blockmemento

// block 630000 · 11 May 2020

The third halving

The third halving came with block 630,000, mined on 11 May 2020. From that block on, the reward for a new block fell from 12.5 to 6.25 bitcoins. It is the same rule each time, applied at every multiple of 210,000 by every node on its own, and this time too the network went on without a pause.

The moment gave the rule a particular echo. In the spring of 2020, as the pandemic closed much of the world, central banks created money on a scale never seen. The block just before, 629,999, carries in its coinbase a headline of the New York Times: “With $2.3T Injection, Fed's Plan Far Exceeds 2008 Rescue”. It recalls the headline of The Times in the genesis block, eleven years earlier, and the contrast is the point: a money whose issuance halves on schedule, beside one that can be expanded at will.

Block 630,000 holds 3,134 transactions, and its coinbase names the pool that found it: AntPool. Its fees came to 0.9097 bitcoin, a small sum next to the reward, which the poster sets side by side in its key figures.

By then, 18.375 million of the 21 million bitcoins, 87.5 %, had been created. The reward of 6.25 bitcoins lasted until block 840,000.

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