Bitcoin Is 75% To Halving, Here’s How Past Cycles Compare
Bitcoin’s current cycle is now 75% on its way to the next halving. See what previous cycles looked like at similar stages on your timeline.
Bitcoin’s current halving cycle has reached the 75% milestone
The “halving” refers to a periodic event where cryptocurrency block rewards are permanently cut in half. “Block rewards” are what miners receive as compensation for mining blocks on the network.
The BTC that these chain validators receive in these rewards is the only way to introduce new coins into the asset’s circulating supply, meaning that block rewards can be considered the equivalent of BTC “production”.
The reason halving exists as a concept is to restrict the supply of cryptocurrency and make it more scarce over time as less and less coins are produced with each halving.
As the halving has such far-reaching consequences for the supply and demand dynamics of the asset, this event has historically had an impact on the price of the cryptocurrency. More specifically, as supply is reduced thereafter, the value of BTC has seen an upward trend.
Halvings occur every 210,000 blocks or roughly every four years. Due to this periodicity and their important place in the market, these events serve as a popular way of defining the start and end points of a BTC “cycle”.
An analyst in twitter put together a chart that shows the status of the current Bitcoin cycle, as well as its comparison with previous ones at similar stages.
The different halving cycles of the original cryptocurrency | Source: Santiment on Twitter
As you can see in the chart above, Bitcoin bull runs have historically occurred after the halving, showing just how powerful the narrative surrounding them has been.
On the graph, it is visible that the last BTC halving cycle is currently at around 75%, which means that miners have mined around 157,500 blocks in this cycle so far.
While the trends that the last two cycles followed after similar milestones were reached differed between the two, they still saw bullish momentum for at least some time after that point.
In the case of the 2012 cycle, the asset price continued to rise following the 75% mark and accumulated until the next bull run. The 2016 cycle reached this milestone while the price was in the midst of the April 2019 rally.
The price continued to rise for a while after the mark was reached, but eventually, the rally topped out and the cryptocurrency dropped after that. Proper accumulation for the bull run didn’t happen until the 2020 halving (at which point a new cycle began).
The April 2019 rally shares many similarities with the current one in terms of various on-chain indicators, so it is interesting that their placement on the timelines of the respective cycles is also quite similar.
It now remains to be seen where the current rally goes from here, and whether the bullish momentum pattern after the 75% milestone will hold true this cycle as well.
BTC price
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $29,100, up 1% over the last week.
BTC has surged today | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView
Featured Image of Dmitry Demidko at Unsplash.com, Charts by TradingView.com, Santiment.net