When South Africa hosted the FIFA World Cup in 2010, bitcoin (BTC) cost $0.20. Now, with preparations underway for the 2026 World Cup in North America, the price of bitcoin is holding above the $66,000 mark. Over the past five tournaments, the growth has amounted to more than 328,000%.

The dynamics have not broken down once. Each new World Cup opened with a bitcoin price exceeding the previous figures: $620 in Brazil in 2014, $6,500 in Russia in 2018, $16,800 at the tournament in Qatar in 2022. This year, bitcoin costs roughly four times more than that level.

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Bitcoin's halving explains the trend

Bitcoin's halving cuts miners' rewards in half with the same regularity as the World Cups — once every four years, limiting the new inflow of coins. On average, 12–18 months after each such reduction, the price of bitcoin tends to enter a growth phase.

In the current cycle, the BTC price reached a maximum above $126,000 in October 2025, and then rolled back sharply.

The current rate is roughly midway between the bitcoin price at the tournament in Qatar in 2022 and the recent peak. This situation coincides with typical corrections after peaks in similar four-year cycles.

The yield is declining

The statistics for each four-year period speak for themselves. Buying at the time of the 2010 tournament and holding the position until 2014 would have brought approximately a 3,100-fold gain. Over the 2014–2018 period, the return was about 10x. Those who held bitcoin from 2018 to 2022 received a gain of approximately 2.6x. In the current period from 2022 to 2026, bitcoin has risen 3.9x.

As bitcoin turns into a multi-trillion-dollar asset, each subsequent growth multiple becomes smaller. Flows of institutional capital and ETFs increasingly influence market behavior, and this can no longer be explained by the economic reward for mining a block alone.

Source: BeInCrypto