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Charlie Shrem, a Bitcoin pioneer and the Bitcoin Foundation co-creator, has taken to the X social media platform to share a notable memory about the very first Bitcoin halving that took place in 2012.
He and his colleagues shared a major concern back then, which he has shared with the crypto community now.
Here's what happened before first BTC halving
In a recent X post, Charlie Shrem shared his memories of the very first Bitcoin halving that took place at the end of November 2012. Shrem tweeted that on that day, the miner’s reward for a new block was reduced from 50 BTC to 25 Bitcoins.
Sharing a photo from that day, on which Shrem, Erik Voorhees and Roger Ver can be recognized, early Bitcoiner Shrem wrote that they were smiling but secretly fearing that the very first BTC halving would fail to work.
Always gets quiet around the #bitcoin halving. I remember the first in 2012, Nov 28th reduced the first block reward from 50 to 25. Here is a pic from that day. We are all smiles secretly we weren’t sure if this first halving would work. Can you guess the early bitcoiners? pic.twitter.com/fBeTjizNNJ
— Charlie Shrem (@CharlieShrem) April 16, 2024
This week, the global Bitcoin community looks forward to the fourth Bitcoin halving, which will reduce block rewards from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC for miners.
Each halving increases Bitcoin’s deflationary feature and makes it more scarce than before since the remaining amount of the 21 million supply gets to be mined more slowly every four years, allowing for a smaller amount of new BTC to be injected into circulation on the market. In the meantime, the very last Bitcoin is scheduled to be mined in 2140.
Bitcoin price in free fall
The world’s flagship cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, has been rapidly falling for almost a week now, since Friday, April 12. Since then, it has lost more than 10% of its value, despite two major attempts to recover. Having traded at close to $71,000 on that day, at the time of this writing, Bitcoin is going for $63,513.
The plunge over the weekend is believed by many to have started due to negative geopolitical developments in the Middle East and to be continuing due to the statement by Fed Reserve chairman Jerome Powell about inflation being stronger than it was assessed earlier.
Now, the likelihood of the Fed cutting down interest rates has drastically dropped, which is negative for risk assets, including Bitcoin.