Bitcoin’s fourth halving, a highly anticipated event occurring every four years in the cryptocurrency realm, has finally occurred.
This event, reducing the Bitcoin block reward from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC, marks a crucial moment in the industry. As a result, the daily issuance of Bitcoin has been slashed in half, now standing at around 450 Bitcoin compared to the previous approximately 900. This reduction will continue until around 2140, when the final BTC is mined.
Why Does Bitcoin Halving Matter?
The fourth halving, affecting Bitcoin at block height 840,000, holds significance due to its impact on BTC’s volatility, which tends to intensify after each such event. This is primarily because the available supply diminishes, subsequently driving up the value of yet-to-be-mined

With the Bitcoin (BTC) halving only hours away, analysts are at odds over whether the one-in-four-years event is already “priced in” to the crypto market.
According to Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan, the answer is yes – but it comes with some important nuance.
The Bitcoin Halving And Efficient Markets
In a Twitter thread posted on Friday, Hougan acknowledged that the halving is both “well-known” and predictable for all market participants.
Specifically, at block 840,000, the newly created BTC attached to each Bitcoin block will fall from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC, reducing its daily supply issuance by roughly 450 BTC per day.
Since this change has been programmed into the network’s code since its creation, the Efficient Markets Hypothesis (EMH) would suggest that Bitcoin’s current

Public interest in the ‘Bitcoin halving’ is gaining steam as Google searches for the term have now risen to their highest level in history.
According to Google Trends data, interest in the term began steadily ramping up at the start of 2024. Beginning with a score of 9 in January, interest in the “bitcoin halving’ keyphrase is now at 100, meaning it has never been higher.
The Bitcoin Halving Approaches
The last time the Bitcoin halving became a popular search term was at the last Bitcoin halving in May 2020, at which point search interest was roughly one-third as high as today’s. Now, four years later, the next halving dwells just around the corner, estimated for April 20 according to nicehash.com.
The Bitcoin halving is a mechanism within the Bitcoin network that’s

Two of America’s largest banks are urging crypto investors to remain cautious around the upcoming Bitcoin halving, which analysts believe may not play out much like prior cycles.
In a Wednesday report, JPMorgan predicted that Bitcoin’s price will not rise following the event, and is more likely to resume declines that began earlier this month.
Could The Halving Be Bearish For Bitcoin?
The bank’s outlook remains consistent with its relatively bearish forecasts throughout the year, refusing to be swayed by growing optimism around Bitcoin spot ETFs or the halving.
“We do not expect bitcoin price increases post-halving as it has already been priced in,” wrote analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou. “In fact, we see a downside for the bitcoin price post-halving for several

While crypto has long been highly affected by the broader financial market, the price of Ethereum (ETH) appears especially impacted by its movements.
According to recently published data from IntoTheBlock, the correlation between ETH and several traditional market indexes is now far higher than those between its larger rival, Bitcoin (BTC), and the same markets.
Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Stocks
The firm’s figures show a correlation coefficient of 0.7 between ETH and the DAX – a stock index tracking 40 over the largest and most liquid German companies traded on the Frankfurt exchange. The equivalent correlation for BTC is 0.63.
A larger discrepancy is found with both the S&P 500 and tech-focused Nasdaq 100. ETH’s correlations to both indexes are 0.77 and 0.7 respectively,

Bitcoin’s price crashed by over 5% below $60,000 on Wednesday amid a market selloff impacting the broader crypto and stock markets.
Bitcoin (BTC) began the day trading for roughly $63,700 per coin. Its price began sinking drastically starting at 1:40 PM UTC, and has plummeted to $59,950 as of 4:45 PM UTC. It trades for $60,475 at press time.
Meanwhile, the price of Ethereum (ETH) has slid back under $3000 to just $2950 at writing time. The S&P500 and Nasdaq 100 have declined 0.68% and 1.27%, respectively.
According to Coinglass, the selloff has triggered $216 million in liquidations across the crypto market in the past 24 hours. That includes over 67,000 affected traders, including one trader who lost $5.4 million on an ETH-USD swap.
Many suspect the market selloff has

Bitcoin’s price may be due for another correction despite a strong recovery from its weekend dump to $61,000, according to analysts at CryptoQuant.
In a community “quicktake” posted on Monday, Bitcoin and Ethereum trader GAAH noted that the prevailing bullish market sentiment may be getting too hot based on information from the perpetual futures market.
Is Bitcoin Still Overheated?
As the analyst noted, average 30-dy funding rates remain high for Bitcoin, even after its latest price dump. Their current level mirrors that during Bitcoin’s 2021 all-time high, which today serves as the digital currency’s “greatest resistance ever.”
“The price is in a defined channel with around 20% expansion/retraction, an ideal scenario for large players to set up large positions,” wrote

Despite venture capital activity declining across the board, funding for Bitcoin startups more than quadrupled in 2023, according to a new report.
Research from Trammell Venture Partners (TVP) shows that the number of Bitcoin-native pre-seed deals ballooned 360% last year, while the number of funded Bitcoin companies rose by 56.9%.
VC Funding Explodes On Bitcoin
As explained in TVP’s Friday report, a “Bitcoin native company” is a firm whose product’s success is mutually aligned with that of the Bitcoin network and which is founded on the principle that BTC is the “global monetary asset of the future.”
That includes early-stage startup companies but discounts late-stage firms, Bitcoin miners, and “crypto” oriented companies.
While the absolute number of Bitcoin venture

One week before the halving, the Bitcoin network is faced with another wave of hot demand, with some coming from a now familiar source: Ordinals traders.
As of Thursday, data from mempool.space shows that Bitcoin users are paying over 90 sats/vByte of block space, placing the average cost of a transaction at $8.50 apiece.
Ordinals Make Their Comeback
The surge in fees has corresponded with an uptick in daily Ordinals inscriptions, which tallied over 162,000 on Thursday compared to a monthly average of 90,280. Meanwhile, the “daily inscription fee spend” reached $1.24 million, its highest level in the past month.
The vast majority of network fees were contained to regular transactions, however. Some suspect that on-chain trading activity is ramping up in advance of the

U.S. regulators will likely reject Ethereum (ETH) spot ETFs – and crypto won’t put up much of a legal fight for it, according to Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas.
The analyst’s latest take is a discouraging sign for Ethereum bulls and stands in stark contrast to his former optimism about Bitcoin spot ETFs preceding their January approval.
Are Ethereum ETFs Worth Fighting For?
In a Wednesday tweet, Balchunas addressed a common theory that the crypto industry will sue the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) if it refuses to approve ETH spot ETFs by May, which is its final deadline to deliver a verdict for several applicants.
“I would question this as Ether futures only ETFs have 4% of the assets that bitcoin futures have,” Balchunas wrote. “That’s a lot of time and

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is cracking down on another corner of the crypto industry, this time targeting one of the biggest players in decentralized finance (DeFi).
On Wednesday, the regulator issued a Wells Notice against Uniswap Labs, the company behind the world’s largest decentralized exchange (DEX).
Uniswap To Be Sued By SEC
Uniswap Labs publicly confirmed the news in a press release on Wednesday, and assured followers that the team is “ready to fight.”
“This is the latest political effort to target even the best actors in crypto like Uniswap and Coinbase,” the team stated, referring to the SEC’s June 2023 lawsuit against the nation’s largest centralized crypto exchange.
“All Uniswap products and the Uniswap Protocol are unaffected,” they

Though Bitcoin (BTC) spot ETFs launched by BlackRock and others have been all the rage in crypto, there’s a slightly older Bitcoin fund that’s also seen exponential gains in the past few months.
The 2X Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITX) has quadrupled its Bitcoin exposure since January, now reigning as one of the largest Bitcoin futures ETFs in the United States.
Institutions Increase Bitcoin Leverage
According to Volatility Shares’ website, BITX held net assets worth $1.58 billion as of Tuesday. By comparison, the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) – the first Bitcoin futures ETF to ever launch in the U.S. – held $2.82 billion as of Tuesday, making BITX one of its only noteworthy rivals in the futures ETF market.
In a post to X on Wednesday, Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric

U.S. Bitcoin spot ETFs have absorbed $12.3 billion of net inflows since launching three months ago. Just how much have they impacted the broader Bitcoin market?
Lead Glassnode analyst James Check provided analysis on Wednesday measuring the effect of Bitcoin ETFs next to the asset’s existing futures and spot markets – using on-chain data.
Grayscale And Long Term Holders
The analyst began by examining the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) – the sole new Bitcoin ETF that’s suffered massive and consistent outflows since January 11.
The fund has lost roughly 300,000 BTC since that time, close to half of its total holdings. However, the rising value of the existing BTC on its balance sheet has meant its net asset value has only declined from $28.7 billion to $23.1 billion, leaving

Following in the footsteps of Michael Saylor, yet another publicly traded company has decided to make Bitcoin its savings vehicle of choice.
Metaplanet, an investment and consulting company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, announced on Monday that it has purchased 1 billion JPY ($6.5 million USD) worth of Bitcoin for its corporate treasury.
Metaplanet’s Bitcoin Strategy
Per a company tweet, Metaplanet has chosen to “embrace Bitcoin as the core treasury asset of the company.”
“This strategic pivot is not just about embracing digital assets but also about pioneering a future where finance meets innovation at its core,” the firm wrote.
According to its website, Metaplanet is focused on “building bridges” between Japan and the rest of the world in both “Web2” and “Web3”

DeFi market maker Swaap Finance has launched a new service called Swap Earn, allowing users to earn an extra yield on already yield-bearing assets.
The protocol tops up investor returns through market-making yield, spreading investors’ assets across multiple pre-defined protocols.
Yield On Top Of Yield
Market making is when DeFi users provide liquidity to decentralized exchanges, allowing fellow crypto buyers to easily find sellers, and vice versa. Market-making yield can come from one of two sources: trading/swap fees, or intrinsic token rewards.
Per a press release shared with CryptoPotato, Swaap Earn liquidity providers earn “superior yield” by depositing their assets into single asset vaults. Assets are then dynamically distributed across multiple protocols in search

The Purpose Bitcoin ETF (BTCC) – the world’s first Bitcoin exchange-traded fund – has struggled to compete with its U.S. counterparts since its January debut.
The Canadian fund has lost 20% of its Bitcoin (BTC) under management over the past three months, despite rising demand and record-high prices for the asset during that time.
Purpose Is Losing Bitcoin
According to Purpose Investments’ website, the company held 27,871 BTC, worth $2.56 billion CAD ($1.89 billion USD) as of April 4.
In BTC terms, the amount is fairly average by historical standards. Since launching in February 2021, the firm’s holdings have mostly oscillated between 20,000 and 40,000 BTC, remaining relatively stagnant throughout 2023 at around 23,000.
That began to change halfway through the year after

Binance will soon close its Bitcoin NFT marketplace after opening its trading venue to the network’s collectibles less than one year ago.
In a blog post on Thursday, the crypto exchange said it will “cease support for trades and deposits of Bitcoin NFTs” starting April 18 at 6:00 UTC.
Binance Exits From Ordinals
The exchange noted that its support for “any further airdrops, benefits, or utilities” related to Bitcoin NFTs will wrap up on April 10. The decision to cut Bitcoin NFTs is part of Binance’s “ongoing efforts to streamline product offerings on the Binance NFT Marketplace.”
“Users will no longer be able to buy, deposit, bid on, or list NFTs on the Binance NFT Marketplace via the Bitcoin network,” Binance stated.
Once support ends, listing orders will automatically be

Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan explained what makes Bitcoin valuable on Wednesday after a recently interviewed Goldman Sachs executive struggled to find the answer.
Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani – chief investment officer of the bank’s Wealth Management unit – said she still isn’t a “believer in crypto” even after the launch of Bitcoin spot ETFs in January.
Why Goldman Sachs Stil Rejects Crypto
According to the Wall Street Journal, the executive claims it’s hard to assign any value to Bitcoin given that it lacks any intrinsic dividends, cash flows, or earnings.
“We do not think it is an investment asset class,” she said. “We’re not believers in crypto.”
Sharmin’s view echoes that of other crypto skeptics like Warren Buffett, as well as those at Vanguard, who have denied their clients

Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange in the United States, has selected the company that will spearhead the implementation of Bitcoin’s lightning network at the exchange.
That partner is Lightspark – a lightning infrastructure provider led by PayPal co-founder David Marcus.
Lightning Is Coming To Coinbase
Per an announcement from Lightspark on Wednesday, their technology will give Coinbase customers access to “instant” and “cheaper” Bitcoin transfers and will lead to more lightning-related collabs with Coinbase down the line.
The lightning network is one of Bitcoin’s most popular “layer two” networks, allowing users to complete transactions instantly instead of waiting on the network to settle transfers in roughly ten-minute batches.
It also avoids fees that plague the

The United States government may be selling more of its massive Bitcoin (BTC) stash, potentially piling more sell pressure onto the crypto market, according to blockchain data.
On-chain sleuth ZachXBT noted on Tuesday that government controlled Bitcoin tied to Silk Road initiated a small transaction to Coinbase – the crypto exchange previously used by the government to sell its coins.
Shortly afterwards, the government’s wallet transferred 1999 BTC to Coinbase Prime, worth $139 million at the time.
The government’s main address for its Silk Road Bitcoin now holds 29,799 BTC, worth $1.96 billion at writing time.
The government first seized over 50,000 BTC connected to Silk Road in late 2021 from the marketplace’s hacker, James Zhong. It began selling those coins

The Bitcoin mining industry had its most lucrative month ever in March, pocketing over $2 billion for securing the leading crypto network.
Data from Blockchain.com shows that miners, in aggregate, averaged $65.23 million per day over the 30 days ending March 31.
Miners In Massive Profit
The latest figure shatters the 30-day averages of the previous two months, which were just $48.31 million as of February 29, and $43.29 million as of January 31.
Miner revenues are almost entirely dependent on Bitcoin’s market price, since the number of newly mined coins remains mostly the same at any given time, irrespective of demand. Throughout March, Bitcoin consistently traded above $60,000 USD, topping an all-time high of over $73,000 on March 13.
The vast majority of miner rewards –

Ethereum (ETH) is losing a key support level against its larger crypto rival, Bitcoin (BTC), amid a broader crypto market selloff that began on Monday.
Data from TradingView shows that 1 ETH is now worth less than 0.05 BTC, trading for 0.04961 BTC at writing time.
The last time the ETH/BTC ratio traded so low was in January, after a brief crypto market selloff after Bitcoin ETFs went live.
The last rare period at a similar ratio was when ETH skyrocketed in April 2021, after which it rallied up to 0.078 BTC within a little over a month.
The second-largest crypto asset has steadily lost ground to Bitcoin since mid-March, shortly before the latter tapped a new all-time high above $73,000 and corrected over the following weeks.
Both assets have been relatively rangebound ever

The government of Argentina is calling on all local crypto firms to register with its new regulatory body dedicated to the sector – or to cease operating entirely.
On March 14, the nation’s senate passed legislation approving the Registry of Virtual Asset Service Providers, in line with recommendations from the Financial Action Task Force.
More Regulation In Argentina?
Argentina’s National Securities Commission (CNV) announced the registry’s creation on March 26, saying the regulations are required to “identify the human and legal persons that provide services related to cryptoassets in the country.”
That includes businesses allowing customers to buy, sell, trade, lend, send, or receive cryptocurrency.
“Those who are not registered will not be able to operate in the

Blobs have officially come to Ethereum through its latest “Dencun” hard fork, making it far cheaper to transact on the network’s layer 2 (L2) blockchains. So what’s next?
In a blog post published on Thursday, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin outlined how he expects Ethereum to scale for mass adoption, emphasizing a shift in developmental focus to L2s.
Vitalik’s View On Ethereum Layer 2s
According to Vitalik, the newly implemented EIP 4844 (aka “blobs”) marked a “zero to one” milestone for Ethereum scaling, after which all remaining scaling improvements will be “incremental” by comparison.
The upgrade creates dedicated data availability space – or “blobspace” – on Ethereum’s base layer where layer 2 networks can post batched transactions for a much lower cost than

Wladimir van der Laan – the former lead maintainer of Bitcoin Core – is mulling a comeback to Bitcoin development after the high-profile industry lawsuit, COPA v. Wright, came to a close earlier this month.
In a blog post last Friday, the Bitcoin pioneer expressed relief and disbelief over the prosecutors’ victory, which saw London high court judge Edward James Mellor declare that self-styled Bitcoin creator Craig S. Wright is not, in fact, Satoshi Nakamoto, nor the author of Bitcoin’s whitepaper.
Freedom From Craig Wright’s Pressure
In agreement with the ruling, van der Laan asserted that Wright is an outright fraud and “awful person” who used his fake identity to harass others and destroy lives. Wright’s absence, he said, could make Bitcoin development a less stressful

How close is the current “Bitcoin cycle” to its bull market peak? History suggests it could be closer than most think.
Lead Glassnode analyst James Check showcased a chart on Monday comparing Bitcoin (BTC)’s price action over the last three years to that of other Bitcoin epochs after touching their respective all-time highs.
The Bitcoin Cycle Top, According To Glassnode
By Check’s measure, Bitcoin is effectively in the same position it was back in December 2020. At the time, the asset had just cracked its all-time high above $19,600 originally registered on December 12, 2017 – a 36-month wait – and would blast to $64,000 within just a few months.
Bitcoin is in a very similar position today: roughly 35 months after peaking in April 2021, the asset has rebounded to a high of

Bitcoin surged by more than 4.5% to above $70,000 on Monday, regaining lost ground after reaching an all-time high of $74,000 earlier this month.
Until Thursday of last week, Bitcoin traded below $65,000 following a multi-day period of unusually small inflows to Bitcoin ETF products, coupled with monstrous outflows from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC).
The asset’s price began to surge again on Friday following the Bitcoin Investor Day conference, when Robert Mitchnick – BlackRock’s digital assets lead – labeled Bitcoin as a good portfolio diversifier.
At the time, Mitchnick explained that the asset’s price movements have historically correlated with real interest rates and inflation expectations.
“It’s the reason Bitcoin’s generally not appropriate in large

Bitcoin is the number one crypto investment choice among BlackRock’s clients, who have little interest in getting access to other coins, according to Robert Mitchnick – the firm’s Head of Digital Assets.
The representative’s words are sobering for the blockchain industry, much of which bore hopes of the world’s largest asset manager taking the broader crypto asset class to the traditional financial world.
BlackRock’s Clients Like Bitcoin
As reported by Fox Business journalist Eleanor Terrett, Mitchnick said that Bitcoin is “overwhelmingly the number one priority” for BlackRock’s client base.
“Then a little bit of Ethereum, and very little everything else,” Mitchnick added during the Bitcoin Investor Day conference on Friday – a gathering of institutional capital allocators

The price of Bitcoin (BTC) has likely already bottomed from a sharp pullback that followed new all-time highs last week, according to popular price analyst Willy Woo.
The analyst provided a list of “good news” and ”bad news” surrounding Bitcoin’s fundamentals on Thursday, comparing the asset’s recent consolidation to that of past bull market cycles.
Has Bitcoin Bottomed Yet?
Woo began with a look at Bitcoin’s Spent Output Profit Ratio (SOPR), an on-chain metric gauging whether the average Bitcoin transaction is currently realizing a profit or a loss. The ratio recently spiked to highs not seen since January 2021, suggesting high profit-taking, and foreboding a lengthy consolidation period.
After tapping $74,000 last week, the asset slid back to $61,000 on Wednesday and has

Bitcoin (BTC)’s price spiked on Wednesday following the latest Federal Open Markets Committee (FOMC) meeting, at which the Federal Reserve announced no changes to interest rates.
The decision keeps the central bank’s benchmark rate between 5.25% and 5.50%, and pushes back investors’ hopes of a more dovish pivot for markets in the near term.
Bitcoin traded for $62,000 one hour before the announcement, before shooting to $64,600 as the updated benchmark rate was revealed.
In a statement, the central bank noted that economic activity in the country continues to expand, unemployment remains low, and inflation remains elevated.
“The Committee does not expect it will be appropriate to reduce the target range until it has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving