Finally the Block-Reward halving is here
Only 12 hours left until miners go from 25 BTC per block, to 12.5 BTC per block!
I am excited, like a child waiting for Christmas. For many years now we have been watching Bitcoin blocks containing 25 fresh coins coming out of the network of supercomputers that generates them, in 12 hours from now - it will all change, and this is what I think will happen:
When the halving occurs, a lot of mining-rigs will stop mining Bitcoins as the reward drops by 50% which will result in less power to mine extremely high difficulty blocks. This will most likely result in slow moving blocks, so in order to not be a victim of that - I would suggest you spread your bitcoins around a bit to where you normally would use them, so instead of waiting for hours and days for your transactions to come through - you have already prepared yourself.
I´m not going to speculate on price, it is all up to the whales to decide what the price will do - but I know this: If the price goes down after halving, a lot more miners will have to turn of their rigs for a while - making even slower blocks.
However, Bitcoins difficulty adjustment algo will kick in and over time the Bitcoin-Network will be back to normal again.
On the other hand - if Bitcoin pumps after halving - miners will keep mining it as before, since the profitability will still be profitable, but to compensate completely for the block-halving, a price-doubling is needed to make the current miners happy.
As always with Bitcoin, I expect drama, volatility, butthurt and flame-wars, so I have made sure we have enough popcorn for anything that may happen. If you want a good site with a countdown and all the information you need, check out: http://www.bitcoinblockhalf.com/ - they are doing an awesome job! Also, come and join me and others on Stakepool Teamspeak by following the connection instructions here: https://stakepool.com/about/connect/ and count down with us :)
Almost Eight year with Bitcoin - it has been a true joyride, the Money-Transfer Protocol works and it has helped build up a whole new industry worth billions of dollars for people worldwide.
So tonight we celebrate like we have never done before - Hip Hip Hurray for Bitcoin, and a big toast to the Satoshi-Nakamoto group that created her - may they live long and prosper!