What Is: the Bitcoin Halving? How Bitcoin's Supply Is Limited
What Is the Bitcoin Halving? How Bitcoin's Supply Is Limited decrypt.co In brief The Bitcoin halving is an event where mining rewards are cut in half. The event takes place every four years, according to pre-set rules in Bitcoin's code. Every four years, the amount of Bitcoin doled out to cryptocurrency miners halves in a process imaginatively known as the Bitcoin halving (or halvening, though the term has fallen out of favor in recent years). Here’s why—and how—it works. Bitcoin’s supply limit To understand the Bitcoin halving, we must first understand the theory behind its supply. The inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto , believed that scarcity could create value where there was none before. After all, there’s only one Mona Lisa, only so many Picassos, a limited supply of gold on Earth. Bitcoin was revolutionary in that it could, for the first time, make a digital product scarce—there will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin .