Total number of Bitcoins hits 10.5 million, production halves to stop inflation
Today the Bitcoin community celebrates the first halving day! It is the day where half of all bitcoins to ever exist have been created and the reward for keeping the network secure and for validating new transactions is being halved from 50 to 25BTC/10min on average.
As expected and predicted the halving went without a hitch as can be witnessed here: http://blockchain.info/block-index/3...228e9ba171342e
The Verge wrote an article about it that you can read here: http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/28/3...halves-to-stop
Quote:
Total number of Bitcoins hits 10.5 million, production halves to stop inflation
Can technology replace the Federal Reserve?
By Adrianne Jeffries on November 28, 2012 10:44 am Larry
The total number of Bitcoins in circulation just hit 10.5 million, triggering a safeguard against inflation that was hardcoded into the digital currency. This means a drastic change in the number of new Bitcoins being created, which is expected to have a huge impact on the economy that has been developing around the ecurrency.
The safeguard has to do with the "block reward," the number of Bitcoins that can be created at a time, which has dropped from 50 to 25. Bitcoin miners, geeks who configure their own computers to mint the cultish digital currency, have been waiting for this moment for a long time — about four years, which is how long Bitcoins have been in circulation.
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