Witness history! Just now, Bitcoin has halved!

Nakamoto 2025-10-13 17:59 67299人围观 BTC

The four-year software update (called "halving") is here. Data shows that at 8:09 on April 20, 2024, Beijing time, Bitcoin successfully completed its fourth halving at block height 840000. The mining reward of the Bitcoin network was halved from 6.25 BTC

The four-yearly software update (called the "halving") is here.
Data shows that at 8:09 on April 20, 2024, Beijing time, Bitcoin successfully completed its fourth halving at block height 840000. The mining reward of the Bitcoin network was halved from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. The last halving occurred on May 11, 2020.

After the Bitcoin halving was completed, the price of Bitcoin rose slightly and is now at $63,914 per coin.

The Bitcoin market supply will be significantly reduced starting from late April. Based on the pre-halving price of Bitcoin (approximately US$64,000/unit), the entire mining industry may lose more than US$10 billion in the next year.

Earnings down? Miners are busy hoarding coins

What is Bitcoin Halving? It is understood that the Bitcoin halving is an event that occurs approximately every four years, which cuts the reward for "mining" Bitcoin transactions in half. Halvings introduce deflationary properties to Bitcoin’s economic model by reducing the rate at which new Bitcoins are produced. The halving event is a key feature of Bitcoin's design to ensure its scarcity, value retention, and long-term sustainability as a digital currency. According to the design of the Bitcoin protocol, the halving event occurs after approximately every 210,000 blocks are mined. This time interval is approximately four years. Therefore, the time of the next Bitcoin halving will depend on the accumulation of block heights, rather than a fixed point in time.

It is understood that the daily output of Bitcoin before halving varies, but they all revolve around the block reward system, with an average output of 6.25 Bitcoins every 10 minutes. Based on previous block rewards, this equates to approximately 900 Bitcoins being produced per day. However, after the halving event, this number will become approximately 450 per day.

If Bitcoin cannot continue its growth momentum over the past year and instead maintains the pre-halving price fluctuation (from US$60,000 to US$65,000 per coin), the entire mining industry will lose more than approximately US$10 billion in revenue in the next year.

(Bitcoin halving schedule. Source/Coinwarz)

As for the losses that may occur after the halving, miners are not eager to sell the Bitcoins in their hands before the halving. They hope that the value of Bitcoin will rise after the halving, so that they can sell more Bitcoins at high prices to offset the losses caused by the decline in production.

According to cryptocurrency research organization The Miner Mag, just days before the mining reward halving, several of the world's mainstream Bitcoin miners, including listed miners such as Marathon Digital Holdings, CleanSpark and Bitfarms, have accumulated approximately $2.8 billion worth of Bitcoin. Clean Spark held more than 5,000 Bitcoins as of the end of March, a 2,400% increase from the same period last year. Marathon Digital Holdings increased its holdings by 50% to 17,300 Bitcoins, while Bitfarms also increased its holdings by 50%.

Matthew Schultz, executive chairman of Clean Spark, said: “We hope that Bitcoin will appreciate in value, which will solve the problem of the reward halving. ”

As for the soaring currency prices that miners are looking forward to, Joel Kruger, market strategist at LMAX Group, said in a statement: "Everything known has been discounted into the price. ”“Having said that, anyone who wanted to buy Bitcoin due to the halving event has already done so, suggesting that we may see a selling reaction in the short term following the halving. ”

Official halving, miners accelerate involution

According to tracking by the Bitcoin production data statistics website Coinwarz, at 8:09 on April 20, 2024, Beijing time, Bitcoin successfully completed the fourth halving at block height 840000. The mining reward of the Bitcoin network was halved from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. The last halving occurred on May 11, 2020.

It is understood that since the number of Bitcoins produced within a certain period of time has an upper limit, in other words, the more computing power a miner has, the greater the proportion of rewards he will receive. Marathon Digital Holdings, Clean Spark and other miners who compete for fixed bitcoin rewards by using ultra-fast computers to solve mathematical puzzles have invested in new equipment and sought to acquire smaller rivals this year to try to cushion the impact of falling revenue.

American Marathon Digital Holdings announced the acquisition of two Bitcoin mining farms on January 16, 2024, with a total operating capacity of 390 megawatts. While taking ownership of both sites, another Canadian miner, Hut8 Mining, continues to serve as operator. On January 30, 2024, a subsidiary of Marathon Digital Holdings entered into an agreement with Hut8 Mining to terminate Hut8 Mining as the operator of these sites and transfer operational responsibilities to Marathon Digital Holdings. Fred Thiel, chairman and CEO of Marathon Digital Holdings, said: "By personally operating the facilities in Granbury and Kearney, we will be able to fully realize the operational and economic benefits of owning these assets. ”“The consistent performance of our Abu Dhabi site is a clear indication that we have some of the best operators in the industry. We look forward to gaining an even greater presence with our new facilities in Texas and Nebraska and leveraging our operational expertise to realize the full benefits of our recent acquisitions. ”

On April 2, 2024, Marathon Digital Holdings announced on its official website the acquisition of a 200-megawatt Bitcoin mining data center adjacent to the Wind Farm. Fred Thiel said: “With the completion of this acquisition, the impact of our operations will be greater, with the opportunity to reduce the cost of production at the site and add an additional 100 megawatts of production capacity. ”However, market investors have not been optimistic recently about whether the price of Bitcoin can continue to rise to make up for the losses caused by the decline in miner output. JPMorgan Chase gave Marathon Digital Holdings an "underweight" rating in a report on April 10. In terms of data, Marathon Digital Holdings’ stock price has fallen by more than 28% since the beginning of the year.

Clean Spark announced the acquisition of three Bitcoin mining data centers in Mississippi on February 27, 2024. “We are excited to begin operations in Mississippi with our latest expansion. We are working hard to add more computing power as soon as possible. ”said CEO Zach Bradford. “Expanding into new states is an important milestone for our company, and we look forward to working with the communities we join. By maximizing the grid services capabilities of Bitcoin miners, we aim to create jobs and promote economic growth, benefiting both of us. ”The reporter inquired that the reality is that Clean Spark’s share price has fallen by more than 15% in the past month.

The impact of the Bitcoin halving on the expected earnings of miners has recently affected the stock price performance of many miners. The share prices of the two miners RiotPlatforms and HIVE Digital Technologies have fallen by 26.37% and 15.58% respectively in the past month. Hut8 Mining’s share price has fallen 36.11% since the beginning of the year.

“This is a last-ditch effort by miners to squeeze out as much revenue as possible before output takes a major hit,” said Matthew Kimmel, digital assets analyst at Coin Shares. ”“With revenues falling across the board overnight, each miner's strategic response and how they adapt will likely determine who leads and who lags behind. ”

As electricity costs soar, tech giants take the lead

Looking back, Bitcoin's value has reached new highs after each previous halving, helping to mitigate cyclical declines in mining rewards and increases in operating costs. However, the room for success in the industry is becoming smaller and smaller, with miners constantly needing to spend more money in a never-ending technology race for smaller returns, while miners now face power competition from the emerging and financially deep artificial intelligence industry.

According to The Miner Mag, although miners listed in the United States are representatives of the industry, they only account for about 20% of the industry’s computing power. The remaining private miners may be more vulnerable after the halving, because compared with listed companies that can raise funds through stock sales, private miners can usually only use debt financing or venture capital to meet their needs. Market traders are generally betting that mining industry stocks will fall over the potential move by listed miners to sell shares to generate cash flow in the coming months. As of April 11, short interest in 15 crypto mining stocks totaled nearly $2 billion, according to estimates from financial analytics and technology firm S3 Partners LLC.

(Source/S3 Partners LLC)

It is understood that the current cryptocurrency market is very different from a few years ago. In the past, most mining activities were scattered around the world. However, in recent years, most mining activities have moved to the United States, which has intensified competition for electricity in the United States.

“Energy in the United States is extremely limited,” said Adam Sullivan, CEO of Core Scientific, a publicly traded Bitcoin company based in Austin, Texas. ”“Currently, miners are competing with some of the world's largest technology companies, which are struggling to find space in data centers that also have high energy consumption attributes. ”

The emerging artificial intelligence industry is attracting large amounts of capital, making it harder for miners to obtain favorable electricity prices from utility companies. Amazon has announced it will spend nearly $150 billion on data centers, while Blackstone is building a $25 billion data center empire. Google and Microsoft are also investing heavily.

David Foley, co-managing partner of the Bitcoin Opportunity Fund, previously said, “The artificial intelligence industry is willing to pay three to four times the electricity bills that Bitcoin miners paid last year, and this is happening globally. ”It is understood that the fund has invested in both public and private miners.

Tech giants also have an advantage in getting electricity from utility companies, given their stable revenue streams, while cryptocurrency mining revenue fluctuates with the rise and fall of Bitcoin's price. Taras Kulyk, CEO of Sunny Digital, a cryptocurrency mining service provider, said: “Given their strong earnings, utility companies view technology companies as more reliable buyers. ”

Due to competition, low-cost power contracts may be more difficult to renew when existing agreements expire. Greg Beard, CEO of publicly traded Bitcoin miner Stronghold Digital Mining, said large Bitcoin miners tend to lock in energy prices, often for several years.