Saturday’s Bitcoin (BTC) halving event resulted in a reduction of miners’ rewards from 6.25 Bitcoin per block to 3.125 BTC. However, experts are now looking ahead to the next halving in 2028 to determine where Bitcoin could be heading. Despite the decrease in miners’ payments, halvings are often seen as a precursor to significant price increases for Bitcoin. The reduction in newly minted BTC hitting the market creates a “supply shock” that can drive up prices.
Pav Hundal, the lead analyst at Swyftx, predicts that the 2028 halving could lead to a price increase of at least 100%, pushing Bitcoin to around $120,000. He points to previous halvings, which resulted in price gains of over 60,000% in 2013, 12,000% in 2017, and 2,000% in 2021. Hundal believes it’s hard to imagine a scenario where Bitcoin would not be worth more than its current price of $60,000 by the next halving.
Henrik Andersson, the chief investment officer at Apollo Crypto, is even more bullish, predicting a peak price of around $200,000 for Bitcoin before 2028. He expects wider institutional acceptance of Bitcoin, driven by the recent approval of 11 spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the US, to support the price action.
Caroline Bowler, CEO of BTC Markets, also looks to external predictions, such as Standard Chartered’s forecast of Bitcoin reaching as high as $200,000 by the end of 2025. She notes ongoing support for this thesis within the short period since ETF involvement began.
While price predictions naturally arise around halving events, Jonathan Miller, the Managing Director of Kraken Australia, sees the halving as a reminder of the progress towards global adoption. He hopes that by the next halving, crypto adoption will have accelerated to the point where even technology laggards will learn about the halving process.
Despite the optimism surrounding halvings, there are concerns that miners may struggle if their rewards are reduced to unsustainable levels. Cantor Fitzgerald’s report suggests that Bitcoin’s price needs to stay above $40,000 for publicly traded mining companies to remain profitable in the long run. However, Henrik Andersson suggests that mining firms can explore alternative revenue sources outside of BTC-denominated rewards, such as Ordinals and fee-generating applications like the upcoming Runes protocol and layer-2 networks like Stacks.
Overall, experts are optimistic about Bitcoin’s future, expecting significant price increases driven by halvings and wider institutional acceptance. However, there are concerns about the profitability of mining if the price drops below certain thresholds. Nonetheless, the industry remains hopeful about the progress and adoption of cryptocurrencies.