The Bitcoin network on Friday night slashed the incentives rewarded to miners in half for the fourth time in its history.

The celebrated event, which takes place about once every four years as mandated in the Bitcoin code, is designed to slow the issuance of bitcoins, thereby creating a scarcity effect and allowing the cryptocurrency to maintain its digital gold-like quality.

There may be some speculative trading on the event itself. JPMorgan said it expects to see some downside in bitcoin post-halving and Deutsche Bank said it “does not expect prices to increase significantly.” However, the impact may be bigger months from now, even if bitcoin continues its trend of diminishing returns from its halving day to its cycle top. Two key things to watch will be the block reward and the hash rate.

“While the upcoming Bitcoin halving will create a supply shock as the previous ones had, we believe its impact on the cryptocurrency’s price could be magnified by the concurrent demand shock created by the emergence of spot bitcoin ETFs,” said Benchmark’s Mark Palmer.

The bigger immediate impact will be to the miners themselves, he added. They’re the ones that run the machines that do the work of recording new blocks of bitcoin transactions and adding them to the global ledger, also known as the blockchain.

“Miners with access to inexpensive, reliable power sources are well positioned to navigate the post-halving market dynamics,” said Maxim’s Matthew Galinko in a note Friday. “Some miners, many that are not public, could exit the market with a combination of poor access to power, efficient machines, and capital. Miners with capital and relatively expensive power will likely find opportunities in the wake of potential consolidation and disruption driven by the halving.”

The block reward

Miners have two incentives to mine: transaction fees that are paid voluntarily by senders (for faster settlement) and mining rewards — 3.125 newly created bitcoins, or about $200,000 as of Friday evening, when the mining reward shrunk from 6.25 bitcoins. The incentive was initially 50 bitcoins.

The reduction in the block rewards leads to a reduction in the supply of bitcoin by slowing the pace at which new coins are created, helping maintain the idea of bitcoin as digital gold — whose finite supply helps determine its value. Eventually, the number of bitcoins in circulation will cap at 21 million, per the Bitcoin code. There are about 19.6 million in circulation today.

“Miners utilize powerful, specialized computer hardware to validate transactions on the Bitcoin network and record them permanently on the blockchain,” Deutsche Bank analyst Marion Laboure said. “This process, known as mining, rewards miners with newly minted bitcoins. But with each halving, the reward to mining is decreased to maintain scarcity and control the cryptocurrency’s inflation rate over time.”

The Bitcoin network on Friday evening completed its fourth “halving,” reducing the rewards earned by miners to 3.125 bitcoins from 6.25.

The price of bitcoin has been volatile ahead of the event, and fell about 4% this week to trade around $64,100, according to Coin Metrics.

Mechanically, the halving itself shouldn’t affect the price of bitcoin in the short term, but many investors are expecting big gains in the months ahead, based on the cryptocurrency’s performance after previous halvings. After the 2012, 2016 and 2020 halvings, the bitcoin price ran up about 93x, 30x and 8x, respectively, from its halving day price to its cycle top.

The event is a big test for mining companies, however.

“All else equal, the halving will cut industry revenues in half, triggering a wave of consolidation and business closures, while (hopefully) rationalizing the network hashrate and industry capex, which is ultimately good for the remaining operators,” JPMorgan analyst Reginald Smith said in a recent note to investors.

Hash rates are a measure of the computational power used to process transactions on the bitcoin network. The larger a miner’s hash rate, the greater of a revenue opportunity it has.

Mining stocks have been volatile in the days leading up to the event. Many are down by double digits for the year, after rallying between about 300% and 600% in 2023. Riot Platforms, for instance, is down about 41% in 2024 through Friday’s close, but it surged 356% in 2023.

“The market so far has seen bitcoin mining stocks as mere BTC proxies, in absence of bitcoin ETFs,” said Bernstein analyst Gautam Chhugani. “[The] halving would further differentiate the low cost, high-scale consolidating winners vs. rest of smaller miners which may be disadvantaged post-halving.”

Still, speculators may still trade on the event. Another JPMorgan analyst, Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, said Thursday that he expects the near-term bitcoin price to fall after the halving, citing overbought conditions and prices that are still above the cryptocurrency’s comparison to gold when adjusted for volatility. He also pointed to subdued venture capital funding of crypto projects.

Analysts at Deutsche Bank have a similar view.

“[The] Bitcoin halving is already partially priced in by the market and we do not expect prices to increase significantly following the halving event,” the firm’s Marion Laboure said in a note Thursday, adding that it “has been widely anticipated in advance due to the nature of the Bitcoin algorithm.”

“Looking ahead, we continue to expect prices to stay high,” she added, citing expectations of future spot Ethereum ETF approvals, future central bank rate cuts and regulatory developments.

Bitcoin is currently trading at just under $64,000, roughly 13% off its March 14 all-time high of $73,797.68.