Bitcoin Third Halving: Miners' reward halves to 6.25 BTC

Halving Bitcoin 2020 took place. Block number 630000 was obtained, in which the pool received only 6.25 BTC.

Firsta block with a reduced reward appeared at 22:25 May 11 Moscow time, it was mined by Antpool. The reward in the coinbase transaction was 6.25 BTC, and the amount of commissions also went to the pool — just under 0.91 BTC.

Miner award halving carries two maineffects. First, of course, a decrease in BTC supply in the market will lead in the long term to an increase in the exchange rate. But this will not give an instant effect. Obviously, this was what the “whales” took advantage of, for the last three days they have been selling the bitcoin exchange rate from the pierced bar of $ 10,000 to $ 8,400 today on May 7-8. Expectations of growth have already been laid in the auction of recent months. Halving itself did not add anything new, but a small speculative bubble quickly deflated.

The second consequence of halving is more negative. Reducing the reward will make a significant share of previous generations of ASIC miners unprofitable, and their owners will be forced to turn off unprofitable equipment or transfer it to other blockchains. This will lead to a sharp drop in hash rate and a temporary decrease in network security. But there will be a more direct effect that will affect everyone. A drop in hash power will result in slower block creation until the next recalculation of complexity. This means that transactions will take longer, and commissions for them will grow several times.

That is the topic of transaction fees nowcomes to the fore. The coming months will show whether miners should expect that someday transaction fees will exceed the block reward and provide them with work for an unlimited time. Last week, the average bitcoin transaction fee reached its highest level in the last ten months and amounted to $ 3.19. But this is rather a consequence of market volatility and increased user activity.

According to Bitinfocharts, May 8th average commissionBitcoin transaction was $ 3.19, which was the highest since July 2019. A previous increase in the size of commissions was recorded on April 30 - then the fee for a Bitcoin transaction was $ 2.94.

In May, the average size of the commission fell brieflyto $ 1.8 last week, and then gradually reached a new high of $ 3.19. At the same time, over the past weekend commissions fell again, and on May 10, the average transaction fee was $ 2.7. When the BTC price hit a record high in December 2017, the average transaction cost reached $ 55. It took several days to process some low-commission transactions.

There is an assumption that miners willstimulate higher commissions after halving. Since miners must also work for half the money, they can only start processing transactions with high commissions in order to continue to make a profit. But if user activity decreases, then miners will be forced to include any available transactions in the blocks, and commissions will go down again.

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