Bitcoin has passed a major technical milestone that has seen mining rewards halved for the third time in the cryptocurrency's 11-year history. Occurring roughly every four years, the so-called halving (or halving) event halves the reward for successfully validating a new "block." The latest reduction of the halving went from 12.5 to 6.25 bitcoin, or around €110,000 to €55,000 at current market rates. The long-awaited halving was triggered at 7:23 p.m. UTC on May 11 with the addition of block 630,000 to the Bitcoin blockchain.
Bitcoin cut in half
Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency in the world and the most important today in terms of market capitalization, followed by Ethereum and XRP. Bitcoin's halving mechanism is built into the system to gradually reduce the staggering rate of new coins, slowing the progression towards the maximum number of coins that can be in circulation: 21 million. With the number of parts currently in stock rising to 18 million, the ceiling (whose function is to simulate shortages) should be reached sometime in the first half of the next century. Since the cryptocurrency's creation in 2009, there have been denominations in November 2012 and July 2016 and May 2020, with the next series taking place in May 2024. The immediate ramification of the latest halving is that revenue generated by mining operations will be cut in half, making maintaining the Bitcoin network (by validating transactions and helping create new blocks) a much smaller proposition. economically attractive Although large mining pools are likely to bear reduced revenue, the halving should weed out small miners who cannot balance the cost of resources with declining revenue. Miners now pushed out of the Bitcoin ecosystem should redirect their IT resources to maintaining more lucrative cryptocurrency networks. The first block to fall under the new reward rate (block 630) is said to have been mined by Chinese mining syndicate Antpool, which has the highest total computing power of any mining operation in the world. Via CoinDesk