According to countdown statistics based on the average block generation time of around ten minutes, progress toward the next Bitcoin block reward halving has surpassed 60%. However, while most halving countdown clocks leverage the ten-minute average, the countdown leveraging the most current block intervals of around 7:65 minutes shows the halving could occur in 2023.
Rapid block gap suggests bitcoin halving could happen in 2023
More recently, at block height 757,214, mined on October 5, 2022, the total hashrate of bitcoin tapped an all-time high (ATH) at 321.15 exhash per second (EH/s). Lately, the block interval has been faster than usual and below the ten minute average.
The speed at which the 2,016 blocks are found in between difficulty adjustments determines the difficulty and current block intervals suggest a large difficulty jump is in the cards. Now, prior to the next difficulty rise, the hashrate has continued to remain strong and block times at the time of writing are around 7:65 minutes.
The next mining difficulty retarget is due on or around October 10, 2022. If block times remain faster than normal even after retargeting, the protocol’s block reward halving could very well happen in 2023. Data from bitcoinsensus.com shows that at 7:65 minutes per block interval, the halving could occur on or around December 19, 2023.
Bitcoinsensus.com further shows the halving time based on the average ten-minute rule which shows the halving will occur on May 1, 2024. Most countdown calculators apply the average ten-minute rule, and other data points suggest the halving could occur on April 20, 2024.
Either way, progress to the next halving is still over 60% complete, and when that happens, the bitcoin miner rewards will be reduced from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. Despite the now bullish momentum, miners could easily slow down once a significant difficulty increase is recorded on October 10th and BTC prices remain low.
This, in turn, would push the halving date back to the 2024 range and after all, there’s still well over a year’s worth of BTC block subsidies to mine. A lot can change. According to a recent blog post from Blocksbridge Consulting, the difficulty change and low price range could give bitcoin miners a headache from loss of profits.
“Bitcoin’s daily mining revenue per PH/s is currently around $80. If the difficulty increases by 13% on Monday and the bitcoin price remains at $19.5K, the daily revenue will drop to $70 per (petahash) PH/s. s,” Bloxbridge Consulting’s Minor Weekly issued note #17. “This will result in mining companies generating all-time low revenues on a daily basis, even less than what we saw during the summer following the May 2020 halving.”
The blog post adds:
Unless bitcoin’s price breaks the $20,000 barrier, those who employ older-generation machines or have bloated mining operations will face an even tougher time ahead.
Viabtc’s Viawallet halving metrics show that eight blockchains are expected to see reward halvings or what is known as “reward reduction”. Dash expects a reduction in reward on June 20, 2023, as the reward will decrease from 2.76 Dash to 2.56 Dash. Other halving events and bounties will come from blockchains including BCH, BSV, LTC, ETC, ZEC and ZEN.
