Reuters: Bitcoin halving: When will it happen and what does it mean for the ...

[pawel7777]

As expected, as the price goes up, the mainstream media are starting to pick up on Bitcoin and its affairs. In today's Reuters article, they discuss the upcoming halving, explaining to the "normal" people what it is and what effect (if any) it could have on the price. Of course they don't offer any solid prediction and advise being cautious, but I think the average reader will shift to the bullish side after reading it.

Bitcoin halving: When will it happen and what does it mean for the price?

https://www.reuters.com/technology/what-is-bitcoins-halving-does-it-matter-2024-03-13/

As bitcoin's price reaches new heights, attention is turning to its upcoming "halving" and whether it is playing a role in its ascent.
Depending on where you sit, the halving is a vital event that will burnish bitcoin's value as an increasingly scarce commodity, or nothing more than a technical change talked up by speculators to inflate its price.
But what exactly is it, and does it really matter?

WHAT IS IT?
The halving is a change in bitcoin's underlying blockchain technology, designed to reduce the rate at which new bitcoins are created.

Bitcoin was designed from its inception by its pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto to have a capped supply of 21 million tokens.
Nakamoto wrote the halving into bitcoin's code and it works by reducing the rate at which new bitcoin are released into circulation.
So far, about 19 million tokens have been released.

HOW DOES IT HAPPEN?
Blockchain technology involves creating records of information - called 'blocks' - which are added to the chain in a process called 'mining'
Miners use computing power to solve complex mathematical puzzles to build the blockchain and earn rewards in the form of new bitcoin.
At the halving, the amount of bitcoin available as rewards for miners is cut in half. This makes mining less profitable and slows the production of new bitcoins.
(For a visual explanation of how blockchain works, click here.)

WHEN WILL IT HAPPEN?
There is no set date, but it is expected to take place in late April.
The blockchain is designed so that a halving occurs every time 210,000 blocks are added to the chain. This means it happens roughly every four years.

WHAT'S IT GOT TO DO WITH BITCOIN'S PRICE?
Some bitcoin enthusiasts say that bitcoin's scarcity gives it value.
The lower the supply of a commodity, then all other things being equal the price should rise when people try and buy more.
So reducing supply of bitcoin should lift the price, some analysts and traders say.

Others dispute the logic, noting that any impact would have already been factored in to the current price.
The supply of bitcoin to the market is also largely down to crypto miners but the sector is opaque, with data on inventories and supplies scarce.
If miners sell their reserves, that could put downward pressure on prices.
Knowing what is behind a crypto rally is hard, not least as there is far less transparency about who is buying and why relative to other markets.
The most common reason given for this year's surge is the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's January approval of bitcoin ETFs, as well as expectations that central banks will cut interest rates.
But in the speculative world of crypto trading, explanations given by analysts for changes in bitcoin's price can snowball into market narratives that can become self-fulfilling.

WHAT ABOUT PREVIOUS HALVINGS?
There's no evidence to suggest that previous halvings have caused bitcoin's price to rise.
Still, traders and miners have studied past halvings to try and gain an edge.
When the last halving happened on May 11, 2020, the price rose around 12% in the following week.
Later in the year, bitcoin began a sharp rally, but there were lots of explanations - including loose monetary policy and stay-at-home retail investors spending spare cash on cryptocurrencies - for this and no real evidence the halving was behind it.

An earlier halving occurred in July 2016. Bitcoin rose around 1.3% in the following week, before plunging a few weeks later.
In short: it's hard to isolate the impact, if any, halvings may have had in the past or predict what could happen this time around.
Regulators have repeatedly warned that bitcoin is a speculative market, driven by hype and "FOMO" (Fear Of Missing Out), and poses real harm to investors, even as they simultaneously approve bitcoin trading products.

[Charles-Tim]

Of course they don't offer any solid prediction and advise being cautious, but I think the average reader will shift to the bullish side after reading it.

Even without reading it, it is clear from long term analysis that bitcoin price will likely reach $100000 and that the price may likely still go higher. Bitcoin price will rise and decrease but in total bitcoin price will rise more in 2024/2025. Bitcoin supply continue to reduce and we should always expect bitcoin to have higher price as the supply is decreasing and demand is increasing.

[Kemarit]

Of course they don't offer any solid prediction and advise being cautious, but I think the average reader will shift to the bullish side after reading it.

Even without reading it, it is clear from long term analysis that bitcoin price will likely reach $100000 and that the price may likely still go higher. Bitcoin price will rise and decrease but in total bitcoin price will rise more in 2024/2025. Bitcoin supply continue to reduce and we should always expect bitcoin to have higher price as the supply is decreasing and demand is increasing.

Scarcity brings demand for Bitcoin.

And just for everyone to ponder, we will have the block halving in the next couple of weeks. And by the end of 2024, there will be 20 million bitcoins. Currently circulating supply is 19,654,537 BTC, 94 has been mined%.

In the next couple of halvings, at least if we all reach 2032, "almost all bitcoins have been mined"  or 99% of it. And the 1% will be mined till 2024 or at least that's what the estimate is. So think about what will be the price of Bitcoin.

[Aanuoluwatofunmi]

Halving is expected to take place next month which is April 2024, it happens after the interval of every four years and on each halving sessions there comes the release of the mining reward to be half, this means that we are releasing some new set of bitcoin and the miners got half of the reward from the last or previous reward, the market value increases and there's high demand and supply during this period, we also experience the bullrun before or after each halving and bitcoin forms a new all time high.

[Z-tight]

Not a bad article, especially for newbies who have probably not experienced any halving and do not understand what it is, for more experienced bitcoiners, they already know all about the halving. The BTC halving is a big event in the network, after every 210,000 blocks, the block subsidy is halved, which reduces the supply of BTC, and with more or the same demand for BTC, the price is going to rise because the supply has been cut in half.

[Lucius]

Bitcoin was designed from its inception by its pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto to have a capped supply of 21 million tokens.
Nakamoto wrote the halving into bitcoin's code and it works by reducing the rate at which new bitcoin are released into circulation.
So far, about 19 million tokens have been released.

One would think that a serious media company could hire a journalist who knows the basic concepts of what they are writing about, but that is obviously something that is beyond their capabilities.

Bitcoin is not a token, but a coin, and those who claim otherwise are simply ignorant.

There are two main types of cryptocurrencies: Coins and Tokens.
Coins are native to their blockchains, and fees charged for using the blockchain are in their denomination. They may act as a store of value, or have chain-specific use cases.
Tokens are built on existing blockchains, and may be used for asset tokenization, utility, or project governance.

As someone already wrote, we have more than 19.6 million BTC in circulation, and someone who "overlooks" more than 600 000 BTC really has no idea what he is actually writing about.

[Captain Corporate]

The funny thing is, the same channels that said that bitcoin is "dead" when the price went down, will now talk about how it is breaking records. They do not have shame, because they believe that their viewers will not remember a thing they said, which they are not totally wrong about to be fair, most people will just forget a year or two ago. But we won't, we remember that mainstream media dragged us through the mud when we were low, because we were going through our regular bear market, and I think that should be probably the most important part of the deal, because we recovered and at bull now, and we can ignore them.

[yhiaali3]

An article full of errors, if not lies. It is clear from the article that it is the type that tries to insert some poison between the lines and within the words.

Like this quote:

Others dispute the logic, noting that any impact would have already been factored in to the current price.
The supply of bitcoin to the market is also largely down to crypto miners but the sector is opaque, with data on inventories and supplies scarce.
If miners sell their reserves, that could put downward pressure on prices.
Knowing what is behind a crypto rally is hard, not least as there is far less transparency about who is buying and why relative to other markets.
The most common reason given for this year's surge is the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's January approval of bitcoin ETFs, as well as expectations that central banks will cut interest rates.
But in the speculative world of crypto trading, explanations given by analysts for changes in bitcoin's price can snowball into market narratives that can become self-fulfilling.

The first thing they try to doubt is that scarcity gives value to the currency, even though this is an economic fact that everyone knows.

They also try to make readers believe that Bitcoin is not transparent due to the scarcity of data related to stocks and supplies, and even if this is true, it does not have a significant impact on the market.

In addition, they also spread panic by saying, “If miners sell their reserves, it could put downward pressure on prices.”

But after all that there is one positive thing which is writing an article about Bitcoin and halving in a huge international news agency like Reuters.

[Lucius]

~snip~
In addition, they also spread panic by saying, “If miners sell their reserves, it could put downward pressure on prices.”

We cannot know how much BTC is in the possession of the miners at the moment, because although around 27 000 are mined per month (900 per day x30), it is very likely that they sell only what they have to in order to pay the costs, and keep the rest for when they can sell at a much higher price. What is certain is that miners are not stupid to sell in a way to influence the price, which means that they use OTC wisely like others who sell/buy large amounts of BTC.

But after all that there is one positive thing which is writing an article about Bitcoin and halving in a huge international news agency like Reuters.

The saying is that every promotion is good, but they should still put a little more effort into the content - well, there are members on this and the BTT forum who would write an impeccable article for them - but it's much easier to tell someone to write an article about halving, even though it might be otherwise a journalist who deals with some other topics.

[Baofeng]

If I may add though, the source is a mainstream media, yeah, in the past they attack Bitcoin but now they have something like a good news, Lol. It's all for the click here. So I wouldn't trust news coming from them although we all know that probably the author just copied an spin this article to look like they are coming from a new source.

For us crypto users, we already know what will happen and what does it mean. This is going to be my second halving if I'm not mistaken, I enter 2017 in the tail of the bull run and so my very first is 2020 during the pandemic. So I have a idea already and I think majority here has the same history as mind and so this kind of article is just "moot point" for us.