What is the bitcoin halving event and will it affect the price of the cryptocurrency?

Making it more difficult to ‘mine’ the digital asset is essential to the idea it has value

Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $73,803.25 in March before dropping sharply. However, its price has crept back up in recent days. Photo: Getty

Donal O'Donovan

Bitcoin's much-anticipated 'halving' is a well-flagged process whereby at particular points the ability to ‘mine’ or generate new bitcoins is dramatically slowed down. It happens roughly every four years and is part of a process aimed at ensuring the total number of bitcoins that can ever be created is fixed and finite. Halving works by reducing the rate at which new ‘coins’ can be created.

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency that was designed by its mysterious creator Satoshi Nakamoto to have a capped supply of 21 million coins or tokens. There are now around 19 million bitcoins in existence.