Four years in the making, the fourth Bitcoin halving finally occurred—marking “a significant milestone for the protocol, and for crypto, more broadly,” according to an update shared by Grayscale.
Friday evening US Eastern Time, at block number 840,000, the Bitcoin block reward “fell by half, from 6.25 Bitcoin per block to 3.125 Bitcoin per block.”
Bitcoin’s total supply is “limited to 21 million coins, and the rate of new issuance falls by half approximately every four years until that amount is reached.”
The Grayscale update added that the halving events can be “considered a demonstration of Bitcoin’s predictable monetary policy and verifiable scarcity.”
Transaction fees rose significantly in the blocks “following the halving due to the introduction of the Runes protocol, a new fungible token standard for the Bitcoin network—highlighting the ongoing development of the world’s first public blockchain.”
If transaction fees normalize “at a level higher than in the past, the impact of the halving on miner revenue will be dampened,” the Grayscale report noted.
For additional insights on the most recent Bitcoin halving event, you may review the extensive Grayscale report 2024 Halving: This Time It’s Actually Different and check out the Grayscale Live: The Halving.
As noted in a separate update from NYDIG, Bitcoin has now undergone a reward halving, which is effectively “a 50% reduction in the block subsidy, on April 19th, just the fourth such event since it launched over 15 years ago.”
Halvings are foundational to Bitcoin’s economic promise of fixed supply “as halvings are how the supply of bitcoins is capped at (nearly) 21 million.”
The NYDIG report also mentioned that the “impact of the new supply reduction represents only 0.6% of daily trading volumes and today is less economically impactful to price than it once was.”
The report pointed out that the halving is “more economically impactful on miners, who are seeing a 50% drop in their main source of income.”
Following halvings we have historically “seen downward difficulty adjustments of 5.4% – 14.7% as uneconomical hash rate is taken offline.”
However, given where prices and rig breakevens are, it seems “unlikely much hash rate, if any, will be taken offline.”
