Sometime in the next few days or even hours, the “miners” who chisel bitcoins out of complex mathematics are going to take a 50% pay cut — effectively slicing new production of the world’s largest cryptocurrency in half. That could have a lot of implications, from the price of the asset to the day-to-day operations of bitcoin miners themselves. And, as with everything in the cryptoverse, the future is hard to predict. Beyond its infamous volatility, bitcoin is still a relatively young asset. This next halving will be only the fourth to take place since the digital currency’s 2009 launch.
