The Bitcoin price was hovering about US$64,000 on Friday morning, New Zealand time. (file image) Photo: 123RF
The much-awaited Bitcoin halving occurred last weekend, but it had little impact on the price of the world's biggest cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin halving was defined as when the reward for mining Bitcoin transactions was cut in half.
Miners were those who used computing power to solve complex mathematical equations to build what was known as blockchains. For their efforts, they previously received 6.25 Bitcoins, which has now been halved to just over 3 Bitcoins.
The halving was built into the Bitcoin code, happening every 210,000 blocks.
Since the halving last weekend, the price of Bitcoin has remained stable throughout the week, with the price hovering about US$64,000 on Friday morning, New Zealand time.
Crypto exchange Binance local general manager Ben Rose said the stability of Bitcoin after the halving was in line with expectations.
"The short-term behaviour of of Bitcoin has been stable. In the previous three, we saw an average increase in price of about 16 percent over the next couple of months, but I think the really interesting thing to look at is the long-term impacts," Rose said.
"So there have been four halvings so far and if I give you the price increase for the 12 months after the halving, the first one was 8000 percent. The second one was 284 percent and the third one was 559 percent."
Buyers would be looking to see what would happen over the next six to 12 months, Rose said.
The "interesting" part of the most recent halving was the price of Bitcoin hitting a record high against the US dollar last month, because it was the first it had happened just prior to a halving, he said.
"A lot of people are putting that down to the introduction of spot exchange traded funds in the US, which has seen quite a lot of money come from institutions that previously weren't investing into the asset class."
