Bitcoin’s 2nd Halving – A New Cycle Begins

Now let’s discuss Bitcoin’s 2^nd Halving. Yes, Bitcoin’s halving events happen on a pretty regular basis, which is approximately every 4 years or so. This is because Bitcoin’s program will adjust the difficulty of finding blocks based on the total computing power. The adjustment happens to ensure that new blocks are found on an average of every 10 minutes.

While this average time is pretty close over a long time, new blocks are found at random intervals. I have seen new blocks appear seconds after the last block was found. Sometimes these blocks don’t have any transaction data in them except the coinbase transaction. This was more common in the early days of Bitcoin. While on the other hand I have also seen some blocks found up to 2 hours after the last block. So there can be a large time interval between sequential blocks.

This means that the exact time a halving occurs can be determined in advance. It is product of random numbers and fate. This time is not correlated to any astrological cycle, but it does make Bitcoin have a distinct cycle of its own. I think this is a valid hypothesis to test this charts similar to how one would interpret a Solar Return Chart. The only difference it this type of aspect last for nearly 4 years in time instead of 1 year. Probably a Mars return Chart would be a more useful comparison.

With the 1^st Halving, we know that the chart shows how the public was likely to react to the deflationary change. This was a very import event as there are not to many examples of a deflationary currency existing. In fact I can’t think of one of the top of my head. In this case the stars aligned and the public accepted that Bitcoin could work and the the Bitcoin Core Team of 5 developers was fit to lead the development of Bitcoin. The future looked bright.

On July 9, 2016 at 4:46 PM UTC, the 2^nd Halving occurred. The chart for this one shows much different picture of what was to come of Bitcoin. First, looking at Saturn on that see it is only making an aspect to the Nodes and this aspect is a square. Saturn is at the bendings of the Nodes, a place I consider one to have the will free in a chart.

Saturn is Sagittarius, literally point the arrow forward and ready to shoot. But will it go toward the North or South Node? The North Node is in Virgo indicating that Bitcoin should focus on diligently working working towards a scalable future (Jupiter), while the South Node is Pisces conjunct Neptune showing more highly idealized vision of Bitcoin based on it being payment processor

Now I am going to back up a little and talk about what was going in the Bitcoin community at this time, the problem of how to scale Bitcoin. You at this this it was realized based on the original code that Bitcoin could only handle 7 transactions a second. That may seem like a lot, but the credit card company VISA can handle 10,000 transactions per second. If Bitcoin will ever become a mainstream currency it needed to scale up it’s transaction volume.

The problem is that there is multiple ways to do this. One way is to increase the size of the blocks, which are limited to 1 MB in size. The other way proposed was to lesser the a more of information included in each transaction and then create a separate part of the blockchain to speed up the transaction volume. The problem with increasing the block size is that it would require a hard fork, which could split the Bitcoin network into 2 different one. The other method was a soft fork, which is more like a soft ware upgrade.

The debate on which method to choose split the Bitcoin community and the Bitcoin Core Development Team. One member want the block increase. This is shown in the Sun (leadership team) sextile the Moon (user/community members) and opposing Pluto (miners*). Most of the developers and users want to take the safe soft fork route, which would keep the community more decentralized. Some, especially some miners wanted to increase the block size immediately, which would have the effect of making the network more centralized. Can you tell which node which group wanted to go towards?

Looking at the biwheel comparison to the Bitcoin Genesis Chart, there are not as many contracts as the first one. The Halving Saturn only makes a square to Ceres in Virgo. It does trine/sextile the Genesis Nodes, but typically that is as powerful as an aspect as a conjunction or square.

The main aspects are the Genesis Sun and Saturn. First the Halving Sun Is opposes the Genesis Sun. This is a double sign showing the conflict in leadership for Bitcoin. Pluto is involved in the aspect too. The Halving Moon is on right on top of the Genesis Saturn. This shows the public interest in the Bitcoin is very high at this time.

Finally we have the Halving North Node and Jupiter conjunct Ceres. In the Bitcoin Genesis block analysis I thought of Ceres as decentralization because Ceres is associated with sharing in the myth and interpretation. This shows that for this cycle the main them would be about how decentralized should Bitcoin be.

The Halving moon on the Genesis Saturn shows the public interest in the scaling debate at the time. In fact of the better part of the next year this was all that was talked about in the Bitcoin community. Since there were multiple proposals and not a single one was agreed upon, several commentators thought the end of Bitcoin (for the 200^th time) was near.

This is because Bitcoin despite mainly being a Mercury and Saturn program does rely on one Venus concept. That is consensus. Many at the time thought one needed complete consensus among all stake holders to achieve success. Looking at Venue in the 2^nd Halving chart one can see that is well dignified by triplicity and term and have a beneficial aspects to the Moon (sextile) and Mars (trine). This means that a consensus would be reached in the debate, but maybe not without peacefully cutting away part of the community.

And that is what happened with the creation of Bitcoin Cash on August 1, 2017. However that deserves it own separate post. A sooner concern in the upcoming 3^rd Halving, which is current scheduled to occur sometime on May 11, 2020 at the time of this post. Depending on the luck involved in finding blocks it may get pushed back to May 12, 2020. So the next post on Bitcoin will be about the 3^rd Halving cycle.

*This is not the traditional interpretation for miners. Typically one would assign Saturn, but in Bitcoin’s case I think Pluto might fit more because (1) miners have a disproportional influence and power on the system. (2) This is a transformation of energy into information. This can be open for debate.