Bitcoin halving – ever wondered what it is? This might help…

bitcoin halving or halvening
Image by HStocks

Bitcoin halving is often referred to as “halvening”. It’s a formulated reduction in the reward coins offered to miners using a predefined blockchain algorithm.

Bitcoin halvings take place once in every four – 4 years approximately, or for every 210,000 block transactions.

The process of bitcoin halving started in the year 2012, approximately 4 years after the of the invention of bitcoin in 2008, but general acceptance of bitcoins did not come into play until 2009.

After the first bitcoin halving, the block reward of 50 bitcoins per transaction was reduced to 25 bitcoins per block or transaction, later this reward was further reduced to 12.5 and will now fall to 6.25 after halvening in 2020.

The main idea of halvening is to create scarcity for the coins and to control inflation, as bitcoins issuance is limited to 21 million coins as per the original concept of Satoshi Nakamoto, inventor of Bitcoin.

The production of 21 million bitcoins involves 32 halvenings, we are now done with two halvenings and this might continue till or come to an end in the year 2140.

To know the overview of Bitcoin Halving (in minutes), check out the following infographic developed by Abishai James at WinBTC.net.

bitcoin halving

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