“Halving” is an artificial, preprogrammed means to control the supply of a cryptocurrency by reducing the mining reward by half.
It “pumps the brakes” on the issuance and circulation of new units of the cryptocurrency.
For example, if miners are awarded 100 coins for validating a block, halving would cut the mining reward for 50 coins.
Halving does not happen just once, it occurs after a certain number of blocks have been mined.
Halving intervals are set forth in the cryptocurrencies source code, and they occur to control the supply.
Bitcoin Halving
In the case of Bitcoin, halving occurs after every 200,000 blocks have been mined.
Before the most recent halving, bitcoin miners were rewarded with 12.5 bitcoins every time their powerful network of computers solved a complex math problem.
Today, that reward has been cut in half to 6.25 bitcoins.
The next halving will limit the reward to only 3.125 bitcoin, and so on, until all 21 million bitcoins are mined.
According to Blockchain.com, about 18.4 million bitcoin were in circulation, meaning there’s only 2.6 million remaining up for grabs.