Gold is considered one of the best stores of value because of its fixed supply. Since the supply is not extremely abundant, gold is scarce is imposed by nature. We are not able to create gold for increasing the supply.
Similarly, the algorithm that imposes bitcoins fixed supply was designed to make bitcoin, even scarcer than gold. So, if demand remains steady or increases for the fixed scarce, the supply and price of bitcoin will experience positive long-term effects.
After the halving in May, the supply of bitcoin will become even more scarce. So let’s look at what happened after previous bitcoin halving.
Bitcoin was around eleven dollars when the first halving occurred in November 2012. Then in 2013, bitcoin spiked to $1100, the highest bitcoin had ever been. At that time before dropping back down to around $220, it remaining under $1000, for the next few years in July of 2016.
During the second halving, bitcoin was around $600, and then spiked to $20,000 near the end of 2017, which was around 18 months later. So, historically the 12 to 18 months immediately following a halving event bitcoin pricing didn’t show much movement.
Also, it’s not quite clear that the spikes price 12 to 18 months after the halving events correlate exclusively with the halving. The first bitcoin price spike to $1100 happened an entire year after the halving event, and it seemed to correlate with the Cyrus bailout.
The second bitcoin price spike to $20000 happened an entire 18 months after the halving took place. It seemed to be caused by market manipulation, as cryptocurrency was being featured in mainstream media, and attracting attention from the masses.
Did the halving affect the spike to $20000 in late 2017?
Maybe not the spike, but it’s more probable that it’s been playing a role in maintaining bitcoins price over $3000, since then.
So, what does the historical data tell us about the upcoming halving event into May of 2020? At this moment, bitcoin gains more popularity since the last halving in 2016. Furthermore, the upcoming halving in May is likely already priced in. For a while, there is a lot of hype coming out about the impending halving.
So, it’s likely that the of bitcoin drops significantly following the halving event due to so many inexperienced people, and investors operating off of the assumptions that bitcoin price will increase immediately after or soon, after the halving like the previous halving events.