I detailed a presentation at the CryptoNutz Bitcoin Meetup on April 19th, where I shared my thoughts on the impending Bitcoin halving, set to occur the very next day. As someone who has witnessed each Bitcoin halving, I've seen the typical rise in anticipation and uncertainty that accompanies these events. However, this latest halving felt different in both atmosphere and potential impact.
During the presentation, I offered a historical perspective and argued that miners might not experience significant financial hardship from the reduced block reward. I explained that miners are compensated not only through the block rewards, or "coinbase" rewards, but also through transaction fees. These fees have surged recently, partly due to the increase in Bitcoin transactions fueled by new applications like Ordinals and the introduction of Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs), which have both increased trading activity thus increasing transaction volume and costs.
For the past few months I had started running some Antminer S9 units through ViaBTC with the goal of capturing and sharing Block 840,000 as well as getting some residual heat in the house lol.
Remarkably, at the very moment this block was mined, it was ViaBTC that secured and distributed the reward. This occurrence not only underscored my earlier points about the evolving nature of miner compensation but also brought an unexpected twist—according to an email from ViaBTC, Block 840,000 not only fell into our pool but also turned out to be the most valuable transaction block ever recorded.
IMAGE Screenshot of ViaBTC mining rewards up to hitting block 840,000 and after.
IMAGE Screenshot of email from ViaBTC regarding block 840,000
This firsthand experience and the real-time data from ViaBTC provided compelling evidence to support my thesis that the impact of halvings is changing and that the economic dynamics for miners are evolving beyond simple block rewards. This discussion at the meetup sparked a lively debate and set the stage for further observations as we navigate the post-halving landscape. I will be doing another presentation in four months to go through findings of what was discussed in this past presentation and see just how on the mark some of the past halving reflect on our future of BTC.
Here are a few slides from my presentation.
One of the things I have also been experimenting with are Ordinals and have created a series in the early release within the first 100,000. I have learned a bit about Ordinal Theory and got really lucky being able to capture some of the satoshies from Block 840.000 which will be used to create my next generation of Ordinals for an game idea somewhere in a space in time that doesn't exist outside my mind...
The miners knew this was coming, so I assume they made appropriate plans. I have no stake in BTC, but it will probably impact other crypto. By 2140 I won't be caring anyway :)
Yes although as I state in my presentation, this halving and the next ones become more insignificant as transactions become the rewards. New layer two solutions such as Stacks are building smart contracts on the Bitcoin blockchain making other chains somewhat insignificant. Bitcoin will in my mind be number one for a significant time and as of today with over 2.1 million tokens registered on exchanges it represents 50% of the total market cap. Something to think about
It seems to stay the biggest because it's the biggest rather than for other qualities. Other coins will actually get used.
I tend to disagree, layer two technology is rapidly changing the scape of Bitcoin, deep dive into Stacks (STX) we are now able to write smart contracts and settle on the Bitcoin Blockchain, what was once just a store of value is now open to other application. Other coins will be used although longevity of them can diminish over time. In my presentation I did a top 10 analysis of coins from each halving, only Bitcoin and Eth remain. We will see where it all leads into the next halving. Hope all is well over there!
You've studied this more than I have, but crypto is still relatively young and all sorts of things could happen.
All good here. I really just play with crypto and don't depend on it. I enjoy the Hive community, so I'll be sticking around here for the long run.
Yes crypto is young and paving a way towards some interesting changes that may be needed. It’s wonderful that spaces like Hive exist to open the crypto world in an undaunted way. There is still a challenging learning curve and way too much misinformation for the regular human to wrap their minds around.