Comparing the halvings.
This is an expanded version of a post from the tertius993 (OP) price guessing thread:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/comparing-bitcoin-halvings-2012-to-2020-and-now-looking-ahead-to-2024-5375808 tertius993 (OP)
Here are csv files that I promised to share. One compares miner machines profitability (this file does not include transaction profitability) and another file shows halving-related info.
https://filetransfer.io/data-package/gIQoMlUU#link1) Miners will continue competing with each over as long as bitcoin block rewards exist in adequate amount (I will talk about it later), as will hashrate increase automatically.
2) Comparing the price at halving with the miner machines profitability a few months before 2020 and a few months before 2016. The revenues were from (7.5 or 10.5) in 2016 (few months before 2016 halving) and (8.5 to 9.5) in 2020 (few months before halving).
I found characteristics of 3 new bitmain miners that are going to be released next February (a few months before 2024 halving), to make their revenue look like (8.5 to 9.5) 2020's and taking into account the prediction of hashrate (600EH/s) the price at 2024 halving should be around 30000$ per 1 btc. Potentially, the problem might be that generally mining machines reaching maximum performance ability. Because the performance growth is logarithmic. The amount of transistors they include shall have a limit somewhere close enough. It might be that we never see any machines greater than 600 TH/s per 3000 W. Or mine using only solar/nuclear electricity.
3) If you take a look at "relative increase" row in the "halving.csv". The price at halving and price at high had relative increases x103 (2012 halving to high in 2013), x30 (2016 halving to high in 2017), x8 (2020 halving to high in 2021) and this relative increase was falling t0 22%-25% of the previous increase. Having said that, the relative increase of (2024 halving to high in 2025) shall be around x1.8 to x2. Which does not look good. Meaning that the lower price we get at halving, the lower it will be in 2025 high. I better be mistaken at 2)!
4) My projections for future: The hashrate must decrease in following 2028 halving (1.5625 reward), it cannot be always increasing due to the block reward. Either bitcoin price shall be huge or amount of transactions shall be huge. I state, in future "small" miners
will disappear and only biggest miners will stay. If some new miners will try to come to the system, the price will drop to flush new comers away. So, in the future there is going to be a top, ceiling price at which point only big miners will have enought profit to satisfy their operation, but small miners will always cause the price to drop.
5) Too many miners. New miners->more hashrate (because of share of power per 1 single mining machine. The more share of all hashpower you have, the greater is your share of reward). To satisfy new miners, the price goes up, I do not why btc system wants so many miners. The fact that, more miners result in price growth.
6) To decrease the hashrate and increase self reward, you need to throw out other miners, to decrease hashrate you need to decrease the price. To decrease the price you need to sell a lot what you have gained. As we approach 2032 halving when rewards decrease to 0.78 (if number of transactions are the same) new miners need to be kicked out to make the system survive.
7) To avoid 6) world shall integrate bitcoin as official payment method, then the number of transactions will increase (I think it was the original idea of bitcoin right? to have btc as payment method worldwide) Then the system will not die. The system dies after some time when miners' profits go below zero.
Lets image a world has accepted btc as official payment method between people. At some point number of transactions stabilize, making the number of miners also to stabilize, since new amount of miners will make rewards less, and if you do not increase your personal power you start losing. It means actually that network hashrate can approach infinity, as your mining equipment growth shall also approach infinity, otherwise you drop mining. In this case when world accepts btc as payment method, the hash rate can grow approaching infinity as long as you are backed up by transactions that people in the world do.
To sum up. IN contrary, in scenario if we do not accept btc as a global payment method, to keep the system alive you need to either drop hashrate (by selling a lot of btc to drop the price to kick out miners) or you need to grow the price to approach infinity. Additionally, I cannot say what price will be at halving, it is early to drop the market and drop the miners. So we shall expect a greater price than 30K$ at day of halving, it might be twice as less as what will be at day of high in 2025. If we say 150K at high, then halving is 75K. Vice versa when we be in April 2024. We can guess the HIGH in 2025.