2024 Bitcoin Halving Predictions and Implications

The Halving is one of the many attributes that makes Bitcoin truly unique in the realm of financial assets. No other major commodity has a completely calculable production schedule with a foreknown supply shock event that cuts the commodity’s production in half.

The 2020 Halving left an indelible mark on the Bitcoin mining sector, and the 2024 Halving will no doubt similarly effect significant changes. To address the potential impacts of the event, we’ve drafted this report to examine how the Halving will impact core Bitcoin mining metrics like hashrate, difficulty, and hashprice, as well as aspects of the Bitcoin mining business like ASIC prices, hosting rates, and other considerations. You can download the report below.

Based on our analysis, we provide the following takeaways:

• The Fourth Bitcoin Halving will occur on April 19, 2024 at approximately 13:30 UTC.
• If Bitcoin’s current price holds or increases moderately, we estimate ~3-7% of Bitcoin’s hashrate may come offline after the halving, and we will see these approximate percentage decreases reflected in subsequent difficulty adjustments.
• If Bitcoin’s price drops from its current level to ~$48,000, then we estimate ~16% of Bitcoin’s hashrate could come offline. We anticipate that Bitcoin’s year-end hashrate will range between 639-674 EH/s

As we indicate in this report, we believe that the next Halving could be an anomaly compared to its predecessors. The current bitcoin bull market and transaction fee activity from inscriptions and ordinals have furnished the opportunity for many miners to stay viable after the block subsidy drops to 3.125 BTC. If Bitcoin’s price holds or increases from here, a modest amount of hashrate may come offline. And if the current trend continues, we expect that hashrate will see slow growth over the next year, as compressed margins – made worse by a slow but steady increase to difficulty – will limit how much hashrate can come online and stay profitable.

Finally, even though the Halving likely won’t disrupt miners to the extent previously imagined, margins will still be very lean after the event. As such, it would behoove miners to improve operational efficiencies in any way they can, either by implementing firmware or upgrading to new ASIC models, as well as hedge their revenues, power price risk, and Bitcoin volatility.

We hope you enjoy the read, and as always, please share and feel free to give us your feedback!

Happy Hashing!