The Bitcoin halving took place yesterday, and people celebrated around the world. Block 420000 was successfully mined, signalling a decrease in the block reward from 25 bitcoins to 12.5, producing little change within the hashrate and price. The next halving will take place at block 630000, which should happen roughly in four years or less depending on the momentum of the hashrate going forward.
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The Halving Happened, and Now We Wait
According to the bitcoin mining pool F2Pool, the group of miners that processed block 420000, a miner who goes by “zzhzz” mined the block. F2Pool says they awarded zzhhzz with a one bitcoin bonus for processing the block.
After this event, the cryptocurrency community showed a lot of excitement and throughout the day, many tweeting and shouting words of celebration.
The hashrate within the mining sector of the Bitcoin network didn’t really slow up, still running at 1,547,796,830 GH/s as of press time. Many believe that the recent bull rally has kept most miners in the industry safe from ROI losses.
Another reason the hashrate didn’t drop is that quite a bit of mining operations, most notably in China, have little to no electrical costs. The latest ASIC mining rigs also have more power efficiency and compute hashing algorithms faster than older machines. This isn’t to say the hashrate will not drop over the next couple of weeks, but most likely it will adjust accordingly.
The halving gained the attention of mainstream media during the day, making it to the top post on CNBC’s news website, and a couple of other publications.
The reward decline means a whole lot of economic changes regarding deflation and scarcity. At press time, with the price per bitcoin at $650 USD, miners are only taking in a little over $8,000 per block, as opposed to $16,000 prior to the halving.
Despite community expectations, the halving has yet to affect the bitcoin price or hashrate. Many speculators believe the price will eventually become volatile, though, as it has been turbulent during the last two months. Markets are far from perfect, and it’s anyone’s guess what will happen.
There will be 64 more halvings as the years go by and the network continues to progresses. What we do know is there will only be 21 million BTC, and that the system is far superior to the likes of the Federal Reserve and fractional banking practices.
it is not important to win but to participate! congrats to F2Pool for mining #bitcoin #halving block
— Slush Pool (@slush_pool) July 9, 2016
How did you envision the halving affecting the economics of the Bitcoin network? Let us know in the comments below.
Images courtesy of Bitcoin Wiki under Creative Commons, Crypto-Graphics.com.
