Most experts and enthusiasts in the Bitcoin community expected the next halving to take place on Saturday, April 20th, 2024, but the data shows that it is more likely to happen a day earlier.
Even though mining difficulty recently recorded an increase, miners have still been able to maintain a high hash rate and this has seen block times drop below the average ten-minute mark.
The halving
The bitcoin halving event is expected to occur this week, as there are a little over 500 blocks left to be mined until the total reaches 840,000.
The forecast now shows that it is likely to happen on Friday, April 19th, 2024 rather than April 20th, as predicted earlier.
Some BTC advocates had been hoping that the halving would happen on the 20th, as the 4-20 date is quite well-known in cannabis culture.
Many online counters also show that it is likely to happen on April 20th, as they are still relying on the block internal average of 10 minutes.
However, it is important to remember that these intervals can often vary and they can be slower, or faster than the estimate.
The timings
Currently, the average block generation takes about 9 minutes and 23 seconds. The hash rate had recently climbed to a record of 644 exahash per second (EH/s).
It has now steadied at 634 EH/s, which shows that it is still high, as miners have continued to use significant hash power for mining block rewards of 6.25 BTC.
Naturally, there is fierce competition and each mining pool wants to be the one to mine the final 840,000 block.
The three mining pools that had discovered the blocks back in 2012, 2016, and 2020 halvings are still operating today.
The details
According to onchain metrics, Slushpool, which is now known as Braiins Pool, was the one that discovered block 210,000, after which the reward was reduced to 25 BTC from 50 BTC.
The GPU that had mined this particular block had been sold in 2013 for a significant premium. The total hash rate on November 28th, 2012 had reached 28 terahash per second (TH/s).
At that time, BTC had been trading at $12. F2pool discovered block 420,000 on July 9th, 2016 and this saw block rewards reduce to 12.5 BTC from 25 BTC.
The hash rate had stood at 1.5 exahash per second (EH/s) and Bitcoin had been changing hands at $650.
On May 11th, 2020, block 630,000 had been discovered by Antpool and this had seen the block reward reduce to 6.25 BTC from 12.5 BTC.
At that time, the hash rate had been close to just 100 exahash per second (EH/s) and Bitcoin had been priced at $8,600.
When the halving happens this time around, the rewards are expected to reduce to 3.125 BTC from the current 6.25 BTC.
There has been a significant rise in the price of Bitcoin in every halving and the hash rate has also recorded increases in the same period.