The 4th Bitcoin Halving was successful, the mining reward was "halved" to 3,125 BTC

The fourth Bitcoin Halving event is finally complete. The block reward for miners has officially decreased from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC/block.

At 07:10 AM on April 20, 2024 (Vietnam time), Bitcoin completed the 4th Halving at block number 840,000, mined by ViaBTC mining pool.

Although the reward in this block has been divided in half from 6.25 BTC to only 3,125 BTC, block 840,000 still recorded a fee paid to miners of more than 37 BTC, worth more than 2.4 million USD, shows that a large part of the community wants their transactions to be included in this historic block, as well as to keep up with the Runes Protocol trend.

As explained, Halving is BTC's deflationary mechanism, designed to divide the amount of new coins produced in half as block mining rewards after every 120,000 block cycle, or once every 4 years. It is designed to ensure a long Bitcoin production period, so that the maximum total supply of 21 million BTC is only reached in 2140.

Since Bitcoin was born in 2009, this currency has undergone three Halvings in 2012, 2016 and 2020.

With this Halving, the block reward has decreased from 6.25 BTC to 3,125 BTC. Halving events will continue until the last Bitcoin is expected to be mined around 2140. After that, miners will only earn from transaction fees.

The next halving event is expected to take place between February and April 2028.

Bitcoin price experienced a sudden increase and decrease on April 19. After dumping to 59,600 USD in the morning due to information that Israel launched missiles to retaliate against Iran, the world's largest cryptocurrency by evening recovered strongly to the area of 65,000 USD. However, at the time of halving, BTC stabilized around 63,500 USD.

But Halving has more impact on prices in the long term than in the short term. According to historical data, after Halving, BTC price will begin to enter a growth cycle and set a new peak, pulling the entire cryptocurrency market up. Then there will be a strong correction.

However, the current situation seems a bit different. Thanks to the momentum from ETF funds after the SEC officially "green lighted" the Bitcoin spot ETF in January 2024, the price of BTC climbed extremely spectacularly in the following months. BTC broke last season's ATH and set this bull season's ATH at over 73,000 USD in March.

Therefore, it is difficult to predict how the price of the king coin will fluctuate after this Halving. Especially in the context of the tense geopolitical situation in the world, which easily affects the group of risky assets.

The level of interest in “Bitcoin halving” is setting an unprecedented record, more than double that of the last “halving” in 2020.

Data from Google Trends as of April 18 shows that the search volume for the keyword "Bitcoin halving" is at 49 points, and is expected to soon reach a peak of 100 points at the end of this month. The level of interest in halving this year is higher than ever, double that of 2020, the last time this event occurred.

A scale of 0-100 is used to measure the level of user interest in a certain keyword in a certain time period and area. A value of 100 represents the highest popularity of that term, a value of 0 means there is not enough data for the term.

Statistics also show that Bitcoin halving is attracting a lot of attention from users in Nigeria, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Cyprus. Among them, Vietnam only falls into the top 39.

Halving is Bitcoin's deflationary mechanism, designed by Satoshi Nakamoto to divide the amount of new coins produced in half as block mining rewards after every 120,000 block cycle, every 4 years. This event is intended to ensure that the production time of Bitcoin is extended, to keep the maximum total supply of the world's largest coin at 21 million BTC in 2140.

Despite the ongoing negative sentiment in the market, many experts still point to Bitcoin's historical patterns that show it will grow significantly post-halving. Meanwhile, many big names such as JPMorgan or BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes predict that Bitcoin will drop sharply after the halving.