* What happens when 21 Million Bitcoins have been
mined?
Bitcoin halving is often referred as “Halvening”, it’s a formulated
reduction in the reward coins offered to the miners using a predefined
blockchain algorithm.
Bitcoin halvings take place once in every four – 4 years approximately, or for every 210,000 block transactions.
The process of halvening started in the year 2012, approximately
after 4 years of invention of bitcoin i.e 2008, but practically bitcoins
came into play in the year 2009. After the first bitcoin halving, the block reward of 50
bitcoins per transaction were reduced to 25 bitcoins per block or
transaction, later this reward was further reduced to 12.5 and it has
now fallen to 6.25 after halvening in 2020.
The main idea of halvening is to create scarcity for the coins
and to control inflation, as bitcoins issuance is limited to 21 million
coins as per the idea of Satoshi Nakamoto, inventor of Bitcoin. The production of 21 million bitcoins involves 32 halvenings,
we are now done with two halvenings and this might continue till or come
to an end in the year 2140. To know the overview of Bitcoin Halving (Just in minutes), checkout the following infographic developed by Abishai James at WinBTC.net.
As Bitcoin's price continues to range sideways, the momentum may be shifting to XRP for the next big move.
Bitcoin's (BTC)sideward price action
of late has been a hunting ground where whales can easily liquidate
misinformed traders on leverage trading platforms. Without decent
swings, any asset can become boring.
But let’s not
forget BTC isn’t the only cryptocurrency out there, as several altcoins
are currently staging somewhat of a comeback. However, there’s one coin
that doesn’t seem to be having a good time lately, namely XRP, the fourth-largest digital asset by market capitalization.
So, in today's analysis, I’m going to look at whether holding XRP is likely to be more fruitful than BTC in the short term.
The bigger picture for Bitcoin
Starting out with the weekly chart, one can see why the bears favor this timeframe. Bitcoin is forming a massive pennant that is far clearer now than it was before the March 12 black swan event.
Typically, pennants break toward the end of the pattern,
sometimes a little before. However, they are invalidated after. As
things stand for Bitcoin, a breakout or breakdown could occur any time
between now and approximately September 2021, 14 months from now.
With
the current price around $9,156, a small 6% increase would put Bitcoin
on the resistance line, and this is why we have failed to reclaim
$10,000. But at this rate, reclaiming just $9,750 would be a welcome
breakthrough for the bulls.
On the flip side, there is a
massive 47.42% gap from the current price to the support of the
pattern. This puts a figure of $4,500 as a potential target, which may
be a great opportunity to stack some sats. But is this just wishful
thinking from overly aggressive bears that shout “burn this Ponzi to the
ground?”
Bitcoin saw a quick, short-lived run past $10,000 after the head of the U.S. Federal Reserve said Wednesday that interest rates will remain near 0% until the end of 2022 and its bond buying program would continue.
Bitcoin (BTC) was trading around $9,894 as of 20:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET), gaining 1.6% over the previous 24 hours.
At
00:00 UTC on Wednesday (8:00 p.m. Monday ET), bitcoin was changing
hands around $9,783 on exchanges like Coinbase. Its price dipped to as
low as $9,709 at 09:00 UTC (5 a.m. ET) before buying volume picked up,
pushing the price above its 50-day and 10-day moving averages, a bullish
technical indicator.
Speaking
after the Federal Open Market Committee’s two-day June meeting, Chairman
Jerome Powell said the central bank will likely keep interest rates
near 0% until 2022. That sent bitcoin briefly to $10,000 before it
dropped back.
“There
is great uncertainty about the future,” Powell said. “At the Federal
Reserve, we are strongly committed to use our tools to do whatever we
can for as long as it takes to provide some relief and stability to
ensure that the recovery will be as strong as possible.”
Cryptocurrency
stakeholders see the Fed’s announcement of no changes as reason to buy
bitcoin. “Liquidity can’t paper over insolvency,” said Scott Bambacigno,
a vice prescient at crypto exchange software provider AlphaPoint, “When
you are deep in debt, more debt isn’t going to help. The Fed can ‘print
money’ but they cannot ‘print jobs’. Assets like gold and bitcoin
should do well if the economy continues in this direction.”
While
the price did briefly pop, bitcoin’s brief run to $10,000 quickly lost
steam. ”A lot of analysts may be looking for the Fed decision to move
BTC, but It’s important to bear in mind that over a long time horizon
bitcoin remains uncorrelated to traditional markets,” said Aaron
Suduiko, a research analyst for crypto liquidity provider SFOX.
Indeed, the upward trajectories of bitcoin seem totally unhinged from stock indexes like the S&P 500.
