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Bitcoin Halving Concludes, Slashes Miners’ Rewards Amid Fee Hike
- The fourth Bitcoin halving has finally been completed, as the blockchain reached its 810,000th block on April 20th.
- The block reward for miners halved to 3.125 BTC per successful block, adding to the already diminishing supply.
- BTC’s remained fairly stable over the weekend following the halving.
- Yes, the fact that the halving occurred on 4/20 has not been lost on the meme-obsessed community.
After weeks of anticipation and hype, the Bitcoin halving is finally behind us. The monumental event, slashing the block reward for BTC miners, concluded on the 20th of April amid a broader market downturn. As we move into a post-halving world, the crypto community is split – are we set for a bull run due to the dwindling Bitcoin supply, or is there more pain on the horizon?
Related: Miners Celebrate Runes Debut As Casey Rodarmor’s Protocol Drives Up Fees
Would You Spend One Million to Be Part of History? Bitcoin Investors Would
The Bitcoin halving event is one of the biggest on the calendar. It occurs approximately every four years and cuts the reward given to BTC miners in half. The most recent halving saw the block reward reduced from 6.25 to 3.125. This anti-inflation measure is baked into the Bitcoin blockchain’s coding and ensures that its maximum supply of 21M BTC won’t be reached until sometime next century. Each of the three previous halvings has resulted in new Bitcoin all-time high prices – although has often taken 12-18 months before occurring.
Although the world is fixated on how the supply shock will ultimately impact Bitcoin’s price, some of the network’s active whales had a few other ideas in mind. Immediately after each halving concludes, there is a mad scramble from investors and miners to etch their names in Bitcoin folklore. Basically, they want their transactions included in the new era’s genesis block – AKA the first bundle of data added to the blockchain post-halving.
But the pushing and shoving has some odd flow-on effects. As people pay up to have their transactions prioritised, the network fees follow suit. The first block following the Bitcoin halving generated an absurd USD $2.4M (AUD $3.7M) in transaction fees, with one fiend paying nearly AUD $1M to have their transaction included. Talk about having money to burn…
So, what’s next for Bitcoin? Some in the industry are already looking to the next halving, set for mid-2028, and arming themselves with price predictions. Several major analysts have already set targets of USD $200K (AUD $311K), while Swyftx Lead analyst Pav Hundal suggested a “high double, or low triple digit percentage point increase in price by the next halving.”
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It’s always good to be looking to the future. But for now, I think it might be time to take a deep breath and observe the fascinating short-term aftermath of the halving.
Author
Ben Knight
Ben Knight is a writer and editor from Melbourne with a passion for all things music and finance. He enjoys turning complex topics – especially the technical details of cryptocurrency – into digestible bites that anybody can understand. He acquired his Master’s in Writing, Editing and Publishing from RMIT in 2019 and has run his own creative writing business ever since.
