With less than a year to go until Bitcoin’s fourth halving, people are already speculating whether this bull run will be the same or similar to previous ones.

In-depth data shows that the asset's price performance was fairly identical before and after the last two such events.

Halving effect

When creating the network, anonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto included an event called "halving," which occurs every 210,000 blocks (approximately every four years) and cuts the rewards received by miners in half to Slow down the creation of new BTC.

Due to fundamental economic factors, these events have a positive impact on the price performance of assets, as when supply slows and demand remains the same or increases, valuations rise (at least in theory).

Therefore, the past three halvings have been followed by price increases. The last time was in mid-May 2020, BTC embarked on a significant bull cycle over the next year and a half, leading to an ATH of $69,000 in November 2021. The situation was similar after the 2016 halving, when the ATH was reached in December 2017 (nearly $20,000).

As shown in the chart above, the asset’s performance before and after the last two halvings was fairly identical. It all started with a 1.5-2 year bull cycle, followed by a massive correction and sideways trading. According to these statistics, Bitcoin has bottomed out after a nearly 400-day bear market that peaked last year when it fell below $16,000.

Will history repeat itself?

All financial experts will be eager to tell you that past performance should not be indicative of future performance. A recent report from Coinbase made the same claim, stating that the impact of the upcoming halving remains unclear, primarily due to macroeconomic factors and regulatory uncertainty.

However, there were similar reports ahead of the 2020 halving claiming that the asset’s valuation was already priced in and investors should not expect any fireworks, but this was not the case.

Still, predicting BTC’s future performance is difficult, after all, not even the recently popular artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT has done so.