Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino says pricing hard to predict as next bitcoin halving approaches

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Quick Take

The demand of bitcoin is outpacing existing mining, said Ardoino said during an online event on Friday.
The next halving event is expected in April, and it is expected to reduce miner rewards from 6.25 bitcoin per block to 3.125.

As the next bitcoin halving quickly approaches, Bitfinex CTO and Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino says its effect on price could be hard to predict as spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds increase the demand.

During an online event hosted by Bitfinex on Friday, Ardoino was asked how the upcoming bitcoin halving event could affect prices, which he said could be hard to predict.

"Already today, the demand of bitcoin is far outpacing existing mining," Ardoino said. "So we are seeing with these big institutions and the ETFs … the demand of bitcoin is far exceeding the current mining output. So sure, the mining output will reduce by half but that is a perception issue. The vast majority of the bitcoins have already been mined."

While Bitfinex is no longer the dominant centralized crypto exchange it once was, USDT is the stablecoin most used in bitcoin trading. Tether has a market capitalization of $103 billion as of this writing.

The next halving event is set to happen in April, which is expected to cut miner rewards from 6.25 bitcoin per block to 3.125. Mining revenue for bitcoin hit an all-time high last weekend, according to previous reporting from The Block. This comes as the price of bitcoin broke through to a new high of $71,000 this week, though it has since tapered off closer to $68,000.

The spot bitcoin ETF effect

An average of 900 bitcoin are currently mined per day on the Bitcoin network, based on the current reward of 6.25 BTC per block at an average block time of approximately every 10 minutes. After the halving, the daily average amount mined will halve to 450 bitcoin.

According to data from BitMEX, some spot bitcoin ETF issuers' daily inflows are skyrocketing past those figures. BlackRock, for example, had 4,886 BTC ($345 million) in inflows on Thursday alone, with daily net inflows for the ETFs combined regularly representing multiples of the daily issuance from miner rewards.

According to CoinShares's Head of Research James Butterfill, spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds consumed 2,800 bitcoins per day at the end of February and were significantly influencing recent price trends. Eleven spot bitcoin ETFs were given the greenlight from the Securities and Exchange Commission in January.

James Hunt contributed reporting.

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