NEW YORK (AP) — Sometime in the next few days or even hours, the “miners” who chisel bitcoins out of complex mathematics are going to take a 50% pay cut — effectively slicing new production of the world’s largest cryptocurrency in half.
That could have a lot of implications, from the price of the asset to the bitcoin miners themselves. And, as with everything in the volatile cryptoverse, the future is hard to predict.
Here’s what you need to know.
Bitcoin “halving,” a preprogrammed event that occurs roughly every four years, impacts the production of bitcoin. Miners use farms of noisy, specialized computers to solve convoluted math puzzles; and when they complete one, they get a fixed number of bitcoins as a reward.
Halving does exactly what it sounds like — it cuts that fixed income in half. And when the mining reward falls, so does the number of new bitcoins entering the market. That means the supply of coins available to satisfy demand grows more slowly.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton can be disciplined for suit to overturn 2020 election, court says
Chinese FM Wang Yi's visit to Spain highlights bright prospects for open cooperation: spokesperson
Egypt opens pharaonic mummies hall to visitors at new museum in Cairo
Peng Liyuan Visits Vietnam National University, Hanoi
Police in Paris detain a man wearing fake explosives vest at Iran's Consulate
PMs of Italy, Portugal call for ambition to attack the crisis
BP defeated thousands of suits by sick Gulf spill cleanup workers. But not one by a boat captain
Spotlight: U.S. authorities tell int'l students to leave U.S. if universities go online
5,000 flee military raids on villages in Myanmar’s Sagaing region — Radio Free Asia
Peng Liyuan Visits Vietnam National University, Hanoi