The Halving just happened, We’re all still alive, and so is Bitcoin! The first 12.5 BTC block was mined by F2Pool (the largest mining operation in the world) at 17:46 (GMT). Bitcoin price and hashrate seem to be stable after a 5% price drop just half an hour before the Halving.

The speculation is over and any dramatic changes regarding the value of Bitcoin will probably happen within the coming months if they occur at all.

Bitcoin saw some volatility in the last few months, which was overall positive considering BTC rose from $420 to $630 in a period of 3 months, reaching the $789.78 (Data via Bitfinex) mark on the 16th of June.

So what does the future hold for the 12,5 block reward Bitcoin? Some worry the block reward reduction will cause a big portion of miners to abandon the industry, thus slowing the Bitcoin blockchain, which would in turn cause the price to drop and drive even more miners out of the business, in a downward avalanche that could end Bitcoin (a Death Spiral).

This would be the worst case scenario for Bitcoin, which is unlikely to happen to the first cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $10.07 billion.

Innovation and development of mining hardware like the new Antminer S9 or the S7.

Many believe that new ASICs should balance the supply and demand scale, allowing the Bitcoin blockchain to remain healthy shaking the Death Spiral predictions the ground.

The new Antminer S9 has 14.5 TH/s hashing power. Supply is limited, however, and we should still see some volatility in the coming months, affecting all users and bitcoin-related companies.

Vlad Cealicu, CTO and co-founder of CryptoCompare said:

With the halving out of the way, we are expecting a lot of volatility in the Bitcoin price in the following week. Another interesting area to watch is bitcoin mining contracts and how the operators will cope with the reduced block reward.

One thing is sure, the halving already happened and nothing broke. We still don’t know who Satoshi Nakamoto is, but whoever he, she or they might be, they can rejoice in the fact that Bitcoin survived another halving and continues to prove itself over again.