Bitcoin Cash Halving: Forked Path to Efficiency

Bitcoin Cash, the biggest Bitcoin fork, finished its halving earlier this Thursday, according to data from BTC.com. The controversial fork launched in August 2017 and increased the block size to 32 megabytes to make payments more efficient.

Bitcoin Cash reached its highest price of $3,324 in late December 2017, but the hype was short-lived due to low adoption and conflict within the community. Bitcoin Cash is the 14th largest coin, with a market cap of $12.5 billion. Although Bitcoin Cash has experienced a recent price surge, it has lost over 83% of its value from its all-time high more than six years ago. Specifically, Bitcoin is at a price slightly lower than $66,000 after touching $73,737 on March 14.

Roger Ver, Bitcoin Cash’s most vocal backer, seemingly disappeared without a trace. Nevertheless, he wrote “Hijacking Bitcoin” with two other experts last year to provide a counterpoint to the mainstream cryptocurrency stories. The book will shake the existing beliefs and knowledge about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin Halving: Miners Are Under Pressure to Make a Profit

Bitcoin’s subsequent halving event takes place in 16 days, and the block reward to miners will reduce to just 3.125 BTC, which will put further pressure on the profitability of operations. The reward is now being halved for block miners. Hence, miners get half a reward. As a result, some miners might get closed if it is no longer viable for them to run losing businesses in such conditions.

Bitwise Asset Management CEO Hunter Horsley predicted this will be Bitcoin’s most impactful halving yet. He cited the large dollar amount of new supply being removed from issuance as the key factor. With relatively low issuance after the halving, the circulating Bitcoin supply will be further constrained.

The April 2024 Bitcoin halving may be the most impactful we’ve seen. Why?

The last Bitcoin halving, 2020, Bitcoin was at ~$9,000. So the supply reduction in $ terms was ~$9M a day, and ~$3B a year.

This halving with Bitcoin ~$70,000, it will be >3x greater in $ terms: ~$32M a…

— Hunter Horsley (@HHorsley) March 29, 2024

Some analysts believe Bitcoin’s price could test $80,000 ahead of the upcoming halving event. The narrative of decreasing supply could drive up prices as demand increases for the limited remaining Bitcoin. However, prices remain unpredictable, and the halving’s true impact remains to be seen.

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