What Could Go Wrong with Bitcoin Halving?

The bitcoin halving is almost here. We asked market analysts and representatives of mining companies to give us their perspective on the impact of this milestone event. So, no time to waste, let's jump right in. Let's start with miners. Miners are those most affected by the bitcoin halving. Their revenue, called mining rewards, will be slashed in half from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.

Currently you have a daily miner revenue in the entire world of around $64 million and that will halt to $32 million. Such a huge decline in the industry revenue will of course be a big shock to the entire industry.

Hence, many miners will be pushed out of business and shut down their operations. With only the most efficient being able to survive.

Everyone is worried for having even the most efficient operations. Just because the block subsidy reducing is out of everyone's control.

Why should you care, you may ask? Well, because miners guarantee Bitcoin's fundamental properties, namely security and censorship resistance, by producing a large amount of computational power or hash power. Bitcoin miners make it incredibly difficult for anyone to manipulate the bitcoin blockchain. By the way, if you want to know more about how the having actually works, check out our video for beginners in the description. Now some say that with block rewards decreasing every four years with a halving, miners will have less and less incentive to secure the blockchain. Some say that could pose a long term risk to bitcoin, which could become increasingly vulnerable to the so called 51% attack, which is when a single entity gains the majority of the bitcoin hash rate and therefore can attack the network. But let's not panic, since the halving is an entirely predictable event that happens about every four years. Miners have had time to prepare. Some have been upgrading their mining rigs, making them more efficient. In order to fund these upgrades, many miners have been selling large amounts of their BTC reserves, taking advantage of the latest bitcoin rally. Other miners have moved older, less efficient equipment to areas with cheaper electricity.

If you continuously have to upgrade your machine to have the last machine in order to be profitable, it means that you're actually paying too much for your electricity. Therefore, the only real long term viable way of building a mining operation is having access to extremely cheap electricity. You have to go into for example Africa to find that. So hash Labs Mining. We are expecting to accommodate a lot of these machines in Africa to give them a prolonged life.

We'll see a lot of miners start to diversify energy wise. A lot of miners are going to migrate towards stranded energy. They go to landfills and they'll use the trash for mining.

Bitcoin Other mining firms are using the halving as an opportunity to win market share over less efficient competitors. For example, Marathon Digital has announced its plans to use its $1 billion strong balance sheet to double its hash rate, bringing it to 50 exahash by the end of 2025. Lastly, let's not forget that besides the block rewards, miners have a second source of revenue, transaction fees. But at the moment, transaction fees only constitute a small, small percentage of the miner's revenue. For example, in March this year, only 4% of revenue came from transaction fees. But this situation is likely to change in the future.

We're going to see more and more activity on the bitcoin blockchain. This increased demand for block space will lead to a very big surge in transaction fees.

I think there will be a point, I don't know if it'll be this having or the next or the next that transaction fees do pass the.

The.

Block subsidy in 2025, I can foresee a situation where the transaction fees periodically are higher than the block subsidy.

One of the reason why transaction fees are likely to increase in the future is the emergence of ordinals or NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain. This new bitcoin use case has gained traction in the last year and a half, significantly boosting transaction fees on the bitcoin blockchain. Thus far, ordinals have generated approximately $240 million in transaction fees and this trend is growing.

So even though the halving will decrease mining profitability, I still think the hash rate will continue to increase. I don't think we will see a very large drop in hash rate after the halving, maybe around 10% or less.

Finally, the widespread expectation is that Bitcoin's price will increase significantly in the months following the bitcoin halving, which should compensate for the diminished rewards in terms of block subsidies.

If you're selling 100% of your Bitcoin to cover your expenses and your capital expenditures and the bitcoin price doubles, well, now you only need to sell 50% of your bitcoin to get the same amount of dollars.

The impact of the halving on pricings is what we're going to discuss next. Will the halving impact Bitcoin's price? Let's distinguish between the short and long term impacts on price surrounding the bitcoin halving. From a price perspective. The having may initially appear as a non event primarily because its occurrence is fully anticipated and thus already factored into market prices. However, given high levels of speculation and anticipation surrounding this event, heightened volatility is to be expected, particularly around the having date. We may even witness a post having pullback due to the classic buy the rumors sell the news phenomenon. However, it's in the medium to long term that we can expect the most significant impact on prices. The halving effectively slashes the supply of new Bitcoin in half. According to the fundamental law of supply and demand, a decrease in the supply of new Bitcoin coupled with stable or increasing demand should theoretically lead to a surge in Bitcoin's value over time. At least that's what happened on the occasions of the previous Bitcoin halving. As you can see in the chart, Bitcoin has surged in the 12 months before and after each halving. The biggest appreciation has happened in the months following the event. You can also notice the impact of the halving on Bitcoin's price and has been decreasing over time. This is because the reduction in new supply decreases with every halving. And this is why most analysts believe Bitcoin's price increase will be significantly less than in previous halvings.

Bitcoin volatility will continue to decline versus beta and versus gold. So right now it's about 3x. It used to be 10x. As you get more and more people involved in this asset, arbitraging, buying, selling involved, it will continue to squash it volatility.

Still, many analysts believe Bitcoin's price could double in value before the end of the year. Again, we need to stress that these are just predictions. There's no guarantee that Bitcoin's price will surge after the halving. At the end of the day there were just three previous bitcoin halvings, which is a pretty small sample size to base a whole theory on. Also, the Bitcoin halving doesn't happen in a vacuum. There are other external factors that could influence its outcome, some of which were not present during previous halvings. One of which is the Spot Bitcoin ETF, which was approved in the US in January. Spot Bitcoin ETFs has been attracting billions of dollars from institution investors in just a couple months. This unprecedented demand, coupled with the supply shock of the having could lead to potentially huge Bitcoin price surges. It had already happened. It was the first time in history that Bitcoin broke through its previous all time highs. Before the Bitcoin halving. The further rise of Bitcoin's price following the halving will significantly depend on whether the inflows to these ETFs will continue.

Total inflows in Bitcoin ETFs this year is about $2012 billion. Unless something happens to radically shift that demand, negative price must go up over time.

If that is the case, observers even say that the ETF factor could invalidate the trend of diminishing returns after each having, in other words, that we should expect an even bigger price increase than in the previous cycles. Analysts at Standard Chartered highlighted the rise of gold prices following the approval of the first gold ETF and came to the conclusion that bitcoin could reach 2250k by the end of 2025. The big picture of the economy is another factor that will determine Bitcoin's price. After the havoc in the past. Post having rallies happened when there was a lot of money floating around the global economy which was good for risky investments like Bitcoin, for example. The last having occurred during the COVID pandemic when governments were pumping lots of money into the economy to help it recover. But now things aren't the same. There's not as much money floating around globally and the Federal Reserve still has interest rates quite high.

The the key thing I'm concerned about is a backup in beta and the impact it'll have on Bitcoin. If you look at 10 year old yields in the US they're 4.3 or so and most of the rest of the world in Europe they're three and two handles, and China it's a two handle. That's an indication that bond yields see global recession coming and we just have to see if Bitcoin can trade more like gold when beta goes down than more like beta. And I suspect with a high volatility it's still at risk of a decent drawdown.

Regardless of what the impact on prices might be, the halving remains one of the properties at the core of Bitcoin's fundamental value. It's the foundation of Bitcoin's unalterable monetary policy. Unlike traditional fiat currencies, Bitcoin operates on a fixed supply schedule with a maximum cap of 21 million bitcoins. This property positions Bitcoin as a potential hedge against currency devaluation and inflationary pressures.

In fiat currencies, what you have is essentially a regulated monopoly, that is that there are certain people who are legally authorized to counterfeit the money to print more of it. And this is really what differentiates Bitcoin from any other kind of asset in the world, which is that no, no other asset has a having.

The having is a crucial milestone that solidifies one of Bitcoin's fundamental properties being a scarce asset similar to gold. If past cycle patterns repeat themselves, the halving will likely be followed by a spectacular surge in price in the months to come. Despite the initial shock, miners will likely adapt to reduced revenues by improving hardware and relocating to areas with cheaper electricity. However, history doesn't always repeat itself. Factors such as Bitcoin, ETFs, the rise of ordinals, or different macroeconomic conditions could lead to different outcomes. This time, therefore, let's be prepared for all the different possible scenarios. If you enjoyed our content, consider giving a like and subscribing to the channel. I'm Max and we'll see you next time.