Bitcoin prices have surged in the past few weeks in anticipation of the latest halving, which took place on Monday.
As a result, bitcoin miners now receive 6.25 bitcoins instead of 12.5. This is the third time bitcoin has halved in its history. The next halving event will take place sometime in 2024 and will reduce the number of new bitcoins issued to 3.125.
Anticipation of the event helped drive bitcoin prices higher in the past few weeks — from a low of around $4,100 in mid-March to just under $10,000 on May 6. But prices have fallen back to about $8,700 now that the halving has actually occurred.
This halving is transpiring at a time when governments are enacting unlimited amounts of monetary and fiscal stimulus," said Michael Sonnenshein, managing director with Grayscale Investments, a digital currency asset management firm.
A couple of days back, when Bitcoin reached one of its recent lows- $9300, the crypto space was going through a tough time.With the onset of Libra cryptocurrency, there were many debates on whether its an attempt to kill Bitcoin. But then the US lawmakers said that Bitcoin is going to stay.
Tom Lee, ex-Chief Equity Strategist JP Morgan, and Co-founder and head of research of Fundstrat, believes that the break-even cost of mining 1 BTC directly correlates with the price of the cryptocurrency. He believes BTC would grow as he is counting on more institutional investors taking on Bitcoin and a steady increase in Bitcoin user base. He recently said in an interview that US President Trump’s remarks could actually trigger a bull run.
John McAfee has been one of the stagnant Bitcoin enthusiasts, who now and then comes up with his prediction. He recently became more optimistic than ever and said that Bitcoin might reach 1 million USD by 2020. Other altcoins like Apollo and MTC might rise 10X more, as said by this BTC enthusiast.
Throughout this year, the BTC/USD pair has covered all standard positions for Fibonacci reversals from the downtrend coming from the 2017 highs.