What Is the Bitcoin Cash Halving and Will It Help Boost the BCH Price? | CoinCodex

What Is the Bitcoin Cash Halving and Will It Help Boost the BCH Price?

Key highlights:

• With each Bitcoin Cash halving, the rewards received by BCH miners are cut in half
• The 2020 Bitcoin Cash halving was the cryptocurrency’s first halving since it forked from Bitcoin in 2017
• While halvings are generally seen as positive events, they can negatively impact hashrate

Just like , , and other Bitcoin-based cryptocurrencies, the protocol also has a halving mechanism. After 210,000 blocks are added to the Bitcoin Cash blockchain, the BCH reward received by miners is cut in half. The first Bitcoin Cash halving happened on April 8, 2020, when block 630,000 was mined. The next Bitcoin Cash halving will happen at block 840,000 which will most likely be mined sometime in 2024. 

The first Bitcoin Cash halving occurred roughly a month before the third Bitcoin halving (May 11, 2020).

Basic Bitcoin Cash information: 

• Launched in 2017 through a hard fork of the Bitcoin blockchain
• Proof-of-work cryptocurrency
• Features a larger block size compared to Bitcoin
• The Bitcoin Cash project is trying to improve scalability on-chain instead of relying on layer 2 solutions

Buy/Sell Bitcoin Cash (BCH)

Bitcoin Cash halving explained

If you have been reading about Bitcoin Cash recently, you have probably seen crypto community members talking about the Bitcoin Cash “halving” and speculating about the impact it might have on the cryptocurrency. In this article, we will be giving you a brief explanation of the Bitcoin Cash halving. 

Bitcoin Cash is a cryptocurrency with a predictable supply schedule – we can estimate how much BCH will be created in a given hour, day, month or year with a lot of accuracy. There can only be 21 million BCH ever created, but the rate at which new BCH are mined slows down by half each time 210,000 blocks are added to the Bitcoin Cash blockchain. This process takes about 4 years. 

The 2020 Bitcoin Cash halving was the first halving for BCH as an independent cryptocurrency. Bitcoin Cash was created in 2017 after a hard fork of the Bitcoin blockchain and BCH shares a lot of its properties with BTC. Currently, Bitcoin Cash miners get 6.25 BCH for each block that’s added to the Bitcoin Cash blockchain (the same as with Bitcoin). After the halving, this reward will be reduced to 3.125 BCH.

The halving’s effects on Bitcoin Cash price

Cryptocurrency investors usually pay close attention to block reward halvings, as they increase a cryptocurrency’s scarcity. Generally, halvings are seen as positive events as far as prices are concerned. However, the cryptocurrency market is still relatively young and there isn’t a lot of history to help us make an educated guess – this is particularly true with Bitcoin Cash, as the 2020 halving was its first halving ever. 

A drop in Bitcoin Cash hashrate?

If the price of Bitcoin Cash doesn’t grow sufficiently, we could see some BCH miners shutting off their machines as they will no longer be profitable due to the rewards being 50% smaller. This could result in reduced hashrate and therefore reduced security and censorship resistance of the Bitcoin Cash blockchain. For example, Litecoin’s hashrate dropped considerably after the Litecoin halving in August of 2019.  

According to Bitinfocharts, the Bitcoin Cash halving had a noticeable impact on the Bitcoin Cash hashrate. After peaking at around 5 exahashes per second in February, the Bitcoin Cash hashrate declined steadily as the halving approached. Then, when the halving was activated, the hashrate fell off a cliff, dropping from 3.6 exahashes per second to a low of 1.5 exahashes per second. 

Bitcoin Cash hashrate chart. Image source: Bitinfocharts

The Bitcoin Cash hashrate spiked right after the Bitcoin halving, but has since dropped again and is currently at around 2.4 exahashes per second.

What happened to the Bitcoin Cash price after its first halving?

The price of Bitcoin Cash dropped quite considerably immediately following the coin’s first halving. This was likely due to traders employing a “buy the rumor, sell the news” strategy. About 6 weeks later, the price of Bitcoin Cash is 14% percent lower than it was at the halving.

Meanwhile, the total cryptocurrency market cap has seen a 19.5% increase in the same timeframe. 

Bitcoin Cash halving – conclusion

Bitcoin Cash halvings are one of the more important fundamental events for BCH, and it will be very interesting to follow how the Bitcoin Cash market develops as the effects of the reduced BCH issuance become more pronounced. It will also be interesting to see how Bitcoin Cash performs post-halving compared to other cryptocurrencies that also had a block reward recently, for example Bitcoin and Bitcoin SV.