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The halving came and went and I thought: what just happened now?
This was my first halving experience. During these days, I read some posts and comments on Stacker News about this event and, as a new bitcoiner, I also looked for more information about halving.
One of the posts I read on Stacker News was written by @cryotosensei, who described his experience during the halving, and at the end of the post, he asked a question: How was your halving experience? I didn't want to reply to the post itself with a comment, because I thought I'd write two or three lines about my first halving experience, too.
First of all, I would like to say that it was an interesting experience. In a way, I was waiting to see what would happen and how this event would be received in Stacker News. In fact, I saw a lot of enthusiasm from some of the stackers for this event, but on the other hand, I also saw a kind of disinterest or neutrality from some others.
To be honest, I'm still not quite sure what Halvin means in practice. Of course, I read some articles about halving and now I have a kind of idea, which can be summarised as follows:
A bitcoin halving event occurs when the reward for mining bitcoin transactions is halved. Halving reduces the rate at which new coins are created and thus reduces the amount of new supply available.
In practice, however, I cannot understand why some were very enthusiastic about this event, while others were completely neutral. Some even mocked those who were very enthusiastic.
How can this event (halving) affect Bitcoin holders in their everyday lives?
Who can shed some light on this?
So, @cryotosensei, my first halving experience was more like this: Hey guys, what's going on here?
I was excited that we have a monetary protocol out of the hands of the govt that works as Satoshi intended. I think that's a pretty good reason to celebrate.
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I think you are right. It is a very common reason.
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Hi Nadia! Welcome to SN! I’m a teacher irl too
Enjoyed reading your account. Yup it’s difficult to get a definitive pulse on things when different Stackers behave so differently, ya.
Hope to read more from you!
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Thank you!
Yup it’s difficult to get a definitive pulse on things when different Stackers behave so differently, ya.
Yeah, it was a bit confusing.
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11 sats \ 1 reply \ @KLT 22 Apr
I believe the celebration aspect is it's an incredible achievement that something like this continues to work, 15 years in, without a central authority that controls it like our current system. The code can't be changed so as long as bitcoin continues on this path, it could be money that's used for several hundred years or more, surpassing Gold.
A celebration of a system that continues to work. Tick tock, next block.
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Agreed!
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11 sats \ 0 replies \ @nym 22 Apr
If there is no limit to GDP growth (in real terms), then there's no limit to price of Bitcoin.
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In exponential decay functions, a halving period is when for a given period added the output is halved. This applies to Bitcoin but maybe a more well-known way to understand it is radioactivity. Carbon-14 decays exponentially and the halving time, also called half-life in the case of radioactivity, is 5730 years. In the case of Bitcoin, things are programmatically determined, the halving period is 4 years and the number of bitcoins newly created decays exponentially, similarly to carbon-14.
I think people who are overly enthusiastic are so because of what it should mean for price actions. People overly pessimistic are so because of, I think, what it means in terms of how much they will progressively pay in terms of fees. Neutral people like me see it as it is, an exponential decay function. This was on the white-paper, this is a value proposition of Bitcoin so nothing to get emotional. Bitcoin worked as it was supposed to work so one way to see is good, it works.
For people partying during the halving period, I think they just want to party anyway.
For the higher fees, I think it is fair to say that some people are using the Blockchain in a sub-optimal way to share "art" with a relatively bad taste and so for people who were not using the lightning network or other means of exchange they have to wait to transact with Bitcoin. So now we see Bitcoin holders fight each other on social networks to say Lightning works or not, Liquid is good or bad, etc. Bottom line: Bitcoin works as expected, lightning works as a scaling solution, and Liquid works as well to store L-BTC in a hardware wallet before swapping it to Lightning.
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nobody watches gymnastics or swimming every week but they watch the Olympics every 4 years 😊
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Right!
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