It’s been one year since Bitcoin had its quadrennial halving event, which usually sends the price soaring.
But while it’s true that Bitcoin rose to an all-time high in the months following the latest halving in April 2024, the percentage spike has not been nearly as sizable as in past cycles.
Data provider Kaiko told Decrypt that though the biggest coin’s price is indeed up, macroeconomic factors have hindered it from making the same kind of gains.
In the report, Kaiko said that at recent levels, the increases represented the “weakest post-halving performance on record in terms of percentage growth.”
Following a surge over the past week, Bitcoin was around $95,000 on Friday, up about 49% since the halving. Past percentage increases have reached well into the three or four figures during the same timespan.
“One of the main changes [with this Bitcoin cycle] is the current macro regime—interest rates have never been this high,” Kaiko Senior Analyst Dessislava Aubert told Decrypt, adding that “the current period of high uncertainty” has hurt the coin’s performance.
Bitcoin has typically performed well in a low-interest rate environment, along with other risk-on assets like stocks. But those have swooned amid investor fears that U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war, dramatic cost-cutting, and other macroeconomic uncertainties would send prices higher and stunt growth.
Bitcoin soared to a peak price of just under $109,000 on January 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration, as crypto markets expected the new administration’s policies to help the industry.
The halving takes place every four years and slashes block rewards for miners—the power-hungry operations that process transactions on the network—in half. With fewer digital coins entering circulation, investors and industry observers generally expect the asset to surge.
Case in point: Before Bitcoin’s first halving in 2012, it was priced at $12.35. One year later, the price of the coin stood at $964, a nearly 8,000% gain.
At the next halving on July 9, 2016, Bitcoin was trading hands for $663. Fast-forward to 2017 and it had shot up in value and was priced at $2,500—a 277% increase.
And at the previous halving, which took place on May 11, 2020, BTC was valued at $8,500. A bull run followed the next year, and Bitcoin skyrocketed to an all-time high price above $69,000, a 762% rise.
The last halving cut miners’ rewards from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC for each block they process. But Bitcoin’s price is barely 50% higher than it was last year.
That has confounded experts, who previously told Decrypt that the halving—along with the historic approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs last January—would lead to a phenomenal run for the leading cryptocurrency. While it has indeed surged and put up substantial dollar gains, the scale of the spike has underwhelmed industry observers.
Retail investors aren’t the only ones who are disappointed. The extraordinarily tough mining industry is also suffering, with a lower BTC price meaning that businesses are being forced to sell off coins more so than before to cover operational costs.
Curtis Harris, Compass Mining’s senior director of growth, noted that increased mining difficulty—fierce competition for smaller rewards—is making it harder for businesses to survive in the industry.
“Unlike previous cycles, the April 2024 halving hasn’t delivered the explosive price growth many miners expected,” he told Decrypt, adding also that “the bigger economic picture” was also making it tough for the space.
Trump’s election win in November and his subsequent inauguration led to a new all-time high price for Bitcoin. But the asset has since plunged and only partially recovered amid investor angst about his erratic policies on trade tariffs and the economy.
“These raise the cost of borrowing, make miners more cautious, and slow down investment in new mining operations,” he added.
But Compass Mining Chief Mining Officer Shanon Squires told Decrypt that miners could have foreseen that the rally would be less lively than past post-halving ones.
“Most have a stable profit if they are optimizing operating expenses and running a good business,” Squires said. “Anyone who built their mining farm expecting $1 million Bitcoin today wasn’t paying attention.”
Edited by Andrew Hayward
