The Barcelona Bitcoin Community has come up with a fun way to mark the forthcoming Bitcoin block reward halving slated for July 10 - a party.
The point is to celebrate an informal meetup to meet other bitcoiners, have lots of discussions, eat BBQ food, the cryptocurrency interest group states on its Meetup.com page.
“My opinion: Let’s celebrate what happens for sure: halving. Have a good time together!” says one of the event’s organizers, Manfred Karrer, the creator of Bitsquare, one of the first decentralized exchanges for Bitcoin. “What happens with price is out of our reach and should not be that important. Price moves up and down, but Bitcoin stays.”
The Bitcoin community which has over a thousand members, has been organising meetups in the past, including on university campuses. The party is free to attend.
A recap of the first halving
The first halving of the block reward took place on 28th of November 2012. The reward was reduced by half, from 50 bitcoins per block to 25 Bitcoins. This reduced the supply of new bitcoins being created daily to 3600 Bitcoins. Block reward is about to reduce from 25 to 12.5 Bitcoins per block and daily supply to 1800 Bitcoins in about twenty days from now.
A common consensus among Bitcoin enthusiasts is that the halving will make the price of Bitcoin go up based on a principle of supply and demand - that if the demand for Bitcoin stays the same as it is today (3,600 per day at the rate of about $760) but the supply is cut in half, the price of Bitcoin would effectively double to ensure equilibrium with supply and demand - stability.
Demand for Bitcoin remains high before the halving
After the first halving, the 7200 Bitcoins being created daily reduced to 3600 at a price of around $12 per BTC. This created a daily demand value of $86,400 to keep the price stable (12 x 7200) at the time. Later, the price rallied to about $260 in four months due to the decreased supply and price speculation by traders. Now that daily demand value for Bitcoin has risen to about $2,736,000, it is yet to be seen what to expect after the halving.