Bitcoin (BTC) investors may only have a two-week window to potentially buy Bitcoin at "bargain-buying" prices before a pre-halving rally kicks off in February, says pseudonymous crypto trader Rekt Capital.
In a Jan. 29 X post to their 349,000 followers, Rekt said that market action around the Bitcoin halving typically plays out in five stages, with the first three stages occurring before the halving.
Rekt noted that in previous Bitcoin halvings, there has often been a steep dip in the months before, generating “fantastic” returns for investors, with 2024 looking to be no exception.
#BTC
— Rekt Capital (@rektcapital) January 29, 2024
5 Phases of The Bitcoin Halving
1. Pre-Halving period
Approximately 77 days remain until the Bitcoin Halving in April 2024
Historically, any deeper retraces that occur during this orange period tend to generate fantastic Return On Investment for investors in the several… pic.twitter.com/8JC8qX2IVm
The Bitcoin halving — currently scheduled for April — refers to mining rewards being cut in half for Bitcoin miners and is widely viewed as a bullish catalyst for the price of BTC.
Noting that Bitcoin had already gone through a roughly 18% retrace in January, Rekt said that there’s now a two-week window in which Bitcoin can be expected to undergo another significant pullback.
“Generally, any retrace during this period likely represents one of the final bargain-buying opportunities for Bitcoin in the Pre-Halving period.”
After this, Bitcoin tends to enter what Rekt calls the “pre-having rally” phase roughly 60 days out from the halving event.
Denoted by the light blue box on the graph attached, short-term traders attempt to “buy the hype” heading into the halving, only to later “sell the news” around the time of the actual halving.
This “sell the news” event typically arrives one to three weeks from the halving itself in what Rekt calls the “pre-halving retrace.” In 2016, there was a 38% price dip in the weeks before the halving, while in 2020 there was a 20% drawdown.
Following a successful halving, Rekt details a long and “boring” period of mostly sideways price action, where many investors are “shaken out” due to disappointment around price action following the halving. Historically, this has lasted an average of 150 days.
Related: 11 Bitcoin miners may not mine profitably post halving — Cantor Fitzgerald
Finally, Rekt explains that Bitcoin enters what’s called the “parabolic uptrend” phase, where after months of sideways chop and general accumulation, Bitcoin experiences stages of accelerated growth.
While Rekt hinges their thesis on the halving as the locus for Bitcoin’s price action, not all market participants are inclined to agree, with several experts claiming that the halving is growing less useful as a metric by which to judge price action.
Speaking at a panel titled “are halving price cycles bullshit?” Swan Bitcoin’s chief investment officer Ralph Zagury said that “liquidity” — and not the halving — would play a more integral role in impacting Bitcoin’s price in 2024.
“Flows are really what drives the market, so the halving, by definition, there’s nothing on it that should impact price,” Zaguary said.
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