Two Weeks Away For Bitcoin’s Next Halving

Bitcoin's upcoming halving event is just two weeks away or approximately 2,000 blocks away, says The Block's Bitcoin Halving Countdown page. The countdown is based on Bitcoin's average block generation time of 10 minutes, indicating a potential date of April 20 at around 1 p.m. ET. The upcoming halving event will see the reward for miners on the network drop from 6.25 to 3.125 BTC per block.

Halvings are programmed to occur every 210,000 blocks, roughly every four years. After a halving event, miners receive 50% fewer bitcoins as a reward for every block they mine and add to the blockchain. However, they continue to earn additional transaction fees for each block mined as usual.

Bitcoin (BTC) has had three halving events in its history, reducing its block reward inflation from 50 BTC to 6.25 BTC in 2012, 12.5 BTC in 2016, and 6.25 BTC at the last halving event on May 11, 2020. In the long term, there will only be 21 million bitcoins in existence.

Halving events have historically been associated with significant fluctuations in Bitcoin's price. While not a direct cause-and-effect relationship, these events have often preceded substantial bull runs in the Bitcoin market.

This time around, Bitcoin (BTC) is closer to an all-time high relative to previous halving events. However, the approval of the spot ETFs contributed to a significant change in BTC's supply-demand dynamics, which could impact price during and after the halving.

Coinbase analyst David Duong believes that the current Bitcoin (BTC) rally is largely a result of this new phenomenon amid spot ETF inflows and rising institutional interest, which have "irrevocably altered" the Bitcoin market. "This means that Bitcoin's response to the upcoming halving may not necessarily mirror its performance in prior cycles," he added.