The Next Bitcoin Halving Event is Anticipated to Occur in April; Specific Date TBD

The next Bitcoin halving event is expected to occur in the second half of April, although Blockworks is unsure of the precise date. Block reward halvings, which cut the amount of fresh bitcoin by 50%, are thought to be catalysts for price increases and the basis of bitcoin's alleged four-year market cycles. Halvings essentially double the cost of producing bitcoin since they lower the reward but have no effect on the overall difficulty of bitcoin mining. Because bitcoin mining is random, it is impossible to predict the exact time and date of halvings.

The issuance of Bitcoin was intended by Satoshi Nakamoto to be cut in half every 210,000 blocks, with procedures guaranteeing blocks are found on average every 10 minutes. Approximately 2.1 million minutes, or roughly four years, are needed to mine 210,000 blocks. Application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), specialized devices that can generate billions of hashes per second, are used by miners. The global block difficulty, which is changed every 2,016 blocks, has an impact on the rate of block discovery. The difficulty is calibrated according to how long it took to find the previous 2,016 blocks.

It is not possible to forecast when the next block or halving will happen because block generation is random and block discovery is a stochastic process. The impending halving event is anticipated to occur shortly, though, and its effects on the market will be carefully watched.