Early this morning, the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain saw its 800,000th block created. This is an opportunity to take stock of the network’s health, as well as the approaching halving.
The Bitcoin blockchain surpasses its 800,000th block
On January 3, 2009, the first block of the Bitcoin network (BTC) was mined by Satoshi Nakamoto, marking the start of a long adventure, and 14 years later, the famous blockchain has reached its 800,000th block.
This took place this morning shortly after 5 a.m. Paris time, and the block earned its miner 6.386 BTC – the 6.25 BTC reward and transaction fee. When the block was created, the mining difficulty was almost 54 T, the highest level ever reached on the network :
Figure 1 – Mining difficulty on the Bitcoin blockchain
This echoes the fact that the network has never been more secure, with computing power close to its all-time highs, at 381.7 exahashes per second:
Figure 2 – Hashrate on the Bitcoin network
40,000 blocks before the next halving
This 800,000th block is an important milestone, as the 4th halving will take place 40,000 blocks later. As a reminder, a halving on Bitcoin takes place every 4 years or so, and consists in dividing by 2 the rewards received by miners on each block mined.
Whereas this reward amounted to 50 BTC at the blockchain’s launch, it is now set at 6.25 BTC, and will therefore fall to 3.125 at the next halving, scheduled to take place in 277 days’ time, on April 26, 2024.
Although past events should not be taken as a guarantee of what will happen in the future, halvings usually mark the start of a new bull run on the cryptocurrency market. The last one, for example, took place on May 11, 2020, while BTC was still trading at $8,700.
This then contributes to the asset’s scarcity, considerably reducing its inflation to the symbolic 21 million BTC mark.
In the meantime, the Bitcoin price is trading around $29,800 at the time of writing, still locked in its range between $29,000 and $31,900 for a month now.
