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Friday 15 July 2016

Happy Bitcoin Halving Everyone!

Now is a time great time to get excited about bitcoin. Rumors about how the price would go down after the halving have been pretty much defunct. This psychological idea, based on the notion that traders had built the price up in anticipation is over and now the simple math can take over and the price is bound to rise. 

Bitcoin miners will get half as many bitcoins for mining as they used to. It happens every 210,000 transaction blocks and it's a milestone for the network. The last time it happened, around 4 years ago, the price went up exponentially. Supply of new coins is reduced.

Whilst the Wall Street Journal does an article title "bitcoin miners get another pay cut" the reality of this is not as you might judge from this sentiment. The pay cut, is to a network which is in fact overblown. With more power than any other computer network by a factor of over one thousand fold. People don't need to feel regret for pulling back on this resource it is in-fact a conservation measure. Reducing the network incentive can also actually be a positive force of decentralisation. It can help little miners, the home miners, have long since given up on mining bitcoin, by shifting the balance in their favor. This can happen because of new efficient chip technologies are becoming available to the masses and existing miners are disrupted. Large miners with the current set ups will be stuck with their current equipment and may have to move from bitcoin into different crypto-currencies. In this way the bitcoin halving could also lead to a boom for other SHA256 crypto currencies. More decentralisation again.

Coins sharing the same mining algorithm as bitcoin tend not to be quite up to the standards of Litecoin and others that we are used to. It is a motley top 10, Zetacoin (ZET), Digitalcoin-SHA-256 (DGC), Mazacoin (MZC), Digitalcoin-SHA-256 (DGC), Terracoin (TRC), Titcoin (TIT), UniversalCurrency (UNIT), Curecoin (CURE), Freicoin (FRC), NeosCoin (NEOS), There are many more, I found 21 in total. They do have potential but it has been difficult to develop in this area due to risk of manipulation from powerful and unloyal bitcoin miners. They all have values that are a fraction of that of a bitcoin. If they are to gain a loyal mining base one of these coins now stand to become the second most powerful computer network in existence and along with it a significant currency.

As of now, price action seems pretty stable after the initial blip in bitcoin. This current relative stability is actually much like the last halving 4 years ago. the halving only lead to a huge price increase by building gradually over the following month. 

If the bitcoin price doesn't do the same again then surely some altcoins will benefit from some of the extra hash power moving to them. Altcoin prices haven't yet seen any action and If they are up to it or deserving, is another question. Who would you choose out of the top ten? Digitalcoin seems to be taking the first step forward and seems quite reputable. Others like Freicoin do have some deep thinking economic concepts at hand.

This will be a very interesting space to watch. There's always a countdown here. Happy Bitcoin halving! I'm looking forward to many more halving parties to come. Will our next halving party be for an altcoin?

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