There are two different types of predictions that can be made about the Bitcoin halving.
The first one concerns the date on which it will occur, while the second one concerns the effect that the halving will have on the price.
Summary
Predictions on the date of Bitcoin’s halving
One thing is certain: Bitcoin’s halving will definitely occur once block number 840,000 is reached.
In fact, it is written in the same Bitcoin protocol that every exactly 210,000 blocks there must be a halving event.
As of today, approximately 820,000 blocks have been mined, so there are less than 20,000 blocks left until the next halving.
However, it is not known exactly when the block that will trigger the fourth halving will be mined, because the time between blocks is not fixed and precise.
On average, about 10 minutes should pass between one block and another, so in theory it would take less than 140 days (just over 4 and a half months) to mine 20,000 blocks. However, in reality, the so-called blocktime (i.e. the average time between mining one block and the next) has been often less than 10 minutes lately.
For example, in the last 30 days it has been over 10 minutes only seven times, while for 13 times it has been significantly lower. To mine the last 10,000 blocks, it took a total of only 67 days, so the average blocktime of the last two months has been just over 9.6 minutes.
If this pace is maintained, it would take another 134 days to reach block 840,000, so theoretically the next Bitcoin halving could occur on April 18, 2024.
However, if the hashrate were to continue to increase, the blocktime could shorten even further, and it could happen a few days earlier.
The previous halvings
Until today there have already been three halvings, the first at block number 210,000, the second at block number 420,000, and the third at number 630,000. The fourth, in fact, will definitely occur at block 840,000.
The first one occurred on November 28, 2012, and the second one occurred 1,319 days later. The third one occurred 1,402 days after the second one, so there is no regularity in these timings.
If the next event really happened on April 18th of next year, it would have been 1,438 days since the previous one, which is a true and proper small record. For this reason, it is possible to imagine that it will happen before that date.
However, it seems difficult at this point for it to happen in May or to somehow be anticipated in March. The favorable month for the fourth Bitcoin halving is April 2024.
The impact on the price of Bitcoin
The miners who mine Bitcoin blocks receive their compensation only in BTC, most of which comes from the reward assigned to those who manage to mine a block. This reward is currently 6.25 BTC, and it is the one that will be halved with the April 2024 halving.
However, miners have to bear very high costs for their mining activity, as they consume a lot of electricity. This often forces them to sell many of the BTC they earn in order to repay the high expenses with the fiat currencies they obtain from this sale.
In other words, a good portion of the BTC that is created out of thin air every day to be awarded as a prize to miners ends up being resold on the market in a short period of time.
So thanks to the halving, the BTC that miners sell on the markets on average every day will be significantly reduced.
However, it should be emphasized that every day a total of about 155 BTC are created, which at the current price have a market value of about 6.8 million dollars. This figure will be halved starting from next year’s halving, but it is really insignificant compared to the daily trading volumes of BTC on the spot market, which exceed 40 billion dollars.
The impact on the price should therefore be minimal in the long term, but becomes more significant over the course of the year. In fact, at the current rate, approximately 57,000 BTC are created in a year, with a total value of about 2.5 billion dollars at current prices. This is already a significant amount that can have an impact on the markets.
Bitcoin price predictions ahead of the next halving
Predicting the impact that the next April halving will have on the price of Bitcoin is almost impossible. However, past halvings can come to the rescue.
In fact, in all three cases, the year following the halving events saw the inflation of three major speculative bubbles (2013, 2017, and 2021). And it is not even a coincidence that these bubbles started to inflate months after the halving occurred, for the reasons mentioned above.
Many believe that something like this could happen again this time, so much so that perhaps the strong price increase in recent weeks could also be due to the fact that markets are already starting to price in this hypothetical dynamic.
Moreover, it is now certain that the halving will happen, and it is also extremely likely to occur in April. At this point, since markets always price in advance certain future events, it is absolutely possible that they have already started pricing it.
However, the fact that the impact that the halving could have on the price is still completely unknown means that this impact will definitely not be fully priced in advance. In other words, only the news of the halving will be priced in, but not necessarily its consequences on the price.
However, what can be said is that if the growth trajectory of the peak prices of Bitcoin is respected ($1,100 by the end of 2013, $20,000 by the end of 2017, and $69,000 by the end of 2021), one could expect a next peak at around $180,000, possibly by the end of 2025 or maybe even by the end of 2024.
It should not be forgotten that this time the bull run could be anticipated by a year since the markets seem to have already started pricing in the halving (which had never happened before).
