Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, fell 1% to about $19,000 early on Thursday. It has been locked in a narrow range of around $20,000 since prices collapsed in June. Even so, analysts from ByteTree Research say “it is time to sit up and pay attention”, as the next halving is expected to happen in 2024.
Bitcoin undergoes what’s known as halving, or halvening, every 3-4 years or so. During a halving, coin rewards to miners — whose computers order transactions on the network and get paid with new Bitcoins — get cut in half. Prior halvings have coincided with bull runs, which often started a few months before a halving and continued for some months afterwards. The last halving, in May of2020, was followed by a bull run that ended in a record Bitcoin price of almost $69,000 in November 2021. Since reaching that milestone, Bitcoin has tumbled about 70%.
“Our view remains that this epoch will echo previous ones, albeit with a lower amplitude given its scale,” ByteTree said in a Wednesday report, which pointed to expected greater regulatory clarity in the coming months as likely to light a fire under adoption of digital assets. “This will bring greater activity into an ecosystem which is heading for another supply shock. If that’s correct, the next few months should be the perfect time to accumulate.”
The advice is coming at a time of low trading volumes and low volatility, when investors see nothing to get excited about. Many crypto long-timers aren’t excited about the halving, either.
Crypto investor Aaron Brown, who writes for Bloomberg Opinion said, “I don’t see major fundamental changes in the next few months.”
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