Bitcoin (BTC), the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, experienced its first halving 11 years ago today. As the community celebrates the anniversary of the first Bitcoin halving, and ahead of the next halving expected in April 2024, it’s time to revisit some of Bitcoin’s historical milestones.
The first Bitcoin transaction occurred nearly 15 years ago on January 3, 2009, a few months after Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, released the Bitcoin white paper in October 2008.
On November 28, 2012, three years and ten months after the first block of Bitcoin was mined, the first halving event occurred. At the time, BTC was trading at only around $12, according to Data from StatMuse, 308,200% lower than Bitcoin’s current price, according to Data from CoinGecko.
Although Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper did not directly describe Bitcoin’s halving and the digital currency’s supply cap of 21 million, the document still hint Control the creation of new Bitcoins through certain mechanisms. The white paper reads:
“To compensate for increasing hardware speeds and changes in interest in running nodes over time, the proof-of-work difficulty is determined by a moving average against the average number of blocks per hour. If they are generated too quickly, the difficulty will will increase.”
Unlike some basic information in the BTC white paper, the halving aspect is mentioned in the Bitcoin source code.The halving can be found specifically in the validation.cpp file of the Bitcoin Core GitHub repository. express The block subsidy for miners “will be reduced by half every 210,000 blocks, which occurs every four years.”
The Bitcoin halving mechanism has been programmed into the Bitcoin mining algorithm to offset inflation by maintaining scarcity.
Before the first halving occurred, miners were compensated up to 50 BTC per block. After the first halving in 2012, the subsidy was significantly reduced to 25 BTC, followed by the second halving in 2016, which reduced the subsidy to 12.5 BTC. The most recent Bitcoin halving occurred in 2020, cutting the block subsidy from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC.
The Bitcoin price cycle has historically been affected by halvings as they significantly increase the scarcity of the cryptocurrency. Just a year after the first halving, Bitcoin had risen to nearly $1,000, while the second halving triggered a 350% surge within a year of the event, with Bitcoin subsequently rising to nearly $20,000 in December 2017. Historical highs.
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After Bitcoin’s third halving, BTC surged to $69,000 in November 2021.
On the anniversary of the first Bitcoin halving, the cryptocurrency community is awaiting the fourth Bitcoin halving, which is currently expected to take place in occur April 17, 2024. Many Bitcoin advocates are particularly bullish on Bitcoin prices in 2024 as expectations grow that U.S. securities regulators will eventually approve a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund.
However, the 2024 halving will not be the last. Bitcoin miner rewards are expected to be halved 34 times until reaching 0 BTC after all 21 million Bitcoins have been mined. According to the current timeline, the maximum supply of Bitcoin will reach 21 million coins around 2140.
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