Prices dropped by 0.47% to $63,747 immediately after the halving, then gained over the weekend to nearly $65,000 on Sunday

Bitcoin on Friday completed its fourth-ever “halving” with prices for the world’s biggest crypto currency remaining relatively steady through the weekend in the aftermath of the event.

Bitcoin prices, which recently reached an all-time high of $73,803 in mid-March, were at around $64,036 prior to the halving that took place after 12:00 am GMT on Friday. Prices dropped by 0.47% to $63,747 immediately after the halving, then gained over the weekend to nearly $65,000 on Sunday.

The halving changes the rate at which new bitcoins are created and was included in bitcoin’s code at its inception by the crypto currency’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, who capped the overall supply of bitcoin at 21 million tokens.

When the halving happens, the rewards received by crypto currency miners for creating new tokens are cut in half, which makes it more expensive for them to put new bitcoins into circulation.

Halvings takes place about every four years, with earlier halvings occurring in 2012, 2016 and 2020. Some crypto fans point to price rallies that followed the halvings as a sign that its price will rise following the latest halving – though analysts are sceptical.

We do not expect bitcoin price rises post halving as it has already been priced in, JP Morgan analysts wrote this week. They said they anticipate bitcoin’s price dropping after the halving because it has been “overbought” and VC investment in the crypto industry has been “subdued” this year.

Bitcoin’s rise to an all-time high last month came after the crypto currency spent much of 2023 recovering from a dramatic slump in 2022, when crypto markets were roiled by the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto currency exchange. Bitcoin hit a then-record high of $67,802 in November 2021 before slipping to below $17,000 for much of November and December in 2022.