LIVE#write2earn NAVIGATING THE IMPACT OF #BITCOIN ’S FOURTH #HALVING : INSIGHTS AND #ANALYSIS
The long-awaited Bitcoin halving has finally arrived. On Friday evening, just after 8 p.m. ET, the Bitcoin network smoothly executed its planned reduction in newly issued BTC. With the creation of the 840,000th Bitcoin block, successful miners now earn 3.125 BTC per completed block, along with network transaction fees.
This marks the fourth halving event in Bitcoin's history, eagerly awaited by the crypto community in recent weeks. Concurrently, the price of Bitcoin saw a modest uptick for the day, hovering around $64,000, as per CoinGecko data.
At its core, the change in Bitcoin's software revolves around its pursuit of digital scarcity. Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator, set a hard cap of 21 million Bitcoin for the asset's total supply upon Bitcoin's inception in 2009.
Currently, over 19.6 million Bitcoin are in circulation, representing the lion's share of the total expected supply, according to Blockchain.com. Halving events are anticipated approximately every four years until the final one occurs in the mid-22nd century.
The rate at which new halvings occur is determined by Bitcoin blocks, batches of transactions added to the blockchain roughly every 10 minutes. For instance, 210,000 blocks ago, miner rewards were halved from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC in 2020.
Nodes worldwide running Bitcoin software contribute to network security by racing to solve intricate mathematical puzzles. The miner that solves the puzzle first is rewarded with a sum of Bitcoin, provided at least 50% of nodes agree on the validity of transactions.
Following the halving, the production cost for miners effectively doubles. While the event doesn't directly escalate Bitcoin network energy consumption, it presents challenges for miners with smaller operations or limited computational resources.
