As it had twice before, Bitcoin halved itself. The usual rewards that are meant to incentivize miners to mine the cryptocurrency are now lessened and we are closer to the maximum number of Bitcoins existing in the world.
Which begs the question: why would someone be interested in mining Bitcoin now? At its inception, the coin was an enticingly novel idea, but in 2020, there are so many cryptocurrencies that miners might flock to other pastures.
The answer is even a moralistic one at this point. Bitcoin must be mined so that Bitcoin is feasible and running for transactions. If there is no more mining going on, then arguably the crypto at the heart of the cryptocurrency experiment failed—and that’s not a good look for the entire financial revolution.
However, in the early days of this, despite any of those concerns, Bitcoin seems to be staying healthy. Recent trends skew positive and the currency still easily beats out any of its competition, with Ethereum being a pale shadow of a second-place option. It seems that the baked-in design of Bitcoin is even more brilliant than perhaps expected, and it’s hard to imagine a world where the currency ever falls very far below any other crypto.
