Markets
What happens to the cryptocurrency market after the Bitcoin halving?
Bitcoin is distributed through mining. The 21 million existing bitcoins are expected to be mined by the year 2140. That is, the last bitcoin is expected to be mined in the year 2140. At the current rate of issuance, the unmined bitcoin will be exhausted before this assumed time . Nearly 90% of the total bitcoin supply has been mined. Currently, around 900 bitcoins are mined per day.
To support issuance and increase scarcity, the number of bitcoins issued per block is regularly reduced. This process of reducing bitcoin emissions per block is known as Bitcoin Halving.
After a predetermined block height (a number used to denote a particular block), the amount of bitcoin issued per block is reduced to half the previous number. For bitcoin the new halving occurs after an interval of 210,000 blocks or 4 years.
The most recent halving (2020) reduced bitcoin issuance from 12.5 bitcoins per block to 6.25 bitcoins per block. This means that instead of 12.5 bitcoins, miners will now be rewarded with 6.25 bitcoins per block mined. The Bitcoin halving is a significant event in the world of cryptocurrencies, particularly in the Bitcoin network. It refers to the process in which the reward for Bitcoin mining transactions is halved approximately every four years. View this report to learn more.