Bitcoin Halving 2020

As we head into the final weekend before the bitcoin halving event happening roughly 12 May 2020, I wanted to see if there were any interesting trends surrounding it, and if markets were savvy about it in equal measures.

I couldn’t find a bitcoin specific countdown, so I approximated the time based on other sites’ countdown timers. So take this as what it is, an approximation.

Bitcoin Halving vs Buy Bitcoin

The halving event, in which the supply of bitcoin rewarded per block gets slashed in half (and not the value, don’t worry!), is a predictable but very important event in the Bitcoin ecosystem. It’s a function built into the design by Satoshi Nakamoto in order to ensure Bitcoin remains deflationary, and that there is a finite supply of it (The final bits of bitcoin will be mined in the year 2140).

Here’s a Google Trends graph of the terms bitcoin halving vs buy bitcoin. You can see how much people are searching for more information on the halving, and consequently, how it’s getting new people into the cryptospace with more searches into buying bitcoin getting a steady uptick as well.

Bitcoin is also currently the best performing asset of 2020 year to date, having completely recovered from the crash in March following the global Covid-19 pandemic, and in the face of unlimited quantitative easing from many countries trying to stem the economic impact.

Who is searching for buying vs halving?

I also thought it would be interesting to see which countries are searching for halving more, vs buying more.

The top 5 countries over-indexing for halving are: Austria, Germany, Poland, Spain and Netherlands.

The top 5 countries over-indexing for buying bitcoin are: Cameroon, Nigeria, UAE, Saudi Arabia and India. Notice Cameroon was 100% about buying bitcoin and presumably has no knowledge of the halving whatsoever.

Not entirely sure what to make of this data, without context of the actual search volume, but it seems like exchange and crypto products could explore establishing a presence in the more nascent buy bitcoin markets and position themselves for a potential land grab, especially seeing the market potential and unbanked population in countries like India.

Philippines breaking out

Perhaps most interesting is the related queries portion, which shows related searches that are trending or seeing a sudden surge in popularity.

It shows a breakout in the search terms where and how to buy bitcoin in the Philippines.

I did a little bit more research, and found this article stating that the Philippines is emerging as the new bitcoin hub.

In a previous article looking at Bitspark, I mentioned that Philippines was the 4th largest remittance destination in the world (at $30bn a year value). Imagine the fees that the remittance companies are raking in, off of Philippines alone, and how crypto adoption can massively help these low wage workers save on fees paid to remit their salary back home.

Beyond “Number go up” and “Store of value”, and other memes making fun of crypto, there are real world use cases and benefits to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, and I think Covid + Halving will just accelerate adoption.

After all, an asset that is uncorrelated to the traditional stock market is always something financial advisors preach as a hedge, right? If you are still on zero crypto, and pride yourself as a savvy investor with a diversified portfolio, get off 0 now.

Time(r) is running out.