Bitcoin Forum

With Bitcoin halving soon does that mean the price of Bitcoin has to double or is mining just going to stop. Another thought is mining is going to get more efficient. What are some of your thoughts on this matter?

To me, it means that some miners could go offline. Not that the bitcoin network is going to shrink dramatically but it will most likely get smaller. It's going to be an interesting event. Many have speculated that after the arms race of ASICs started a bubble was caused and the loss of interest from traders resulted into miners actively reducing the price. Maybe we'll see a shift after the halving.

BTW this thread seems to be more fitting in the mining speculation board.

I think it's speculating more on the impact on the space in general.

It's still quite a way out so I wouldn't want to guess what'll happen. There might be new generations of machinery or miners might go all out to cut costs such as setting up in places with geothermal energy etc.

I would've thought the market would've priced it in long before it happens but you never know.

Halving the incoming supply of new coins will have a modest beneficial impact on the price (everyone remember Econ 101 and the Law of Supply and Demand?)

I don't think it will have a sudden impact, since the halvening is a public event everyone can anticipate. And I don't think the impact will be huge, because the current supply of 3600 coins/day is dwarfed by the amount of bitcoin traded every day (50-100 times that?). Still, over time the tighter supply of fresh coins should pull prices in an upwards direction. Bitcoin money supply is currently growing at about 10% annually, making it inflationary in the near term. Cutting that figure to less than 5% will put it into a much more stable rate of growth. And after the next halvening after that it will be growing slower than most well-managed fiat currencies (if there is such a thing), AFAIK.

Is defendly a big deal for farms and big mining operation, either they cut their power consumption and miner cost in halve or the are pretty much done.

only two things could happen, value will rise, or the total miners will decrease, the latter will lead to the death of bitcoin for a certain degree or a reset, on the other hand the diff will decrease, and this mean more opportunity for casual miners

It doesn't mean anything for the price. It may rise and probably should if the demand is the same of greater but there are no gurantees. And it means literally what it means. Mining will continue but the block reward halves.

Well, they also knew about it even before they started their miners. That's why I don't think we'll see a significantly big amount of miners going offline.

I agree here completely.  With less btc generated per day, my coins I'm hodling will become more valuable.  More valuable coins gives miners and incentive to stay in the game.  However, I'll also add that our curent network hashrates are super sky high.  I'm sure many miners could drop out and we'd still have a safe network.

Energy-efficient mining farms in cheap energy countries will continue to mine BTC; however, the inefficient one will end being put out of operation like many before.

Bitcoin halving soon? Come on, it is 15 months from now. It is the whole eternity for Bitcoin and thus I am not sure if it is the right time to already start discussing that.

I don't think the next halving could have significant impact on the price, much less probability to see it double in price. Just because the rewards will be reduced by half doesn't mean that price will increase proportionately. Most likely what we will see is that most of the miners which can't keep up with the cost of production will go out of business and the void would be taken up by those which can managed it efficiently. Overall, provided that daily demands remain, we should see only a slight increase.

Before the halving actually takes place the price will get a decent bump. It might only not be what people are expecting.

My guess is before halving we might see it going up by max 100% from current price. Not much more than that.

This event is too far away to make a fair prediction. Especially considering how fast everything changes in bitcoin. Next week might already look like a completely different bitcoinlandscape from now.

The mining gets more efficient with every new generation or iteration of ASICs hitting the market. The halving has nothing to do with it. Sure, it could and possibly will push some miners with older gear out of the game, but it's not very interesting price-wise. The decreased supply is what's so special about it!

Over a year before the halving happens. Since the block reward is going to be reduced in half, I would assume that miners that cannot cope up in terms of expenses may shut down their machines for good, and that is if the price didn't go up. But as I've said, it is over a year before this happens. Many things could take place along the way, so I'm not really sure what the halving may bring.

Miners are going to mine as long as it's economically feasible to do so. Period. There'll likely be a decline in the total network hash rate if the price isn't incredibly much higher than the average cost of mining a single coin. Economically it will be priced in continuously...

Exactly. The price will have to react to compensate that there are less miners ready to mine at a given cost the half of the coins they used to mine before. but as I said before, it is 15 months away from here. Too early to call it just now.

Well last time prices rocketed up.

Largely it depends on how big a part of the supply flow the rewards are.

I'm guessing 25-50% miners rewards/fee being instantly sold and the rest from all these merchants taking Bitcoin and instantly converting to dollars.

This would mean something like an immediate 33-100% price increase on the exchanges with more increases possible due to the resulting positive market reaction and speculaters flooding in.

We will also see mature P2P markets by that time I think. OpenBazar and other stuff is already in the works.
 - these things together could mean big price jumps.

If we have constant influx of fiat and constant influx of bitcoins, they would form an equilibrium price. If bitcoin influx halves and nothing else changes, the equilibrium price will double.
So reward halving will cause price doubling.

Unfortunately, there are number of assumptions in this reasoning. We assume that influx of fiat won't change. We assume that price is currently fluctuates around the equilibrium. Both of these assumptions are wrong. Influx of fiat can change tenfold, any direction (up, down or sidewise :)). Rally/crash can move price very far from the equilibrium. And even influx of bitcoins can change - miners can stop selling or long-time holders will decide to sell.  Scale of this can be order of magnitude more, than the halving. Halving can change prices twofold, while a rally - twenty-fold.

Having said all this, we can still assume, that halving will double the prices. When? IMO, earlier than in 15 months time. But it won't look like sharp doubling. Because of this: Say, you are a miner. You are selling all coins you produce straightaway, to cover running expenses and interest. But if you know that the coin price will double in a year, it would make sense to borrow money and pay from them, while saving the coins. If you borrow even at 20% p/a it already makes sense to stop selling coins now and get 80% profit from it. The same is true about speculators. They should start accumulating already. So it is possible that the doubling is already priced in.

IMO, it is not yet priced in, because 15 months is an eternity in the bitcoin world. Borrowing for the eternity is too risky. :) So, the price doubling will happen somewhere early next year and will be very gradual, maybe not even noticeable on the background of rallies and crashes.

Agree on that. And that is also, I believe, what people behind ETF may be thinking. They will introduce it early enough to profit from the halving effect, just as you described. That may help with money inflows, and thus, further increase the price.

They will be done IF btc price won't increase but it may happen and then boom.
But i'm sure smaller miners will have to stop if price won't atleast doule, even better triple! ;)
Also by these sentences you can already see that i belive bitcoin will rise after next halving.

Miners still make a profit at current prices with current hardware and current electricity costs. At least the miners having access to cheap mining equipment and big amounts of electricity. Many smaller miners will turn their equipment off when the halving occurs.

this could lead to a potentially 51%, if the price decrease too much and for much time, because at that point even large farm will turn off their miners, and only the largest farm will prevail resulting in the infamous 51% that we all know

Ha yeah, but I bet by now the big mines are smart enough to spread their hash rate across various pools so it doesn't appear as if their hashing power is under the control of a single entity...

either price doubles or hashrate declines - or price goes up a little and hash goes down a little (what i think will happen).

Litecoin will halve in a few months btw. Far earlier than btc.

What he said

Well it actually depends on the events and the situation in which this occurs. We might see something very bad happen on the way (hopefully not), which would cause another loss of confidence.
If we're looking a just basic supply and demand, if nothing changes then there will definitely be a price rise after the halving.

If you want to keep track of the time: http://bitcoinclock.com/ .

It's OK that bitcoin is halving. There are websites that can double it back to normal!  :)

Huh!?!? Reminds me of that one time where Blockchain.info was having the sniffles/hiccups: It showed avery balance multiplied by two, or something. Other charts were off, as well.