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Bitcoin’s Halving Is A Meaningless Milestone
Do not trust pundits touting a non-existent “supply reduction”
Bitcoin’s long-awaited halving took place earlier today, against a backdrop of genuine ecstasy among the cryptocurrency’s dedicated acolytes. There were countdowns, live-streamed video events and chants of “when moon?” It cracked the mainstream news and is regarded as the biggest event in crypto. The halving has driven seemingly every bitcoin owner on the face of the Earth into making enthused price predictions and posting them online.
All of this is categorically insane. Worse, it is built on a lie, or at least a piece of purposeful misdirection on the part of Bitcoin’s major boosters, who should know better.
There are just as many bitcoins today (18,375,000) as there were yesterday, before the halving
Let’s recall what the halving actually does. It’s very simple: it halves the block reward for bitcoin miners, from 12.5 new BTC to 6.25. This changes the economics of mining significantly, by making mining much less lucrative. Some miners might stop altogether, hurting Bitcoin’s hash rate.
And that’s it. That’s all the halving does. It slows the rate that new BTC are produced. It does absolutely nothing…
