What Is Bitcoin Halving And Will It Affect The Price

What is bitcoin halving?
It is related to how bitcoins are recorded and created. Transactions in the cryptocurrency are recorded on a universally accessible ledger called a blockchain. These transactions are put on the blockchain by “miners” who pack them into blocks that are then linked – or “chained” – together. They do this by solving a cryptographic puzzle using specialised hardware and – this is the key bit – receive a reward in newly created bitcoins.

Nakamoto intended the number of bitcoins entering circulation to be finite, at 21m, so the protocol seeks to control the amount of new coins entering the market. It does this by halving the size of the miners’ reward every 210,000 blocks – roughly every four years.

The latest halving is expected to take place in the early hours of Saturday in the US and UK, when the reward for adding a new block of transactions to the blockchain will decrease from 6.25 bitcoins to 3.125. Bitcoin – of which there are more than 19m in circulation – will continue to halve until the 21m point is reached, expected in 2140.