Venture capitalist titan and billionaire investor, Chamath Palihapitiya, has thrown into the wind a bold prediction: Bitcoin could be on the brink of an astronomical price rise, surging to an astounding $500,000. This audacious prognosis hinges on the potential for a bull run in the wake of Bitcoin’s most recent, fourth halving cycle, which transpired in the spring of 2024 on April 20th.
In recent times, Palihapitiya has become an integral part of a critical exchange of views regarding the effect of past halving cycles on Bitcoin’s value. The agile investor offered a price analysis, deftly illustrating the digital currency’s performance—including trends and patterns—following each distinctive halving event in its decade-long history.
Positioning data at the forefront of his argument, Palihapitiya noted that historically, Bitcoin’s value has scaled new peaks after each halving cycle. He underscored a distinct correlation between Bitcoin’s halving events over a span of twelve years, from 2012 to 2024. His meticulous analysis further detailed how the price of the cryptocurrency reacted at various intervals— one, three, six, nine, twelve, and eighteen months—post each halving event.
In offering up his observations, Palihapitiya found that during the initial three months after a Bitcoin halving event, market players are often still in the process of reevaluating the event’s aftermath and gauging its impact on the broader crypto landscape. From six to eighteen months post-halving, however, a different pattern emerges: Bitcoin’s price began to appreciate at an exponential rate, catapulting it to uncharted all-time highs.
“Following each halving event, we’ve seen a stark increase in Bitcoin’s price, with the majority of the returns realized between the 12 to 18 months post halving,” Palihapitiya penned, dissecting the phenomena that had occurred at each sequential halving event.
He elaborated by disclosing that eighteen months after Bitcoin’s maiden halving cycle, the cryptocurrency’s price swelled by an impressive 45X. In the wake of the second halving cycle, Bitcoin mounted an impressive gain of almost 28X. And after the third, it experienced a surge of nearly 8X.
Based on these cyclical patterns, Palihapitiya proffers a future projection of Bitcoin’s value reaching an incredible $500,000 by October 2025, espousing that it will likely mirror the trend witnessed in the wake of its previous halving cycles.
Critically, during his discourse, Palihapitiya put forward a tantalizing idea that if one were to analyze the average pattern of Bitcoin’s previous halving cycles, there is a potential for the digital currency to experience a peak surge of up to $1.4 million. He was quick to add that should Bitcoin reach such lofty heights of appreciation, it could unseat gold as the traditional safe-haven asset, emphasizing Bitcoin’s potential to transform into a digital currency that holds transactional utility for hard assets.
Leveraging the average of the second and third halving cycles, Palihapitiya projects Bitcoin’s price striding toward $99,643 six months post its latest halving event in April, reaching a stratospheric $238,623 in nine months, $362,997 in twelve months, and cresting at a staggering nearly $500,000 in eighteen months.
Just as important to Bitcoin’s road to $500,000, Palihapitiya illuminated the role that several factors could play in this meteoric rise. Chief among these is the increasing appetite for Spot Bitcoin Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), which he believes could shape the trajectory of Bitcoin’s value in 2024.
This prediction holds significant clout, particularly when considered against Bitcoin’s record of a consistent price increase at the dawn of the year, following the approval of Spot Bitcoin ETFs by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The launch of the Spot Bitcoin ETF was a milestone moment for the cryptocurrency, as its price surpassed $73,000—marking a new zenith since 2021.
