Bitcoin has risen just 50% since its last halving in April 2024, marking the worst performance on record following a halving. In this analysis, we review how Bitcoin has evolved in previous cycles and what its current situation is.
This month marks an important milestone for Bitcoin: exactly one year since its most recent halving. On April 20, 2024, the Bitcoin (BTC) network experienced this scheduled event, which aims to preserve the scarcity of the cryptocurrency and keep its inflation under control.
Approximately every four years, Bitcoin undergoes a halving, a process that reduces the reward miners receive by half. Specifically, every 810,000 blocks mined, the mining subsidy is cut by 50%, thus limiting the number of new bitcoins entering the market. The total supply of BTC is limited to 21 million units. Following the last halving, rewards dropped from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per block.
Historically, halvings have been catalysts for long-term uptrends for Bitcoin, although price increases are not always immediate. Generally, the biggest rallies occur between six and eighteen months after the event, with all-time highs recorded between twelve and seventeen months later, although returns have varied with each cycle.
Bitcoin is currently trading close to $95,000, following a more than 13% advance in April. It should be remembered that in January 2025, nine months after the halving, the cryptocurrency reached an all-time high of over $109,000.
Bitcoin price evolution after each halving
The history of Bitcoin halvings shows significant increases:
- First halving (November 2012): the reward was reduced from 50 to 25 BTC. A year later, Bitcoin had risen more than 7,000%, from USD $12 to around USD $1,000.
- Second halving (July 2016): the price grew by almost 300% in one year, from $660 to around $20,000 during the 2017 bull market, with a reward reduced from 25 to 12.5 BTC.
- Third halving (May 2020): Bitcoin recorded an increase of more than 550%, rising from approximately $8,600 to a high of over $69,000 in November 2021.
In this cycle, despite global macroeconomic challenges, Bitcoin has also shown growth: from $64,000 on April 20, 2024, to around $94,000 on April 27, 2025. Considering its peak at the beginning of the year, the performance is even more remarkable.
Bitcoin under pressure after the fourth halving
Although Bitcoin peaked at over $100,000 about six months after the halving and surpassed $109,000 in January, its price subsequently retreated. Macroeconomic uncertainty, driven by trade tensions between the US and its partners, coupled with fears of a recession, affected financial markets in general.
Bitcoin closed the first quarter of 2025 with a decline of nearly 12%, its worst quarterly performance since the second quarter of 2024. However, the cryptocurrency is showing signs of resilience at the start of the second quarter, benefiting from its perception as a safe haven in times of economic crisis.
Even so, its post-halving performance has been unusually weak compared to previous cycles. According to Kaiko analysts, this lackluster performance has coincided with growing macroeconomic uncertainty.
“The first quarter of 2025 was marked by an increase in global trade tensions and a sharp deterioration in risk sentiment,” Kaiko researchers noted in a recent report.
The worst post-halving performance in Bitcoin’s history
With just double-digit growth compared to the triple-digit growth seen in previous halvings, Bitcoin is facing its worst post-halving performance to date. Had it maintained average growth similar to previous cycles (around 2,000%), its price would now exceed $1 million, a mark that some analysts project for the coming years.
“One of the main factors of change in this cycle has been the current macroeconomic environment—interest rates have not been this high before,” Dessislava Aubert, senior analyst at Kaiko, explained to Decrypt. She added that ‘the current period of high uncertainty’ has limited Bitcoin’s growth potential.
The high-rate environment, driven by the US Federal Reserve’s restrictive monetary policy, has strengthened risk aversion, negatively affecting assets such as Bitcoin.
Solid fundamentals and long-term prospects
Despite the moderate short-term performance, Bitcoin’s fundamentals remain strong. Indicators such as the increase in active addresses, transaction volume, and hash rate support an optimistic long-term outlook.
In addition, continued demand for spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and the growing adoption of Bitcoin as a reserve asset by companies and governments reinforce growth expectations.
Although the 12-month return has been lower than in previous cycles, many analysts agree that Bitcoin still has room to grow in this cycle, with some projections anticipating prices above $150,000 by the end of 2025.
