One of the most pivotal events on Bitcoin's blockchain is a halving, when the reward for mining is cut in half. Since 2020, the network participants validating transactions have been awarded 6.25 bitcoins (BTC) for each block successfully mined.

The next halving is expected to occur in early-to-mid 2024, when the block reward will fall to 3.125. Over time, the impact of each halving will diminish as the block reward approaches one satoshi.

BASICS OF BITCOIN

Bitcoin's underlying technology, blockchain, consists of a network of computers (called nodes) that run Bitcoin's software and contain a partial or complete history of transactions occurring on its network. Each full node—a node containing the entire history of transactions on Bitcoin—is responsible for approving or rejecting a transaction in Bitcoin's network. To do that, the node conducts a check to ensure the transaction is valid. These include ensuring that the transaction contains the correct validation parameters and does not exceed the required length.

Each transaction is approved individually. This is said to occur only after all the transactions contained in a block are approved. After approval, the transaction is appended to the existing blockchain and broadcast to other nodes.2

Adding more computers (or nodes) to the blockchain increases its stability and security. As of Nov. 1, 2023, there are 16,902 nodes estimated to be running Bitcoin's code.3 Although anyone can participate in Bitcoin's network as a node as long as they have enough storage to download the entire blockchain and its history of transactions, not all of them are miners.