What is Bitcoin Halving?

The halving of Bitcoin is a pretty simple concept, but to explain it we need to start with Bitcoin mining.



As we know, mining is done for rewards, which are distributed according to a set of certain rules. The first rule is that the Bitcoin supply is limited to 21 million BTC and the second one is that for every 210,000 blocks that are added to the blockchain the reward decreases by 50%. That is essentially what Bitcoin, or block halving is. This decrease is set in place because of the law of supply and demand. If BTC coins are created too quickly, or there’s no end to the number of bitcoins that can be created, eventually there will be so many bitcoins in circulation and they would have very little value.



According to research, Bitcoin halving happens roughly every 4 years. There have already been two of them, in November 2012 and July 2016. Bitcoin Halving 2020 will happen in May of this year.