12 May Bitcoin halving sees mining profits slashed for third time
Bitcoin has surpassed a significant technical milestone that saw rewards for mining activity halved for the third time in the cryptocurrency’s 11-year history.
Occurring roughly every four years, a so-called halving (or halvening) event cuts the reward for successfully validating a new “block” in half. The latest halving saw compensation fall from 12.5 to 6.25 bitcoin – or from roughly $110,000 to $55,000 at current market rates.
The highly anticipated halvening was triggered at 19:23 UTC on May 11 with the addition of block 630,000 to the Bitcoin blockchain.
Bitcoin halving
Bitcoin is the world’s first cryptocurrency and the largest today by market capitalization, followed by Ethereum and XRP.
The Bitcoin halving mechanism is built into the system in order to incrementally reduce the rate at which new coins are minted, thereby slowing progress towards the maximum number of coins that can ever be in circulation: 21 million.
The number of coins currently in existence sits at 18…