Bitcoin’s 800,000th block mined - what’s next?

The Bitcoin (BTC) web has produced its 800,000 artifact since its inception successful 2009, with conscionable 40,000 blocks near to excavation earlier the network’s adjacent mining reward halving.

The 800,000th artifact contained 3721 transactions astatine 1.64MB, with the terms of BTC trading astatine $29,815 connected July 24, arsenic marketplace researcher Dylan LeClair noted connected Twitter:

#Bitcoin artifact 800,000. pic.twitter.com/Yw9c6klqbY

The milestone was wide shared crossed the societal media level connected July 24, with Bitcoin proponents and manufacture commentators highlighting the milestone arsenic an indicator of web information and resilience:

Bitcoin’s artifact tallness astatine its halfway is simply a measurement of the sequential blocks of the blockchain, which incorporate transactions and information that are bundled into blocks by web miners. Block tallness besides serves arsenic a measurement of a circumstantial artifact successful narration to the genesis block, the founding artifact of the network’s chain.

₿: 800,000th bitcoin artifact mined! pic.twitter.com/uGKi15zRaO

The metric acts arsenic a chronological bid of transactions and blocks of the network, with each caller artifact connected to the erstwhile 1 successful the chain. This assists successful allowing users to place the bid successful which transactions are recorded.

Block tallness besides serves arsenic a measurement of Bitcoin’s immutability. The much blocks added to the chain, the much computing powerfulness volition beryllium required successful bid for a malicious histrion to effort to tamper with erstwhile blocks.

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As antecedently explored by Cointelegraph, a 50 percent onslaught would necessitate an attacker to get capable computing powerfulness to recalculate the proof-of-work of each consequent artifact of a tampered transaction-containing block.

Block tallness besides serves arsenic a measurement utilized to support Bitcoin’s mining difficulty. Proof-of-work based blockchain networks person their mining trouble of mining adjusted periodically based connected the full computational powerfulness of the web and the clip it took to excavation a definite fig of erstwhile blocks.

Bitcoin’s web aims to person a caller artifact generated each 10 minutes. If much hashing powerfulness is added to the web astatine a fixed time, this would power this metric and the web automatically adjusts the mining trouble each 2 weeks to support equilibrium.

Bitcoin’s artifact tallness besides dictates the magnitude of Bitcoin rewarded to miners for adding a caller artifact to the network. Bitcoin’s protocol is designed to person artifact halving events each 4 years, oregon 210,000 blocks connected the chain.

Source: Nicehash

The archetypal artifact reward was 50 BTC backmost successful 2009, earlier it subsequently halved to 25 BTC, 12.5 BTC and presently 6.25 BTC successful 2012, 2016 and 2020.

Bitcoin’s adjacent halving is earmarked to instrumentality spot successful April 2024, with the latest artifact reward halving to 3.125 BTC. Halving events historically coincide with large terms rallies for BTC and the wider cryptocurrency markets.

With little than a twelvemonth to the adjacent halving, different macro events person besides arrested Bitcoin’s terms diminution pursuing its past large highest astatine $69,000. Analysts and commentators person speculated that the latest Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) filings from the likes of planetary plus managers BlackRock and Fidelity indicate renewed organization involvement successful Bitcoin.

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