Definitely a few weeks or so before it starts. If it doesn't happen and stays where it is then miners will be turning their systems off and the halving disaster we all feared for will begin. Creating a halving for the 25mil bitcoin limit while there is over 100mil wallets isn't really a lot of bitcoin which means we need to be going up in storage capacity, not slowing it down.
Nah i don't think so. The effect of the halving is zero like it was zero last time. Zero in the way it don't affect the price. For bitcoin standards the halving itself is an important thing.
The reason why it was zero last halving was because people were still making decent money off of mining and were still able to support themselves. When this halving happens their profits will be in the negative which will force them to turn off their machines which results in a slower network that will cause people to get angry over and not use bitcoin. That will then cause the price to drop even lower to were our last resort Chinese miners can't even run and will be forced to turn them off as well before they go bankrupt. That's what a halving disaster means.