Bitcoin's block reward halves every 210 000 blocks (210k * 10 minutes = 4 years), this block marks Bitcoin entering its 5th epoch with a block reward of 3.125 BTC down from its original of 50 BTC.

Interestingly there must have been a lot of people that wanted to get a transaction in the halving block, including fees and subsidy it resulted in a total reward of over 40 BTC for the pool that mined the block, ViaBTC.

Any interest I might have in this is tempered by the fact that Bitcoin mining accounts for about 0.2% of global carbon emissions - roughly the same as the country of Greece. As long as Bitcoin is based on a proof-of-work process, I think the world would be better off without it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_bitco...

Could we get a title change that adds a bit more context? Something like:

Bitcoin passes reward "halvening" milestone at block 840000

You could sort of argue that the halvening concept is common-ish knowledge for tech people with passing familiarity, but hardly anyone outside the crypto space knows the significance of the number 840000.

I still don't get why I would want to hold a bitcoin for anything other than speculation. If I want some form of currency to actually use there are plenty of less volatile options.

Given some weak assumptions, it can be proven that Bitcoin can't beat the performance of S&P 500 in a long enough time horizon.

The gist of it is this: Bitcoin can't perpetually grow faster than world wealth. If we assume, say, 3% inflation-adjusted growth in world wealth, it means that Bitcoin cannot perpetually make more than 3% annually. Stocks, bonds, real-estate don't have this constraint because they pay cash to investors.

At some point in the future, Bitcoin will be down over the last decade while S&P 500 will be up significantly. Bitcoin holders will start to think - wait, why am I holding Bitcoin instead of S&P 500?

Edit: Hacker News says I'm posting too fast so I can't reply to comments below.

what's notable about this? has 11 upvotes at time of this comment but zero explanation for those of us who do not follow bitcoin in detail

The only way I can foresee a cryptocoin actually holding value is if spending the coin meant spending processing cycles and RAM doing things like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_volunteer_computing_pr...

But in more general sense, less like https://boinc.berkeley.edu/ and more like AWS...

It's the only way to have value, actually holding computing power in a distributed network.

Anyone have a sense on when realistically mining becomes totally impractical for the reward? I seem to recall reading somewhere that with the current technology it would take till around 2100 to mine them all, but surely somewhere between 2030 and 2040 the reward to power consumption will get out of whack such that nobody will do it?

$2M award for the miners. Wonder how much energy that took

Am I reading these transactions right? It can cost over $5000 to transfer less than a single dollar?

https://mempool.space/tx/2fc565c457bf3202704f3b2e61c50312c07...

hooray bitcoin, bitcoin is dead, long live bitcoin!

Truth is Bitcoin has mostly failed as a currency, and that’s ok.

The only thing Bitcoin really buys is freedom.

Strange a decentralised money supply can be coordinated so easily for changes. Is the miners already so concentrated they can do whatever they want.

context? is there anything inherently notable about this?

Context: Bitcoin miners have just adopted a 50% pay cut for themselves. This pay cut was baked into Bitcoin protocol at the launch of the network (mostly, see "BIP 42" [1]). The OP link gives information about the block in which this pay cut was made.

I get that HN comments tend to dismiss Bitcoin. But the fact that for the fourth time this pay cut has happened without a hitch speaks volumes to what makes Bitcoin interesting: It's a rare combination of economic incentives and technology that keeps chugging. Nobody can stop it. And it's extremely resistant to change. It requires no governmental approval. All attempts at subversion or interference have failed. There aren't many systems that come close to that kind of record.

[1] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0042.mediawi...

BTC to 100k as a 'base case' by the end of the year, but an inevitable climb towards 1 million per coin, say a barrage of influencers, YouTube personalities who used to run hedge funds, and other assorted media outlets.

I trade BTC for swings, and have a vague belief in its future. It seems like more is happening with other coins in terms of platform development and r and d.

But the shills are grating on me more than ever in this cycle.