The Bitcoin halving is about a month away — here’s what you can expect

The Bitcoin halving is roughly a month away.

It’s set to take place on or around April 20, though the exact date won’t become clear until it’s closer. The quadrennial event takes place every 210,000 blocks, this time at block 840,000.

Following the halving, the amount of bitcoin awarded to miners will be, well, halved: Mined bitcoin rewards will drop to 3.125 per block, down from 6.25.

The last halving occurred in 2020 when the rewards dropped from 12.5 bitcoin per block to 6.25.

What’s different this time?

This will be the fourth halving in the history of Bitcoin, but it is unique for a couple of reasons. First and foremost is it follows the newly-launched bitcoin ETFs.

The Securities and Exchange Commission only approved the bitcoin ETFs in January, meaning that they’ll only be a few months old by the time the halving happens.

The other reason is that bitcoin has never before carved out new all-time highs ahead of a halving. Bitcoin’s recent historic run-up puts this halving in completely uncharted territory.

ICYMI: Earlier this month, bitcoin (BTC) notched a new all-time high for the first time since 2021.

What to expect

For the halving itself? Not much. It’s a fun event, but it won’t have a serious impact on most watchers or holders in the short term — if history repeats itself. However, the previous halvings have led to movement in bitcoin’s price in the months post-halving.

Lucas Kiely, chief investment officer of Yield App, thinks that bitcoin could enter a “danger zone” ahead of the halving, and see a price drawdown of up to 20%. Bitcoin, after hitting multiple new all-time highs, lost a lot of the positive momentum sending it higher.

There’s not a clear trend revealing how bitcoin may react directly after the event occurs — especially considering how vastly different this year has been from the past halvings.

But in the long run, as Komodo’s Chief Technology Officer Kadan Stadelmann previously noted, the halving creates “a scarcity that tends to increase its value.”

Uncertainty won’t prevent analysts and commentators from looking into what happens post-halving.

How bitcoin could be impacted

JPMorgan analysts, in a note last month, predicted that bitcoin’s price could dip to $42,000 after the halving. Historically, the halvings have occurred when bitcoin was below its previous peak, and the previous three did lead to bitcoin carving out bull runs in the months after the halvings, though not immediately.

The analysts also noted that continued price appreciation could be a boon for publicly listed bitcoin miners, such as Marathon, Riot, Griid, Cipher and Core Scientific among others, even as their cost of production doubles.

The analysts believe that the miners with “below average electricity costs” and better rigs could survive as others struggle.

Miners could see further consolidation in the space, with bigger players like Marathon making pre-halving moves. The publicly traded miner bought another site in an $87 million deal earlier this month.

Riot and CleanSpark also made their own moves earlier this year. CleanSpark acquired three new facilities and Riot bought more mining machines.

While JPMorgan went low in their estimates post-halving, others see bitcoin carving out new all-time highs by the end of this year.

Standard Chartered, in a note, said that bitcoin could hit $150,000 by the end of this year. While the analysts didn’t dig into the past action of bitcoin post-halving, part of their thesis comes from the fact that after the halving, bitcoin miners “new supply will fall to 450 BTC per day, [and] the same amount of ETF buying will be equivalent to 5x new supply.”

Binance CEO Richard Teng, speaking at an event, reportedly said he could see bitcoin surpassing $80,000 by the end of the year. Teng previously expected bitcoin to top out at $80,000.

Teng, in a post on X, acknowledged the vast difference in his call versus Standard Chartered’s, adding, “I have always been conservative.”