Taking a contrarian view, Morgan Creek Digital co-founder and prominent personality in the crypto space Jason Williams has described the upcoming Bitcoin halving event as a non-event. He made this known in a tweet early this week.
Unpopular Opinion –
Bitcoin halving in May 2020 won’t do anything to the price. It will be a non-event.
— Jason A. Williams 🦍 (@JWilliamsFstmed) December 1, 2019
While halving refers to the reduction by half of the Bitcoin rewards that are given to miners every four years, previous halving events have indicated a decreased measure of influence on Bitcoin prices which indicates a maturing of the cryptocurrency markets. Also, the miners prepare in advance of each halving event so there is very little data as to the effect on the halving on Bitcoin prices over the past few halving events.
According to sources, Jason indicates this when he said in an interview:
“For the community that are living this day to day they know the event is there. They even know the date (within a few days). Large miners that are holding BTC will have to sell to cover operational expenses or use cash as revenue halves.”
“New buyers have to come in to move this market up. So other than a new headline, the halving is being dealt with now by those who are operationally affected by it. Those that don’t will be priced out of the mining business,” added he.
This, of course, indicates a view from only one side of the crypto space as many “true believers” still think that the fixed supply of Bitcoins in circulation is enough to guarantee that prices are going to go up in when the event occurs due to Bitcoin scarcity.
While this may be true on one level, a historical check of exponential increases in Bitcoin prices proves that other factors at play also contribute towards a price increase or decrease as the case may be in this regard.
In both halving events that occurred in November 2012 and July 2016, it is noteworthy to mention that prices didn’t gain significant ground for extended periods for up to a year in each of these cases which led to rallies. This, of course, has been seen by some that Bitcoin is a lagging market where the early birds with this kind of foresight and investment panache can strike gold as prices increase exponentially.
They may not be far from the truth but however, this may not also be the case next year as new research suggests that many new entrants into the Bitcoin markets have no idea about Bitcoin halving and so the net effect that will occur on the ground might just match Jason’s scenario closely enough for many to consider him to be the “crypto-Nostradamus” (pun intended).
Investment behemoth Grayscale indicated this when it said in a report:
“The halving is close enough that it’s time to start talking about it more seriously, but far enough out in the future that it’s unclear whether it’s priced into the market efficiently. Based on anecdotal conversations with market participants, we were surprised to learn that many of them were not even aware of this event,”
This, of course, indicates that next though next years’ halving event is unclear, the net effect of scarcity of Bitcoins in circulation will still improve prices dramatically sooner if not later than planned by many.
Christopher Haruna Hamman is a Freelance content developer, Crypto-Enthusiast and tech-savvy individual. He is also a Superstar Content Developer, Strategy Demigod, and Standup Guy.
