Today, April 20, the fourth halving took place on the Bitcoin network at block 840 thousand. He halved the reward for each block mined, from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. Cointelegraph reports this.
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This is a programmed process in the Bitcoin protocol that occurs every 210,000 blocks mined, approximately every four years.
Three halvings took place in 2012, 2016 and 2020, which led to a significant drop in mining rewards. The first Bitcoin halving took place in 2012, when the reward for mining a block was reduced from 50 to 25 BTC.
The main purpose of the Bitcoin halving is to manage scarcity and regulate the inflationary supply of the first cryptocurrency. The mechanism was built into the code by the founder of Bitcoin under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.
By cutting the reward for mining in half, the process actually slows down the rate at which new Bitcoins are created. The system will operate until approximately 2140, when the last Bitcoin will be mined.
How Bitcoin responded to the halving
Bitcoin calmly reacted to this event without significant changes. At the time of writing the news, the price of the asset is about $64,220. Over the course of a day, Bitcoin increased by 3%, but over the week the fall is 4.77%. This is evidenced by data from CoinMarketCap.
It is worth noting that over 24 hours, the greatest growth among cryptocurrencies with the largest capitalization was demonstrated by:
- Cardano (+10.48%), Dogecoin (+6. 59), XRP (+5.54).
Recall
The Ministry of Finance wrote that JPMorgan analysts predicted a fall in the Bitcoin rate after halving.
