First Mover: Bitcoin Cash’s Halving Was Dull – Bitcoin’s May Be Much the Same

German bank BayernLB predicted last year that bitcoin’s halving could drive its price to $90,000, roughly 12 times the current level. Cryptocurrency markets got a sneak preview on Wednesday as a lesser coin, bitcoin cash, went through its own halving.

“All in all, this has been very anticlimactic,” Denis Vinokourov, head of research at Bequant, a cryptocurrency exchange and institutional brokerage, wrote in an email. Bitcoin cash prices rose 5.9 percent Wednesday, entirely in line with its trading range on most days. Cryptocurrencies have been volatile since long before the coronavirus hit. Bitcoin climbed 2.3 percent on the day.

“In crypto, that’s normal,” Roger Ver, executive chairman of Bitcoin.com and a key proponent of bitcoin cash, said in an audio interview over Telegram from his home in St. Kitts. Ver says he hadn’t been expecting much from the event. He’s been around the crypto industry since the early days, and witnessed bitcoin’s halvings in 2012 and 2016. This week’s halving was the first for bitcoin cash, which split off from bitcoin in 2017.

The episode offers a dose of reality for crypto-industry newcomers who might be looking forward to something spectacular when bitcoin’s next halving arrives in May. It’s so hotly anticipated that clever web designers have erected pages featuring countdown clocks. As of the latest look, it’ll take place in an estimated 34 days, seven hours and 47 minutes. (On May 13, around 09:25 UTC.)

If bitcoin cash’s halving is any guide, there really won’t be much to see. Maybe champagne glasses will clink somewhere, celebrating the passage of another four years of bitcoin’s remarkable existence since it was created in early 2009 atop what is now the world’s largest blockchain network.

Bitcoin’s price, currently around $7,300, has climbed 20-fold since the start of 2015, the first full year of historical data from the popular cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. There were a lot of days between then and now, many of them up, many of them down, and only one of those days in 2016 coincided with a halving.

Just think back to how much has happened in cryptocurrency markets in the past six months: Chinese President Xi Jinping said the world’s largest economy would “seize the opportunities” afforded by blockchain technology. (Bitcoin jumped 12 percent.) The U.S. killed a top Iranian general, threatening to escalate into a war. (Up 10 percent.) The coronavirus came along. (Bitcoin plunged, then recovered, and is now up 2 percent year-to-date.)

First Mover: Bitcoin Cash’s Halving Was Dull – Bitcoin’s May Be Much the Same, CoinDesk, Apr 9