Bitcoin ‘halving’ has taken place, CoinGecko says
London: Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, on Friday completed its “halving,” a phenomenon that happens roughly every four years, according to according to CoinGecko, a cryptocurrency data and analysis company.
Bitcoin was fairly stable immediately afterward, falling 0.47 per cent to $63,747.
Bitcoin enthusiasts had eagerly waited for the “halving” – a change to the cryptocurrency’s underlying technology designed to cut the rate at which new bitcoins are created.
Chris Gannatti, global head of research at asset manager WisdomTree, which markets bitcoin exchange-traded funds, called the halving “one of the biggest events in crypto this year”.
For some crypto fans, the halving will underscore bitcoin’s value as an increasingly scarce commodity. Nakamoto capped bitcoin supply at 21 million tokens. But sceptics see it as little more than a technical change talked up by speculators to inflate the virtual currency’s price.
The operation works by halving the rewards cryptocurrency miners receive for creating new tokens, making it more expensive for them to put new bitcoins into circulation.
It follows a surge in bitcoin’s price to an all-time high of $73,803.25 in March, having spent much of 2023 slowly recovering from 2022’s dramatic plunge. On Thursday the world’s biggest cryptocurrency was trading at $63,800.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been supported by excitement around the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s decision in January to approve spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds, as well as expectations that central banks will cut interest rates.
Previous halvings occurred in 2012, 2016 and 2020. Some crypto fans point to price rallies that followed them as a sign that bitcoin’s next halving will boost its price, but many analysts are sceptical.