When Was the Last Bitcoin Halving? Understanding This Key Event and Its Impact
Bitcoin halving is one of the most significant events in the crypto space with most analysts saying that bull runs only occur after Bitcoin Halvings.
With Bitcoin halving coming in 2024, most investors are now asking when was the last Bitcoin halving and how did previous Bitcoin halvings affect the price of Bitcoin so they can capitalize on it.
This article will give an overview of the last Bitcoin halving and how it impacted the price of Bitcoin itself and the whole crypto market.
What is Bitcoin Halving?
Bitcoin halving is a change in miner rewards for every four years or 210,000 blocks which is a mechanism that decreases the amount of Bitcoin going into the market, hence lowering Bitcoin’s inflation.
It is an unchangeable mechanism implemented by Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, to limit the number of Bitcoin available on the market overtime.
The way it works is that approximately every four years the rewards per miner is dropped around 50% so that Bitcoin becomes more scarce, thus increasing its price.
Originally, before the first halving, miner’s rewards were 50 BTC per block. But after the first halving miner’s rewards were cut by 50% which makes the reward for every block created goes down to 25 BTC per block.
Bitcoin implements a Proof of Work consensus mechanism where their validators, which are called miners, mine BTCs by validating transactions where after validating transactions and successfully creating a block, they will be rewarded with BTCs split among validators that constructed the block.
As of right now, the current reward for one block created is 6.25 BTC, which happens after the last halving.
When Was the Last Bitcoin Halving?
The last Bitcoin halving happened on May 11th, 2020 at block 630,000 approximately four years after the previous halving before that.
It was counted as the third halving that happened for Bitcoin which marked a significant increase in Bitcoin price, marking the start of the 2021 bull market.
Before that, the second Bitcoin halving occurred on July 9th, 2016 which was at around block height 420,000, also marking the start of the 2017 bull market.
The first Bitcoin halving happened at block height 210,000 on November 28th, 2012, which also marked a significant increase of Bitcoin price, but was not considered a bull market because most investors haven’t found out about Bitcoin at that point, so it was not popular.
When is the Next Bitcoin Halving?
The next Bitcoin halving is projected to happen around March or April in 2024 which stands at block 840,000.
The next Bitcoin halving will decrease miner's reward to 3,125 BTC per block marking a significant decrease of Bitcoin’s inflation, making it more scarce.
Bitcoin’s scarcity is kept because the maximum supply of it only stands at around 21 Million BTC and cannot be tempered with.
Even with governance proposals, most Bitcoin investors would not agree to a change of Bitcoin supply to either decrease it or increase it because it would taint the whole scarcity value of Bitcoin itself.
Most of Bitcoin’s supply itself is also held by whales, so if a new proposal was published to change Bitcoin's supply, it would not reach an agreement because most of those whale’s wallets are dormant.
How to Trade the Bitcoin Halving?
Because of that, it is projected that Bitcoin’s price will become more scarce making it possible for the price to increase significantly.
Price increase happens because of the logic behind supply and demand mechanism, where the supply of something decreases but its demand decreases, the price of that thing will increase.
Looking at interest around Bitcoin right now, and the development of its ecosystem through the help of its layer two blockchains, it is fair to say that demand is increasing.
While demand is increasing, halving will create a supply shock that makes Bitcoin scarce, so by logic, the bull market should start after the next halving.
Projecting Bitcoin's historical value, it is fair to say that the next bull market will happen in late 2024 or in the beginning of 2025 as the previous bull market did.
If investors want to capitalize on this potential gain, the safest way to do it is just by buying Bitcoin when a price correction happens after the next Bitcoin halving is done.
This is because after halving happens, usually the price of Bitcoin drops before going higher, so investors can capitalize on this movement and reach potential profit when the bull market happens.
Another way to capitalize more on the movement is utilizing BTCs by using staking platforms to earn passive rewards.
You can do that by using Bitrue by buying BTC on it and using the flexible staking feature to earn daily passive rewards.
Overall the Bitcoin halving is an event that usually pushes not only Bitcoin’s price higher, but the overall crypto market. Investors need to be aware of this movement to maximize their profit when the bull market comes.
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