Bitcoin Is Booming, Hits Highest Price Since the Halving

The price of Bitcoin has surged to its highest since the much-talked about halving event on April 19, touching a recent high of $67,422 on Friday before dipping again.

CoinGecko data shows that the biggest digital asset is up by nearly 3% in the past day. Over seven days, the coin has risen by more than 9%. It's now priced at $66,750. Bitcoin last hit today's high price on April 13, more than a month ago.

Bitcoin dropped following the halving—a quadrennial happening baked into the coin's code—though experts told Decrypt that was to be expected.

A combination of factors including geopolitical turmoil, cooling hype surrounding the new spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and investor uncertainty surrounding the Federal Reserve's next moves caused the virtual asset to nosedive down to under $57,000 last month.

It has been rising ever since, though Bitcoin's price is still below its all-time high price of $73,737 set this March.

The Bitcoin halving took place late on April 19 in the United States. It led to miners, the power-hungry operations that process transactions on the network, having their rewards cut in half from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC for each block they process.

Designed as a feature of Bitcoin to make it deflationary, the idea is that the event will make sure that as time goes on, it becomes more difficult to make new virtual coins. Four halvings have now taken place, and after about a year following each one, the coin has typically risen in price.

Bitcoin's rise this year has mostly been thanks to new investors putting money into the asset via the new spot ETFs, which were approved in January. The investment vehicles have been massively popular, receiving billions of dollars in inflows.

Edited by Andrew Hayward