2024.16 - Half

IMHO
In the early hours of 4/20/2024 (UTC time), Bitcoin celebrated its 4th Halving, officially entering its 5th Epoch.
https://t.co/7TFaZC4UXn just did the sickest animation for the halving.
— HODL (@americanhodl8) April 20, 2024
WELCOME TO EPOCH V pic.twitter.com/9Kb2oPA7Vp
It's always interesting to compare the state of the network between halvings. The obvious comparison may be price —BTC was trading around $8.7k on the previous halving May 20, 2020— but there's also tons of other interesting metrics to compare like hashpower, transaction volume, daily throughput value, etc.
Here's a snapshot of the state of Bitcoin at the moment of this halving:
The moment of the Fourth Halving on the Dashboard#bitcoin pic.twitter.com/Deb8dXSE2h
— Clark Moody (@clarkmoody) April 20, 2024
What IS a halving?
I've read so many ludicrous bad takes on this, it's worth taking a moment to explain:
- New bitcoins are produced at a pre-determined rate each time a new block is minted. The miner who mints the block receives these new bitcoins (usually known as the block reward or subsidy) plus all the fees associated with the transactions in the new block.
- The amount of new bitcoins created with each block is adjusted every 210,000 blocks (which comes out to roughly 4 years), we call this event a halving.
- It's called a "halving" because the amount of new bitcoins issued with new blocks is cut in half.
- In the beginning the Bitcoin protocol rewarded miners with 50 Bitcoin each block. In 2012 that was cut to 25. In 2016 to 12.5. In 2020 to 6.25 and now we have entered into the 3.125 per block era.
"So the miners are now rewarded with LESS Bitcoin for their efforts?"
YES
"And you celebrate this?"
YES
"WHY?"
Two main reasons:
- The first is celebrating the proper functioning of BTC's mechanical, virtually immutable monetary policy. This monetary policy is one of the cornerstones of BTC's value. If it were easy to change BTC would be another shitcoin.
- The second is that historically, the halving has triggered BTC's NGU ("Number Go Up") engines. IF history rhymes (a big if) BTC should close the year between $100-$200k.
Price range for Bitcoin in the 4th halving cycle:
— ecoinometrics (@ecoinometrics) April 20, 2024
upper bound ~ $4,500,000
lower bound ~ $140,000
That is *if* Bitcoin ends up following a growth trajectory in the range of the previous cycles. pic.twitter.com/s93yldJEI0
The natural way to think about why halvings have pushed price up in the past goes something like this:
"During the past epoch, miners earned roughly 900 BTC per day in aggregate (which would come to $29M if we use a $32.2k average price). They need to sell some of that BTC to pay for their fiat costs (mostly energy).
After the halving, their fiat costs don't change, so they'll naturally need to sell at a a higher BTC price in order to offset their overhead costs, ie they'll HODL harder."
But isn't it "priced in"?
This has been the question with halvings for a few cycles now. There are largely There are three main camps of thought here.
The First Camp:
- The Efficient Market —"everyone knows about it so, of course it's priced in"— camp. Which assumes future demand is predictable and participants
are not retardedunderstand what a halving is.
To them, I submit the following tweet from a dude with over 100k followers who claims to have made a fortune in memecoins:
BITCOIN HALVING
— Hassan | NEW MONEY (@MrOverpaid) April 20, 2024
Remember to HODL ur bags because there will be 10.5M bitcoins after today
They halving the number of bitcoins
So price will surely go up
Don’t be a paper handed nerd pic.twitter.com/KJsm9Y9Wtp
The Second Camp (I'm here):
- The "it's impossible to price in an overnight doubling of marginal production cost" camp. Which is another way of saying "the halving may be proced in, but the effects of the halving can't be priced in"
The Third Camp:
- The "daily sell-pressure from miners is small compared to BTC's total trading volume, making the halving irrelevant" camp.
Considering the brutal amount of energy (which can be inferred by the mining difficulty level) being expended by miners , I think saying an event which essentially halves the productivity of their fiat overhead is "irrelevant" is flat out wrong. Let's revisit in December
The Larger Point
Setting NGU discussions aside, the importance of a credible monetary policy cannot be understated. The lack of one has been the downfall of many an empire.
Tytler writes:
— ThinkingWest (@thinkingwest) April 19, 2024
“the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship” pic.twitter.com/ATznWlqk1R
Any similarities to the present are sheer conincidence
At a personal level, the debasement of money is nothing less than the theft of our life's work. More often than not, our savings are trapped in the jurisdiction we are born and subject to the monetary (mis)management of the government in turn.
🇦🇷 An Argentinian man found his grandmother's savings 18 years after her death. See image.
— Oliver L. Velez ⚡️ 13%'er Bitcoiner (@olvelez007) April 20, 2024
The bills you see aren't even in circulation today. In 2006 2 pesos were worth $0.64. Now, they are worth $0.0023, a minor fraction of a single penny.
After a lifetime of so much effort,… pic.twitter.com/7S72WhuR6X
People try to get around these monetary traps in creative ways, but often fail.
A lot of people wonder how wealthy Chinese get their money out of the country. Here’s an example: last week customs officials in Hong Kong seized these two “water pumps”. If you look closely at the second photo you’ll see gold. $11,000,000 worth of gold disguised as water pumps. pic.twitter.com/v5rEyboo10
— Cornelius X. Carroll (@CXCarroll) April 20, 2024
I'm with Hunter Horsley on this one. Don't overthink it. The halving is very bullish. Just have a little patience
I think people are dramatically underestimating the halving.
— Hunter Horsley (@HHorsley) April 19, 2024
The market has never priced it in before, and won't have priced it in this time.
For the prior 3 halvings, after investors spent months discussing if it was priced in, here's what happened in the 12-months after…

Bitcoin News
Hot Sauce
The ETFs are doing just fine, thank you very much. Grayscale continues to see outflows and the rest continue to see net inflows.
Some disclosures have started to flow in, giving us a fitst look into who's buying these ETFs. So far we're seeing a lot of the "Hot Sauce" approach, firms adding a dash (often less than 1%) to their portfolios.
Some perspective on the "it's so over" ETF flows lately:
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) April 18, 2024
1. Totally normal for ETF category to cool off after breathtaking pace like this, esp w/ price down 12% in past 5 days (more on that in a minute)
2. It's microscopic. Over past five days the ten's net flows are -$223m,… https://t.co/Yd56QxYWMs
Mental Seal
If you've been following for a while you may get a sense that Dave is here to teach the world a big lesson on Bitcoin. He could have easily added a few million a few years ago, instead he's made every wrong call in the book. All because he's not willing to put in the work and actually understand BTC
DAVE PORTNOY: I wouldn’t buy #Bitcoin at these levels. I’m don’t think I can stomach getting back in until it’s in the 40’s again 👀 pic.twitter.com/kCjkwJWWzR
— Bitcoin News (@BitcoinNewsCom) April 20, 2024
I'm not saying its easy, the number of subjects you could use as a prism to understand Bitcoin can be daunting
Computer science
— Alex Gladstein 🌋 ⚡ (@gladstein) April 20, 2024
Distributed systems
Cryptography
Economics
Mechanical engineering
Monetary history
Geopolitics
Political economy
Human rights
Civil engineering
Graphic design
Philosophy
Mathematics
Materials engineering
Geology
Nuclear engineering
And on and on… https://t.co/d7tnkbirqN
But you don't need 5 PhDs, you simply need to apply yourself.
Building
There used to be a lot of noise around VCs and "crypto" mostly wild, short-term speculation looking for a quick payout. BTC VCs are different. They have to be. Longer time-frames, stronger fundamentals. Lynne is the perfect guide to dive into what's happening in that space.
In honor of this new epoch… we’re launching @BuildwBitcoin !! So excited about sharing stories of the innovators Building with Bitcoin and the investors supporting them!! 🧡💥🎉 https://t.co/MRrdPWF2BT
— Lynne B (@lynnerae) April 20, 2024
WTIMF?
The IMF published a rather surprising (non-disparaging) working paper around Bitcoin and cross-border flows.
1. Bitcoin is increasingly used as a hedge against risk
2. Bitcoin is used as freedom money in autocratic regimes|
3. Bitcoin’s biggest use case is the global south to protect against currency debasement and financial instability
— Daniel Batten
The IMF just published a paper on Bitcoin cross-border flows, and here are three major takeaways.👇
— Sam Callahan (@samcallah) April 18, 2024
1.) The study provides evidence that increased Bitcoin activity occurs as investors move away from risk assets and supports the findings of other studies that Bitcoin can be used… pic.twitter.com/biBI0mW9dy
Curioser
Last week we mentioned a single custodian controls the addresses that hold the rewards for 9 different pools. It turns out many pools are trying to mine the exact same blocks too —as opposed to each running their own block templates.
This is worrysome. Whether its the result of laziness or of centralization is irrelevant. Ocean Mining pool is the only pool offering hashers a choice of different templates (as well as payments directly from the coinbase). I hope more pools follow their lead, or more hashers switch to Ocean.
Looking at the merkle branches that mining pools send to miners as part of stratum jobs, it's clear that the BTCcom pool, Binance pool, Poolin, EMCD, Rawpool, and possibly Braiins* have exactly the same template and custom transaction prioritization as AntPool. https://t.co/KTjFWtTXEP pic.twitter.com/xhCrdvkOH8
— 0xB10C (@0xB10C) April 17, 2024

Krypto News
"Crypto" can be lethal to your portfolio
RUiNED
Runes, a new "shitcoin-on-top-of-Bitcoin" launched with the halving block.
I won't go into the details of runes because it's a scam and you should stay away from it. But the one good thing about it is that in the mania of the launch they sent fees into the stratosphere (it'll pass).
#Bitcoin fees are so crazy because of a new token protocol that went live on block 840,000 that uses Op_Return called Runes.
— Dylan LeClair 🟠 (@DylanLeClair_) April 20, 2024
It is pure degenerate speculation- there is nothing being promised nor any utility other speculation.
Miners will churn through it eventually. pic.twitter.com/Fw3plYN5Ee
How "crazy" did fees get? Absolutely insane.
Someone just paid $500,000 fees for their $0.70 amount transfer to be included in the #Bitcoin halving block 🤯 pic.twitter.com/npwS91Olbq
— Vivek⚡️ (@Vivek4real_) April 20, 2024
There had never been a time where fees surpassed the block reward by such a wide margin. This won't last, but godspeed to the miners.
Halving was actually the doubling … of txn fees https://t.co/tM0oxXpO8g
— Hunter Horsley (@HHorsley) April 20, 2024
Oh, hilariously, a lot of those expensive fees were for naught. It's like an auction where if you don't win you still lose the money.
Good morning! https://t.co/xcqp8UvlH0 pic.twitter.com/TKt62XnXR8
— FRANCIS - BULLBITCOIN.COM (@francispouliot_) April 20, 2024
High fees create some real and obvious inconveniences, things are already starting to calm down, I hope we'll be back to normal soon.
82% of wallets that hold bitcoin cannot move right now due to high fees. https://t.co/wWo9FY2QPb pic.twitter.com/0vKgf9G7RG
— Hector Lopez (@hlopez_) April 20, 2024

Fiat News
Rubicon. Crossed.
The decision to freeze the assets of Russia's Central Bank was already a significant blow to the USD as an international reserve asset. Now they have decided to seize those assets and use them to fund Ukraine.
This is a blatant weaponization of the USD will make all nations think think long and hard about where to store its reserves going forward.
The USD is a new beast from this day forward.
BREAKING: 🇺🇸 US passes law granting the president the authority to confiscate $6 billion in 🇷🇺 Russian government assets currently frozen in the United States and transfer them to 🇺🇦 Ukraine 😮 pic.twitter.com/mvV0zWSCB1
— Bitcoin News (@BitcoinNewsCom) April 20, 2024
Stranger Things
I don't have the exact quote but a famous investor said something like:
"When long-standing correlations cease to exist, it mean the rules have changed somewhere" —Famous Investor ;-)
Markets this month:
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) April 20, 2024
1. Tech stocks are falling like the AI bubble has popped
2. All other stocks are rising like we are in a bull market
3. Gold prices are rising like we are entering World War 3
4. Bond prices are falling like everything is completely fine
5. Oil prices are…
US Treasury Bills now yield 4 TIMES more than the S&P 500's dividend, the most since the Dot-com bubble.
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) April 20, 2024
Over the last 100 years, a multiple this high has only been seen ONE time.
By comparison, even in the 2008 Financial Crisis this metric peaked at ~3x.
With interest rate… pic.twitter.com/GQQvaKh54Z
BREAKING: The Magnificent 7 stocks have erased $400 BILLION of market cap today alone.
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) April 19, 2024
Nvidia, $NVDA, accounts for HALF of today's losses with a $200 billion downswing in market cap.
The S&P 500 is just 4% away from entering correction territory.
What's happening with big… pic.twitter.com/lvfFRTb5ze
My candidate for the biggest driver of all this strangeness is something even the IMF is saying out loud now: US GDP is being driven by unsustainable levels of debt.
LL: When even the IMF sees it.....
— Lawrence Lepard, "fix the money, fix the world" (@LawrenceLepard) April 20, 2024
April 16 – Bloomberg (Christopher Condon): “The International Monetary Fund leveled an unusually direct criticism at US policymakers…, saying the country’s recent standout performance among advanced economies was in part driven by an…
Mind the Gap
The disproportionate rise in "Household Net Worth" vs. "US Median Wage" simply means an acceleration of the rate at which asset owners are getting richer while wage earners are getting poorer.
This is critical... Since 1980 the share of total Income for the bottom 50% in US went from 20 to 10%
— Pietro Ventani (@PietroVentani) April 18, 2024
Understanding how economic inequality affects politics and geopolitics (eg via trade policy) is absolutely key to macro analysis & portfolio strategy pic.twitter.com/80lSkXKB7r
Das Angst
It's interesting to see Germany —the strongest economy in Europe— has citizens whose median wealth ($66.7k) is well below that of their EU bretheren.
Germany, a rich country with poor people visualized.
— Michael A. Arouet (@MichaelAArouet) April 20, 2024
Germans prefer to rent instead of buying property, prefer savings accounts with negative real interests over equities and spend more than others on insurances due to the famous German angst. That’s the result. pic.twitter.com/gHhknhkhd2

Dystopian News
Bigger Brother
The government can spy on you lawfully now. Yay.
"The provision effectively grants the NSA access to the communications equipment of almost any U.S. business, plus huge numbers of organizations and individuals."
“One of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history”
— Alex Gladstein 🌋 ⚡ (@gladstein) April 20, 2024
Just happened 🇺🇸 https://t.co/GJnNxAjZ7R
Plunder
How does the world's most indebted country find the largesse to fund wars on the other side of the world?
Congress just gave $60 billion to Ukraine and $26 billion to Israel,
— MDB (@MDBitcoin) April 20, 2024
Yes, you read that correctly,
Opt out!
Save in #Bitcoin,
You're American, and you've been told that you're not patriotic unless you support countries you've never visited around the world,
America should… pic.twitter.com/fLjND0hTXB
mAIverick
Drone fighter jets, whar could possibly go wrong?
🚨🇺🇸PENTAGON: FIRST-EVER AI VS. HUMAN AIR BATTLE
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) April 19, 2024
Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects has conducted a training air battle between an AI-operated X-62A robotic fighter jet and a human-piloted F-16.
During the initial simulations, the AI won.
Will future wars just be AI… pic.twitter.com/rOZQ5tu3qy

Price News
Bitcoin Surfing
Bitcoin has not been able to climb back on The Board ($67.8k) and I don't think it will this coming week (chart gods must be appeased with a red April candle), plus "slow summer" is coming.

Dip Fishing
I was too shy to suggest placing on order around $60k last week, I won't repeat the same mistake this week. If I were fishing for dips, I'd place orders around $62.5k and a hail mary close to $60k.

Calm Chart
The April red candle seems to be holding, I'll bet it will last through the month. Historically, this (immediately post-halving) has been a good moment to stack hard. Pluse bear in mind, summers are usually the doldrums for BTC, so we could have several "sideways months"

