bitcoin_halving

BITCOIN HALVING IN

BITCOIN PRICE AND INFLATION:

WHAT IS BITCOIN HALVING?

In the Bitcoin network, user transactions are grouped in blocks and recorded to a digital public ledger called a blockchain. Miners are in charge of this task, and receive a mining reward in the form of bitcoins for each block recorded.

The amount of bitcoins rewarded for each block decreases with time: it is halved every 4 years. This event, the moment when the mining reward is divided by 2, is commonly called "Bitcoin halving". Other denominations are used: "reward drop", "reward halving", or simply "the halving" or "the Halvening" which is a popular meme among bitcoiners.

When Bitcoin was created in 2009, the initial reward was 50 bitcoins. In november 2012, it dropped to 25btc after the first halving. The second halving will take place in July 2016, decreasing the reward to 12.5btc. Read more.

WHAT IS THE IMPACT ON BITCOIN PRICE?

As any freely traded asset, Bitcoin price depends solely on demand and supply. The evolution of bitcoins supply is hard coded and is known to everyone, so it all depends on the evolution of demand. Bitcoin being a very young currency with much room to grow in use and value, I would personally bet on a price increase. How much? When? It remains 100% unpredictable. One thing is certain though: at the time of Halving, the supply reduction will already be priced in the exchange rate, thanks to market anticipation. So don't expect a big price movement on Halving Day.

Note that other examples of halvings are available for comparison.

The first Bitcoin halving occurred on the 28th of November 2012. On that day the price went up +1.7%, a negligible move.

However the preceding and following months showed continued growth and led to the famous early-2013 rally (from 13$ to 260$ in 4 months).

More recently, the Litecoin, a Bitcoin clone, passed its first halving on August 25th, 2015. Two months before, a wild speculative rally took the price from 2$ to more than 8$, before crashing back to 3$.

What is certain for this second Bitcoin halving is that similar wild, speculative, short-term rallies and crashes will occur. The interesting observation will be, on a larger time-scale, to see if the up-trend that Bitcoin price has been experiencing since its inception in 2009 will continue its path.

HOW DOES THIS SITE WORK?

This web page is connected to several web APIs to provide real-time data about the Bitcoin network.

The new block announcement is obtained through a websocket established with blockchain.info.

The spot price is provided by Bitstamp web API.

Bitcoin’s 2016 Halving: What is It and Why Should You Care?

Last updated on April 30th, 2018 at 06:30 am

Soon a major event is going to happen in the Bitcoin ecosystem – The Block Halving. Although it may sound like a pagan ritual which includes the sacrificing of virgins and opening gateways to parallel worlds, the block halving event is real and it’s important.

The supply of Bitcoin is finite

Whenever a miner solves a Bitcoin block he gets Bitcoins as a reward, that’s how Bitcoins come into this world.
When Satoshi Nakamoto set up the rules for the Bitcoin protocol he stated that the number of bitcoins generated per block is set to decrease geometrically (by 50%) every 210,000 blocks. Since 6 blocks are found on average within an hour and halving happens once every 210,000 blocks, this means that every 4 years (give or take) there will be a halving event.

This basically means that the reward the miners will be reduced to 50% of what it used to be. So if today each miner receives 25 Bitcoins for solving a block, after the halving event he will receive only 12.5BTC. Following this math, the final number of Bitcoins will be roughly 21 million(20999999.9769 to be exact) in the year 2140.

Of course the fact that 21 million Bitcoins have been generated doesn’t mean that there are actually 21 million Bitcoins that can be spent. You need to take into account that there are many lost Bitcoins which will never be recovered (it’s assumed that 1/3 of the Bitcoins mined until today were lost).

Why should you even have a halving event?

“The main reason why this is done is to keep inflation under control. One of the major faults of traditional, “fiat”, currencies controlled by central banks is that the banks can print as much of the currency as they want, and if they print too much, the laws of supply and demand ensure that the value of the currency starts dropping quickly.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, is intended to simulate a commodity, like gold. There is only a limited amount of gold in the world, and with every gram of gold that is mined, the gold that still remains becomes harder and harder to extract. As a result of this limited supply, gold has maintained its value as an international medium of exchange and store of value for over six thousand years, and the hope is that Bitcoin will do the same.”

So when will the next halving occur?

Well, since we know the average block generation time (10 minutes) we can estimate that the next halving event should occur on July/August of 2016. There are websites such as BitcoinClock which show you a countdown until the next event.

Having said that, some community members have noticed that in fact, since the creation of Bitcoin, a new block has been created every 9 minutes and 20 seconds on average and not every 10 minutes as presumed. This is 7% faster than the presumed time of 10 minutes. Taking that into account, the next halving will be on July 9, 2016.

How will the Bitcoin halving effect the bitcoin economy?

Of course the main question people want to know is “will this affect Bitcoin’s price?” and the answer is “nobody knows”. There are arguments in favour of two scenarios – either the price will rise, or nothing will change.

Some claim that the halving event is well known to the community and therefor will not surprise anyone or cause a major change in Bitcoin’s price. Others claim that due to shortage in “Bitcoin supply” the price is bound to climb as demand will increase. However no one seems to think that the halving may lower the price of Bitcoin in any way.

The same debate happened before the last Bitcoin halving in 2012 and nothing actually happened to the price. Of course back in 2012 Bitcoin was much less known to the general community.

On November 28th 2012 the first Bitcoin halving occurred when block 210,000 was solved. Back at the time Bitcoin’s price was $13.42 and the halving didn’t seem to effect the price that much. Shortly after Bitcoin’s price spiked to $230 but many attribute that to the Cyprus bailout.

Having said that I personally believe that Bitcoin hasn’t been that widely adopted so such an event will have a significant effect on it’s price, what do you think?

The halvening is upon us: Bitcoin’s reward for miners just dropped 50%

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The biggest event of the year in bitcoin just happened.

The network saw its mining reward—the amount of bitcoin miners receive for confirming transaction—get cut in half earlier today (July 9), around 12:48 EST. The event occurs after every 210,000 blocks are mined, or confirmed, by the system.

It’s a significant moment for the bitcoin community. As we explained, the event was programmed into the system by its pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto. For miners, it results in a big drop in revenue—for one block mined, a miner would make around $16,000. Now, it’s $8,000.

In the long term, experts think the halvening could spur bitcoin’s price to new heights. A little over a year after the first bitcoin halving event in November 2012, the price reached an all time high north of $1,000.

In the short term, there has been a bit of a drop, but nothing too dramatic. The bitcoin network seems stable though, and the price has already started to climb back up.

For more details on the bitcoin halving event, check out our explainer.

Will the Upcoming Mining Reward Halving Impact Bitcoin’s Price?

The reward for mining Bitcoin is expected to see the second halving in its history later this year, potentially in June or July.

Bitcoin, a deflationary store of value as opposed to reserve currencies and fiat-money, has had its total supply limited to 21 million bitcoins since the original code released by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. Unlike fiat currencies that can be printed at will by central banks, the total supply of bitcoins is fixed by the consensus rules of the system. Because of its deflationary nature, the digital currency is often compared to precious metals such as gold, which also undergo a resource-intensive creation or mining process.

This process of mathematically securing transactions in a block of chains called mining requires a tremendous supply of computing power and electricity. In exchange for securing the Bitcoin network and processing transactions, the protocol currently rewards these miners with 25 bitcoins for every block of transactions found. However, this reward for miners will soon be cut in half from 25 bitcoins to 12.5 bitcoins. This “halving” will occur at block 420,000, which is expected to be mined in the middle of 2016.

Surge or Stability?

The decline of miner’s reward simply means that the Bitcoin network will begin to generate bitcoins at a much slower rate. If the demand for bitcoin remains constant through the year while the supply is cut in half, simple economics dictates that the price should rise until there is a new equilibrium between supply and demand. Whether or not this supply change is already a factor in the price of bitcoin is a point of disagreement.

Some argue that the Bitcoin community has been fully aware of the halving of miners’ reward for a long time and that the actual decline in the supply of bitcoins will not surprise most Bitcoin enthusiasts and traders in the community.

Historically, halving of miner’s reward has had no substantial effect on the price of Bitcoin. On November 28, 2012, the first time the miners’ reward was halved, there was no visible impact on the value of Bitcoin, which was worth around USD $13.40 per bitcoin.

This occurred when block 210,000 was solved.

Considering the historical result of the “halving day” and the increasing awareness of Bitcoin, it is difficult to predict whether the price of Bitcoin will surge or maintain its stability after the halving of miner’s reward.

As Bitcoin security expert and author of Mastering Bitcoin Andreas Antonopoulos explains, the impact of halving on the price of Bitcoin depends on a wide range of factors, including the difficulty and transaction volume of Bitcoin.

“I can't predict price. No one can. Anyone who does, even for 10 minutes, is lying,” said Antonopoulos. “The reward halving will change the inflation rate in Bitcoin. How that affects the overall economy depends on the conditions of all the other parameters in the economy: price, adoption, transaction volume, hashrate, difficulty, investments, other currencies, world market conditions, etc.”

Everything you need to know about the bitcoin ‘halving’ event

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Bitcoin has been on a wild ride.

Already over the past year, Craig Wright stepped forward as Satoshi Nakamoto, bitcoin’s anonymous founder, but later backed away from those claims; a civil war raged at the upper echelons of the bitcoin community over changes to the network’s code; a renowned bitcoin developer wrote a eulogy for the cryptocurrency; and another virtual currency, ethereum, exploded in popularity.

Against this backdrop, the price of bitcoin has nearly tripled.

It’s nearly impossible to say why bitcoin has done so well. But as an asset not directly tied to a single economy, it tends to attract investors when there’s a lot of volatility. There’s certainly been no shortage of that.

Now, a looming event expected around July 9th, known as “the halving,” could rattle the entire bitcoin system—its price, its stability, and its future.

What’s going on?

Before we get started, we should go over how bitcoin works. Bitcoin is a digital currency that lets two people enter into a financial transaction without any middlemen. While simple to use, the technology is loaded with checks and balances to eliminate fraud.

One of the keys to preventing fraud is the process of mining. Bitcoin transactions are stored on something called a “block.” If the bitcoin network is essentially a massive accounting book, then the blocks are its pages. Each block can store 1 megabyte of data, and it’s the miners’ job to confirm the authenticity of the transactions contained in the block. The miners do that by taking each transaction’s corresponding data and using it to complete a math problem. The solution is known as a “hash”—a shorter unique string of digits that has all the important transaction information within the block. Once completed, the hash ties back to the last block, which is how bitcoin creates a permanent, unalterable transaction record. (Changing one hash would require changing everyone else’s ledger in the bitcoin system.) Importantly, as more computing power is added to the system, the problems become more complex.

Miners don’t do this for fun, of course—every time a miner completes a block, it earns bitcoins as a reward. Right now, miners earn 25 bitcoins per block, which is about $16,000. Completing a block is the only way for new bitcoin to come into circulation.

That’s a lot of money. Sounds like a decent gig.

Yes, miners can make a good amount of money. Some, like this one in China, gross $1.5 million a month, according to Motherboard. Overall, ARK Invest estimates that miners have a 40% profit margin. Dealing with the complexity of the problems requires a lot of computing power and electricity, which account for the bulk of miners’ expenses. Becoming more efficient is crucial, which is why some miners have focused on making better chips and others have tried things like submerging their mining rigs in super cold liquids to get rid of heat more efficiently.

As long as mining for bitcoin remains profitable, miners will keep mining. But that’s about to become more difficult.

What’s changing?

Remember that reward miners get for confirming blocks? It’s going to be cut in half to 12.5 bitcoins in the coming weeks.

Why?

Part of what makes bitcoin valuable is the fact that there is a finite supply of 21 million bitcoin. No more will ever be created. This was done to make bitcoin similar to a natural resource like gold. When bitcoin’s creator built the system, he (or she, or they) knew that if bitcoin took off and there was an abundance of miners, that cap would be reached quickly. Currently, there are almost 16 million bitcoin in circulation and about 3,600 bitcoins are created each day.

So, to slow things down, Nakamoto did two things. First, in the bitcoin code, Satoshi made miners compete with one another to win the block reward. As more people are attracted to mine bitcoin, it gets progressively more difficult for any single miner to win the reward. As competition increases, miners load up on processing power, turning bitcoin mining from a bedroom hobbyist activity to one that requires the computing power of entire data centers today.

The second change? After every 210,000 blocks, the mining reward is cut in half. This is known in the bitcoin industry as a halving event. As of now, it looks like the 420,000th block will be mined on July 9th, at approximately 11:23 UTC.

So, this happened before?

Yes, approximately every four years, like the Olympics. Last time, it happened on November 28, 2012. At the time, the biggest concern was whether the computer code would actually cut the reward in half. But it did, which was a huge reassurance to the market that the technology was fully functional. On the day of the halving event, the price of bitcoin was $12.25. A little over a year later, it reached its all-time high, around $1,000. Bitcoin was also bought and sold more frequently, making it an all around better asset.

How will the miners adjust to being paid less for more difficult work?

Miners will hope to stay profitable by cutting costs and finding new revenue streams, like charging small transaction fees, for starters. A research paper by ARK Invest bitcoin analyst Chris Burinske found that miners have been over-investing in state-of-the-art mining equipment ahead of the halving, which means that the fixed cost of upgrading their equipment will be lower in the foreseeable future.

Miners will also benefit if the price rises, and some market watchers believe it will. Vinny Lingham, an avid bitcoin follower who has accurately predicted the price of bitcoin before, wrote in May that the halving event could push the price of bitcoin north of $1,000 by the end of the year. In an interview with Quartz, he reaffirmed that estimate, though he predicts there could be major volatility over the next few months at around $700, which he says it closer to the “true all time high” for bitcoin (read more about that here).

So, while miners are getting shortchanged by the halving event, most of them will be able to offset the short-term loss of revenue. But not all miners will survive.

Who won’t survive?

The miners running older equipment will be the ones that suffer. Lingham and other industry experts estimate that 25% of computers will probably be unprofitable thanks to the halving event. If they’re taken offline, the hashrate—a metric that quantifies the processing power of the bitcoin network—would fall, and the bitcoin network could be less secure. Last time, it fell almost 20%, according to Coindesk.

That’s a big problem, right?

Theoretically, but probably not. There’s a hypothetical scenario called a “51% attack” where a miner takes over 51% of the processing power in the bitcoin network. Since the miner controls the majority of the network, it can make fraudulent transactions and confirm them on its own, or spend bitcoins that have already been spent. It would create a chain effect that would probably bring down the whole bitcoin network. But bitcoin’s been around for so long that it’ll take a lot of money and resources to take over the network. ARK Invest estimated it would cost up to $400 million to carry out such an attack. And one of the key properties of blockchain, the technology underpinning bitcoin, is transparency—if any bad actor tries to take over 51% of the network, they’ll probably be spotted quickly, ARK Invest said.

What can we expect on the day of the event itself and after?

In general, we can expect a lot of volatility. On the day of the last halving, nothing really happened. Bitcoin was four years old and its market cap was only around $129 million.

With bitcoin’s market cap closer to $10 billion today, things won’t be as calm this time. Volume could be heavy and the price could fluctuate a lot, but the real metric to keep an eye on is the hashrate. If miners decide it no longer makes sense to keep older equipment online, the hashrate could fall, like it did last time. However, if the computing power in the bitcoin network falls below a certain point, it suddenly becomes profitable to add those older mining rigs back into a miner’s system (the less computing power, the easier and cheaper it is to solve for blocks). Then, if miners turn back on a lot of their older hardware, the hashrate jumps back up again. All this back and forth can cause a ripple effect throughout the bitcoin ecosystem.

Mid-July will be a tense time for the bitcoin community, especially miners. Mining will be tougher and less lucrative. And while things like transaction fees may change the way we think about bitcoin, making it less of an anarchist’s financial dream and more of a digital version of our existing financial system, a successful halving event will prove that bitcoin has a future, even if we don’t know exactly what it will be.

What is the Bitcoin Halving? Bitcoin Whiteboard Tuesday

Last updated on May 8th, 2018 at 04:03 pm

What is Halving Bitcoin…No, not having bitcoin…halving Bitcoin. What does it mean? When does it happen? What happens to the value of bitcoin when it does happen? Well, stick around…Here on Bitcoin Whiteboard Tuesday, we’ll answer these questions and more.

What you will learn in this video

• What is Bitcoin Halving?
• What are the implications of Bitcoing Halving?
• Does Halving affect Bitcoin price?

Hi, everyone. I’m Nate Martin from 99 bitcoins dot com, and this is Bitcoin Whiteboard Tuesday. During each edition, we’ll go over some basic ideas about Bitcoin. That way, you can learn more about Bitcoin yourself, or forward these videos to friends or family members who have questions.

When Bitcoin was created in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto, he designed a way for new bitcoins to be distributed without a person or group of people deciding who should get them. The idea, called bitcoin mining, was to reward people with new bitcoin for doing the work of verifying new transactions into new blocks through computational work…Ok, I lost some of you there. For a better understanding of mining, check out our episode titled, “What is Bitcoin Mining?”

Suffice to say that new Bitcoin is created as a reward for miners verifying blocks in the blockchain. When bitcoin started, the reward was set to 50 coins per block. but Nakamoto put into the protocol a rule where every two hundred and ten thousand blocks, or roughly every four years, the reward would be cut in half, and so is named a ‘halving event’.

The first occurred in late twenty twelve, where block number two hundred ten thousand rewarded 50 coins to the winning miner, but then block number two hundred ten thousand one only rewarded its winning miner 25 coins. The second halving event occurred in mid 2016, halving the block reward again so the reward for block number 420,001 came in the amount of 12.5 coins. And so it will go, until sometime near the year 2140, when all 21 million bitcoins will have been mined.

So why the change? Why not keep the reward the same? Isn’t that unfair to the miners?

The answer to that question lies in the law of supply and demand. If the coins are created too quickly, and there’s no end to the number of bitcoins that can be created; eventually there will be so many bitcoins in circulation that they would have very little value.

Vitalik Buterin, who is, at the time of this episode, the lead developer of the Ethereum project, wrote an op-ed piece for Bitcoin Magazine and explains the need for slowing the distribution of bitcoins through halving this way:

“The main reason why this is done is to keep inflation under control. One of the major faults of traditional, “fiat”, currencies controlled by central banks is that the banks can print as much of the currency as they want, and if they print too much, the laws of supply and demand ensure that the value of the currency starts dropping quickly. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is intended to simulate a commodity, like gold. There is only a limited amount of gold in the world, and with every gram of gold that is mined, the gold that still remains becomes harder and harder to extract. As a result of this limited supply, gold has maintained its value as an international medium of exchange and store of value for over six thousand years, and the hope is that Bitcoin will do the same.”

In other words, much of the value of gold is found in the fact that more and more resources are necessary to find a commodity of which there is less and less to find. People who enter into the mining business already know this and take that fact into account when determining how much to invest in their mining equipment and other costs associated with mining, while still being able to make a profit from selling that commodity on the market. That’s true for gold, and it’s also true for bitcoin.

The difference is that gold miners don’t know how much gold is left, or when the supply will be gone. Because of the rules in the protocol, Bitcoin miners know exactly how much is left, and when the supply will tighten.

Ok…but I’m sure you’re asking…what will happen to the value of my bitcoin?

Well, the short answer is…nobody knows. In 2016, a week after the halving event, not much happened to the exchange rate of bitcoin against the US dollar. Where bitcoin was trading at around 650 US dollars at the time of the event, a week later the rate was about 675, so not much of a change.

Many believed that the anticipated rise in price actually occurred between three months and a year ahead of the event itself, where bitcoin was trading around $300 at a year prior and $430 three months before the halving occurred.

But that was a different time. Add into the mix the media attention and subsequent public awareness spike in 2017, the exponential growth of ICO’s and new coins in the marketplace, government regulations and restrictions, not to mention futures and derivative offerings opening up doors for institutional investment; and it becomes quite the task to predict what effect the next halving event will have on global exchange rates.

The important thing to remember is this: Bitcoin was designed to be valuable. First, in that there will only ever be a specific number of them in existence, 21 million; and that inflation in bitcoin’s economy is kept in check by slowing its distribution through the process of halving.

I hope this gives you a better idea of what bitcoin halving is, and why it’s an important feature of what gives bitcoin its value.

Now, you may still have some questions. If so, just leave them in the comment section below.

And if you’re watching this video on YouTube, and enjoy what you’ve seen, don’t forget to hit the like button, and make sure to subscribe for notifications to new episodes.

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I want all my lost access yahoo account 'delete'; Requesting supporter for these old account deletion; 'except' my Newest yahoo account this Account don't delete! Because I don't want it interfering my online 'gamble' /games/business/data/ Activity , because the computer/security program might 'scure' my Information and detect theres other account; then secure online activities/ business securing from my suspicion because of my other account existing will make the security program be 'Suspicious' until I'm 'secure'; and if I'm gambling online 'Depositing' then I need those account 'delete' because the insecurity 'Suspicioun' will program the casino game 'Programs' securities' to be… more

chithidio@Yahoo.com

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Question on a link

In the search for Anaïs Nin, one of the first few links shows a picture of a man. Why? Since Nin is a woman, I can’t figure out why. Can you show some reason for this? Who is he? If you click on the picture a group of pictures of Nin and no mention of that man. Is it an error?

Repair the Yahoo Search App.

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I contacted Samsung thru their Samsung Tutor app on my phone. I gave their Technican access to my phone to see if there was a problem with my phone that stopped the Yahoo Search App from working. He went to Yahoo and I signed in so he could try to fix the Yahoo Search App not working. He also used another phone, installed the app from the Google Play Store to see if the app would do any kind of search thru the app. The Yahoo Search App just wasn't working.

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We can go to www.yahoo.com and search for any topic or website. It's just the Yahoo Search App that won't allow anyone to do web searches at all.

I let Google know that the Yahoo Search App installed from their Google Play Store had completely stopped working on May 18, 2018.

I told them that Yahoo has made sure that their Yahoo members can't contact them about anything.

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No matter what I search for or website thru the Yahoo Search App it says the following after I searched for
www.att.com.

WEBPAGE NOT AVAILABLE
This webpage at gttp://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0geJGq8BbkrgALEMMITE5jylu=X3oDMTEzcTjdWsyBGNvbG8DYmyxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDTkFQUEMwxzEEc2VjA3NylRo=10/Ru=https%3a%2f%2fwww.att.att.com%2f/Rk=2/Es=plkGNRAB61_XKqFjTEN7J8cXA-
could not be loaded because:
net::ERR_CLEARTEXT_NOT_PERMITTED

I tried to search for things like www.homedepot.com. The same thing happened. It would say WEBPAGE NOT AVAILABLE. The only thing that changed were all the upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols.
Then it would again say
could not be loaded because:
net::ERR_CLEARTEXT_NOT_PERMITTED

This is the same thing that happened when Samsung and At&t tried to do any kind of searches thru the Yahoo Search App.

Yahoo needs to fix the problem with their app.

Yahoo Search App from the Google Play Store on my Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone stopped working on May 18, 2018.

I went to the Yahoo Troubleshooting page but the article that said to do a certain 8 steps to fix the problem with Yahoo Services not working and how to fix the problem. Of course they didn't work.

I contacted Samsung thru their Samsung Tutor app on my phone. I gave their Technican access to my phone to see if there was a problem with my phone that stopped the Yahoo Search App from working. He went to Yahoo and… more

What to Expect When the Bitcoin Halving Happens

It's an event that brings equal parts predictability and uncertainty.

For close to a year, bitcoin miners and investors have been preparing for a network change nicknamed 'the halving'. At approximately 18:00 UTC tomorrow, the subsidy the bitcoin network uses to compensate miners will drop from 25 BTC to 12.5 BTC, never to increase again.

Yet, despite its scheduled arrival, many in the industry remain unsure just how significant an impact it could have on bitcoin's still-volatile price and the health of the distributed payment network's transaction validators (aka miners).

A programmed feature in the code, the bitcoin subsidy controls the supply of new bitcoins that are released into the market with each new block. When bitcoin first launched, a miner could earn 50 BTC for sealing a block on the blockchain ledger. After 210,000 blocks, or approximately four years, however, the reward was cut in half to 25. And tomorrow, as block 420,000 is sealed, miners will be left with a reward of 12.5 bitcoin.

As currently set, only 21m BTC will ever be mined, a figure that would require the consensus of all or most bitcoin users to change.

Because the figure does not vary or become irregular, there is a steady, predictable supply of new bitcoins. To traders, this has quelled some uncertainty regarding how many new bitcoins could suddenly appear for sale, and to miners, it has provided a steady incentive for them to continue maintaining bitcoin's ledger.

Complicating matters, however, is that not all traders are altruistic and that mining costs money, and since bitcoin's price impacts other areas of the ecosystem, some believe this delicate balance could be altered by the halving.

Petar Zivkovski, the director of operations at WhaleClub, argues that the price of bitcoin will drop after halving, due to the fact it marks a likely exit event for speculative buyers.

"The halving's impact on price has been felt since September of last year when price was hovering in the $200s. During that time, smart money began buying bitcoin in a market phase commonly known as accumulation."

So, what impact will halving have on the network? What will happen to the price? What can the average bitcoin investor or user expect to happen – or not to happen – once the halving occurs?

CoinDesk surveyed a number of market experts to explore.

There won't be Armageddon

At one point, there were some miners who expressed concern that the halving could impact their profitability, enough so that some would be forced offline. Chandler Guo, the founder of Bitbank and its subsidiary, BW, was one of these community members.

He argued in the beginning of June that, "if the price doesn't go up very quickly, up two times, it means a lot of the older machines will be shut down. They must shut down".

Further, he cautioned that 300 petahash of older machines could be forced off the network. But, since that interview, the price has increased from $530 to $650, meaning that this dynamic has changed.

Guo's thesis focused on the belief that if transactions took longer to verify, individuals would grow disenfranchised with the network, which could ultimately send the price down. If that happened, especially with the reward cutting in half, the profits for miners could degrade, making continuous mining more difficult.

Eric Lombrozo, founder of Ciphrex and a contributor to the open-source Bitcoin Core developer team, said in June that it was possible that such an event could occur, but that the extent of any impact was likely to be mitigated, based on historical analysis.

He told CoinDesk:

"We've already had a halving in the past…and we've also seen significant sudden drops in bitcoin price – both of these situations imply lower short-term miner revenue. In neither case did we see a significant drop in hashrate."

The hashrate could decline

While Armageddon is not around the corner, there is agreement that hashrate on the network, which currently stands at 1.54 exahashes per second will experience a slight decline.

Marco Streng, CEO of hosted mining services firm, Genesis Mining, isn't too concerned about this, however. "I think due to the halving, a slight hashrate drop is realistic to assume," he said.

Terrence Thurber, co-founder and CEO of hosted bitcoin miner Oregon Mines, echoed Streng's predictions about the network experiencing some drop in the total hashrate.

"We continue to believe that total network hash rate will decrease by approximately 10% after halving as older equipment that is no longer economically viable will leave the network. Later generation machines . will pick up some of the slack," he told CoinDesk.

Elsewhere, BitFury CEO Valery Vavilov expressed optimism about the halving, though admitted that his firm expects some drop in hashrate.

"Some decline in the bitcoin network hashrate is expected (after the halving), and we believe it will be insignificant," he told CoinDesk, adding:

"The most important thing is that even if the hashrate declines, it will not compromise the security of the bitcoin network."

Mining costs won't be affected

But the drop in hashrate won't be as significant primarily because the only real cost that miners have is electricity.

Eric Mu, the chief marketing officer at HaoBTC, a mining firm with approximately 5.5% of hashrate, explained that the effect of halving likely won't be immediate.

"The bulk of the cost is sunk in the form of mining equipment and infrastructure, at least that is our case," he said.

Litecoin's halving event, which took place on 25th August, 2015, supports Mu and Lombrozo's belief that the effect won't be significant.

When the halving happened, the hashrate was 1.19 TH/s. Over the following days, that dropped to 1.11 TH/s, which was only a 7% drop.

Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin and director of engineering at Coinbase, explained why the drop was so small in a reddit post.

Because China-based hydro power plants generate too much electricity, he explained, they will sometimes give miners free electricity for a share of revenue. Miners may make half as much at halving, but with free electricity, he argued they're still profitable.

The price will drop

But, how the price will be affected remains to be seen.

As noted by Zivkovski, the smart money — institutions, professional traders and knowledgeable bitcoiners — were banking on the rumor and event cycle. It's arguable that yesterday's near-10% price correction was already a sign that this is starting to occur.

Zivkovski said to CoinDesk:

"This is the classic 'buy the rumor, sell the event' cycle. In this case, the event is the halving. Smart (and patient) money, in the most part, is no longer looking to accumulate. Their holdings have more than tripled in value."

And after halving, the accumulators will start looking to liquidate those holdings, Zivkovski explained.

"Post-halving, however, the excitement will die down. Bitcoin, the network, has not changed fundamentally or significant in the past six months," he said.

While he couldn't offer a precise prediction on price, he did say that after accumulators take their profits, "a higher support level will form and the cycle will slowly take shape again".

Later, the price will rise

While the price could decline in the short term, it remains unclear how supply and demand will shift after the halving, if it will at all.

Miners are earning 25 BTC today, but it's not known whether they're selling at the same rate to maintain operations now that the price has increased. With prices rising, they could even be holding more bitcoin than they would normally.

Either way, the rate at which they could potentially sell new bitcoins into the market will undoubtedly fall, which could mean that, assuming demand does not decline, buyers will need to acquire bitcoin from the market, which would push the price up.

Where there is uncertainty is how much the price will rise.

"The price of bitcoin after the halving would normally be expected to rise as decreasing supply meets increasing demand," Thurber explained. "The unknown is how much price increase has already been baked into the current price."

But when the halving dust settles, Thurber believes that the price will be even higher than this recent run-up.

"Presuming the $445 value in May to be prior to a halving induced run-up, the project price after halving is fully absorbed should be approximately twice that level, around $900. Reaching this theoretical equilibrium is likely to take several months if it occurs."

Progress will continue

Ultimately, no matter the outcome, bitcoin has been here before.

It halved, some people stopped mining, but then the dust settled and the network grew, a process that will continue to happen until all 21m BTC are mined.

And as the network continues to grow and solidify, it becomes clear that even an event as jarring as halving can only reassert bitcoin's continued existence.

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

What is the 'Halving'? A Primer to Bitcoin's Big Mining Change

Of all the rules in bitcoin's code, few are as revered as the hard limit of bitcoin production.

The code dictates that 21 million coins will be released over the course of bitcoin's lifecycle. By limiting the total amount of bitcoins that could be created, Satoshi Nakamoto was able to establish a defined amount of available data, a revolutionary accomplishment in and of itself.

The limited production of bitcoins was, in a way, aimed at counteracting the endless printing of paper currencies.

Nakamoto compared it to the discovery and mining of gold in the original Bitcoin white paper, writing:

"By convention, the first transaction in a block is a special transaction that starts a new coin owned by the creator of the block. This adds an incentive for nodes to support the network, and provides a way to initially distribute coins into circulation, since there is no central authority to issue them. The steady addition of a constant of amount of new coins is analogous to gold miners expending resources to add gold to circulation. In our case, it is CPU time and electricity that is expended."

But in the actual code, there is actually no "constant of amount of new coin."

Instead, there are rules in place that dictate how much bitcoin will be released and when and how that supply is reduced overtime, ultimately leading to a time during which there will be no new bitcoins released.

Each time a new block is added to the bitcoin network, freshly minted bitcoins are rewarded to whichever miner discovered the valid block. This reward, initially set to 50 BTC, fell to 25 BTC in late 2012. Sometime next month, this number is expected to fall to 12.5 BTC. This event is known as a "halving".

Bitcoin halving in the code

According to the Bitcoin Core Client, main.cpp, the initial nSubsidy was 50 * COIN, which is the constant 100 million satoshis.

In the code, there is a line that says:

This dictates that every 210,000 blocks, the amount of new coin released should suddenly cut in half. As the code runs, it continues to calculate how many blocks have been solved. When the number hits 210,000, the first halving event takes place.

When the 210,000th block was hit, the number of bitcoin released was 50 * COIN divided by 2, which is 2.5 billion satoshi or 25 bitcoin.

On line 1574, the code specifies how the maximum number of bitcoin is reached. It says:

If (halvings >= 64)
return 0;

This means that once there have been 64 halvings, there should be no further nSubsidy released. In other words, after 50 has been divided 64 times, the last bitcoin will have been released into the market and the total 21 million supply will be in circulation.

Unlike with other perceived deflationary assets, it is crystal clear in the code that there will be a maximum number of bitcoin – and it is through this halving process that this state of affairs is achieved.

Bitcoin halving and miners

Miners, as one can imagine, stand to be impacted the most when the next halving event takes place.

In the white paper, Satoshi explains that the addition of bitcoin comes at the expense of CPU time and electricity. Miners have special-purpose pieces of hardware that are constantly running in a bid to discover the next block, using a constant flow of electricity along the way.

They make money when the revenue generated through mining those bitcoins exceeds the cost of running the mine, which in addition to electricity also includes personnel overheard, insurance and any other charges that come along with powering a high-intensity data center.

But with the halving, miners stand to see their revenue fall by a commensurate amount, bringing with it a significant impact on their business.

According to the CoinDesk Bitcoin USD Price Index, the price of bitcoin averaged $577 as of 12PM EST on 10th June. If the 420,000th block were to have been sealed with the market at that price, the amount of revenue denominated in US dollars that a miner could expect to receive would have fallen from $14,425 to $7,212.50 in an instant.

Losing 50% of revenue could result in some bitcoin miners having to shut their operations down. At least one miner has moved to pull the plug ahead of the halving.

However, there has been rigorous debate over how much of a concern the halving will be, given that the event is pre-programmed in the code and miners have likely been preparing for the event. Unlike with gold or another precious metal where a new, big discovery can happen at any time, miners know exactly what to expect and when.

Some argue that miners don't necessarily have to lose 50% of their revenue simply because their income is going to drop by half. As the argument goes, prevailing demand for bitcoins will stay constant, forcing the price higher once fewer bitcoins are being generated on a day-to-day basis.

For example, if miners were selling all 25 of their bitcoins per block to pay their bills, this would be an introduction of 25 new bitcoin into the market roughly every ten minutes (though this can fluctuate depending on network variance).

If the price were to stay constant at $577 even with these new bitcoins being added, that means there is $14,425 of available demand for every given block.

If the number of available bitcoin released every ten minutes were to fall by half to 12.5 BTC, the price of bitcoin will have to increase to make up for the $14,425 in available demand. Therefore, just because a miner sees its subsidy drop from 25 bitcoin to 12.5 doesn't mean the revenue in USD will drop as well.

Halving in the Real World

Fortunately, the bitcoin network has been through this situation before, albeit with a much smaller mining presence and less overall market activity.

Bitcoin experienced its first halving event on 28th November, 2012, the subsidy falling from 50 to 25 bitcoins per block.

At the time, the network hashrate was approximately 25,000 GH/s – a far cry from where it is today. A month later, the network hashrate dropped to approximately 20,000GH/s, a 20% drop. By February 2013, however, the hashrate had returned to its previous high and continued to rise from there.

At halving, the price for a bitcoin was approximately $12.25, which meant that miners received approximately $612.50 per sealed block. By February 2013, the price had actually increased to approximately $30. Miners had lost half of their bitcoin subsidy, but the price had increased enough to more than offset this. By April 2013, the price had increased to approximately $181.

But there is a big difference between a hashrate of 25,000GH/s, when the average person could run a bitcoin miner at home, and today, when industrial-grade mining farms in China, Iceland, the northwest US and the Republic of Georgia make up the bulk of mining activity seen today.

Today, the network hashrate stands at 1.4 exahash at the time of this writing. For context, that is 1.4 billion gigahash per second. If July's halving mirrored the last one, the hashrate could drop to approximately 1.12 exahash.

Fortunately, miners can look to litecoin for insight into what might occur at halving.

The hashrate right before Litecoin's halving took place was approximately 1.19 TH/s. On August 25, 2015 Litecoin's halving occurred. Over the next few days, the hashrate dropped from 1.19 TH/s to 1.11 TH/s.

The reality is that the hashrate only dropped by about 80 GH/s, which was only about a 7% drop.

Charlie Lee, Director of Engineering at Coinbase and Litecoin's Satoshi Nakamoto, offered the following theory as to why the hashrate didn't really drop:

"The hashrate dropped a little but then climbed back up pretty quickly to the previous level. That's really unexpected, but I think I have an explanation. I talked to some Chineses miners at Scaling Bitcoin and learned something interesting. Most miners have found electricity for free or close to 0 cost."

Essentially, because the cost of electricity was so low, miners didn't see any reason to shut their hardware down that they had already paid for. In other words, while profit did drop, it was all profit at electricity rates.

With a significant percentage of mining taking place in locations that already provide cheap electricity, the outcome could be similar when the number of new bitcoins introduced falls: the hashrate may drop, but it might not be as significant a drop as it was the first time.

The exact impact on the network – and the price – remains to be seen, and the weeks leading up to the event will likely see no shortage of commentary and speculation as to the outcome.

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

Bitcoin Halving and its Impact on the Price in 2016

The year 2016 will see twofold reduction in mining rewards for a found block.

The overall supply of bitcoins is finite, and comprises 21 million coins. A coin first sees the light every time a miner solves a block. The bitcoin protocol dictates that the quantity of bitcoins used as a reward from a block shall half every 210,000 blocks. In average, there are around six blocks deciphered in an hour; therefore, generating 210,000 blocks takes roughly 4 years.

This means that miner reward will drop to 12.5 BTC as opposed to 25 BTC in the years 2012 to 2016. The final amount of 21 million bitcoins will have been mined by 2140.

The reason behind that is the necessity to control inflations. Bitcoin at its essence resembles commodities like gold rather than fiat currencies. If a centralized issuer prints too much money, it will devaluate, while the supply of gold is limited, and its mining becomes gradually different over time. Due to its limited supply, gold may retain its properties as an international means of exchange. Bitcoin designers hoped that the cryptocurrency would behave more or less the same.

As a single block takes roughly ten minutes to be mined, the reward halving is set to occur in July or August 2016. However, some bitcoin community members reasonably say that it takes roughly 9 minutes 20 seconds to mine a block, which is 7% less than the generally accepted value. Considering the fact, the halving may occur as early as on June 20, 2016.

The main question is how the halving may affect the bitcoin price. The answer is nobody knows for sure; however, the most popular scenarios state that it is either surge in price, or retention of current dynamics. Some say that the community has been ready for the halving in advance, and no one will be surprised. Therefore, they say, the price will not change, as it is expectations conflict or unpredictability that cause price fluctuations. Others say that due to reduction of bitcoin supply, the demand will grow, which will result in the surge of price. However, both parties agree that the halving will not result in the price’s dropping.

However, some say that abrupt reduction of the reward combined with price retention may cause de-incentivizing of mining, which may result in monopolization and volatility growth. Some miners may consider it unprofitable to keep their capabilities on, and may bowl off. Moreover, the drop of mining profitability and outflow of market participants may signify reduction of bitcoin’s investment prospects. Its further popularization and acceptance in that case may also be subject to fading.

Halving has already occurred on November 28, 2012. Back then, bitcoin was worth $13.42, and the halving had no effect on the price. However, bitcoin was not as popular as nowadays. Shortly after the price rocketed to $230. Nevertheless, experts associate it with then-crisis in Cyprus.

Daniel Masters, former oil trader at Shell and current co-founder of a multimillion bitcoin hedge fund Global Advisors, expects that bitcoin could overcome its historical all-time high of $1,100, or even peak at $4,400 by late 2017.

Masters reasons his predictions with increased acceptance of bitcoin payments by major corporate players and governments, further development of investment and interest in the underlying technology, the blockchain, and further growth of demand from China caused by its deceleration of economic growth and devaluation of Yuan.

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The everyday usage of bit coin has increased more than 100% in the last year, demand is going up both in trading & in usage for buying products & services. With the current mood in the market, currently miners sell all their bitcoins as soon as they receive them to pay for expenses, with less of them being given out the mood may change & miners may hold onto them since demand is increasing it means the loss of bit coins available to trade is not just half, but more than half of new bit coins, so it is difficult to predict what it will do in real dollar terms. In the mid-term demand is expected to double again, who knows how traders will bet in the short term.

I don’t think miners holding onto bitcoin is a relevent concern even if they were to do that. I also see no reason they would do that, they still have bills to pay so getting rewarded half the coins they used to isn’t going to change that. If anything it might hasten their liquidation of bitcoin in order to cover expenses.

You gotta remember that 3/4th of all possible bitcoins have already been mined and out there. The last 5 million something will be mined over the next 125 years. That is the estimated time it will take to mine that last 5million. The amount of bitcoins rewarded to miners over any near term is going to be a tiny drop in the bucket. The amount of new coins is going to be limited by constantly increasing difficulty with dwindling reward, not miners hoarding.

The immediate result of the halving I think is obvious. The cost of mining is constantly increasing as difficulty increases and more mining power is required to process the same amount of work. This means increased use of real power as well. So the cost of mining is going to continue to increase continously. It already is impossible for all but huge mining farms to even make a profit mining. Cost of power makes it impossible to break even for smaller operations. Even the large ones are not making much over cost at the current reward. With the halving they will be getting half the pay for alot more work and alot more expenses (power and new equipment). These expenses will continously increase, not just every 4 years or so that the halving occurs. More cost with a steady reward, half of what its been. The only way for mining to not totally fall because it not being able to cover cost getting only half the reward if the price stays the same, is for it to not stay the same. The price will have to double almost immediately to get to just a break even point again, and continue to rise overtime to cover the ever increasing cost of mining.

Who knows when & how the major main stream sites will consider the use of bit coins. Top Ten Sites like amazon, alibaba, youtube, ebay, google, facebook, yahoo, bing, pinterest & netflix are not allowing payments in bit coins, if they do allow bit coins for their products & services, then demand for bit coins will go up in a massive way. For now the demand & usage is being led by the preferences of the consumer over credit cards, because many consumers do not want to give up their credit card info every time they order online with sites that they know are reputable.

seems kind of obvious with BTC being hard coded deflationary spiral…