28/2023 11:47:46 AM
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