Bitcoin Halving

The first-ever Bitcoin halving took place on Nov. 28, 2012 — slashing rewards to just 25 BTC. On this date, a single BTC would set you back about $12. But just look at where it was a year later. Dusting off the CMC archives, we can see that the price of Bitcoin stood stood at $1,031.95 on that date in 2013. That’s an annual rise of 8,500%, the types of returns that would cause most Wall Street investors to faint.

Let’s travel in time to the second halving in 2016, when rewards were about to tumble once again, this time to 12.5 BTC. On the date Bitcoin hit 420,000 blocks — July 9, to be exact — one coin cost $650.96. A year later, Bitcoin was already at $2,518.44. However, the real rise took place 5 months later, when on Dec. 17, 2017, Bitcoin ballooned to its all-time high of $20,089. It took just 526 days for growth of 2,990% to be realized.

It’s fair to say that the jury is still out on whether this upcoming halving will be followed by the type of growth that followed the previous halvings. Either way, it’ll take 12 to 18 months to know if Bitcoin can pull it off again.