Bitcoin's next 'halving' is right around the corner. Here's what you need to know
That could have a lot of implications, from the price of the asset to the bitcoin miners themselves. And, as with everything in the volatile cryptoverse, the future is hard to predict.
Here's what you need to know.
WHAT IS BITCOIN HALVING AND WHY DOES IT MATTER? Bitcoin «halving,» a preprogrammed event that occurs roughly every four years, impacts the production of bitcoin. Miners use farms of noisy, specialized computers to solve convoluted math puzzles; and when they complete one, they get a fixed number of bitcoins as a reward.
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The world of cryptocurrencies is very dynamic. Prices can go up or down in a matter of seconds. Thus, having reliable answers to such questions is crucial for investors.
View Details» Halving does exactly what it sounds like — it cuts that fixed income in half. And when the mining reward falls, so does the number of new bitcoins entering the market. That means the supply of coins available to satisfy demand grows more slowly.
Limited supply is one of bitcoin's key features. Only 21 million bitcoins will ever exist, and more than 19.5 million of them have already been mined, leaving fewer than 1.5 million left to pull from.
So long as demand remains the same or climbs faster
