The halving of block rewards for Bitcoin miners was earlier scheduled to happen sometime in mid-May. However, faster block times influenced by recent all-time highs in hash rates could bring the halving closer than earlier anticipated.
At the time of writing, the Bitcoin blockchain was averaging 8.3 minutes per block, instead of the popular 10 minutes per block estimate. Even though the network would as designed, readjust difficulty to the 10 minutes average in the approximately four days, the increase in hash power still means that miners may continue to process transactions faster than expected in the days leading up to halving.
If that prediction comes true, then data from bitconsider.com, a halving countdown website, estimates that Bitcoin’s next halving date would fall on April 28, 2020. Note that this date is still subject to adjustment depending on average block confirmation time and network hash rates in the days ahead.
Meanwhile, when Bitcoin’s block reward is halved, miners will now receive 6.25 BTC for confirming a block of transactions, instead of the current value of 12.5BTC. Many enthusiasts below that this inherent scarcity feature could propel prices even higher, although there is not enough historical data to confirm that charts must go in that direction.
Bitcoin Tops $9600 For The Second Time in 7 Days
Irrespective of fluctuations in the estimated date for Bitcoin’s next halving, the price of the cryptocurrency today continued on the upward trajectory that it has been on since the start of the new year.
As shown in the chart above, Bitcoin (BTC) had reached as high as $9656 according to data from CoinMarketCap, before retracing to $9559 at the time of writing this report with a market cap of $174 billion. On the YTD chart, Bitcoin is up over 33%.
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