Bitcoin records its third-ever block reward halving

Bitcoin's third-ever block reward halving has taken place, dropping the per-block subsidy from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC.

The 630,000th block – which kicks off the new halving era – was mined by AntPool at 3:23 EST. The block contained 3,134 transactions and 0.90968084 BTC in transaction fees. The total transaction volume for the block was 3311.62144322 BTC.

The final pre-halving block was mined by F2Pool, the network's largest miner by current estimations and also the one that mined the first post-halving block back in 2016. 

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The halving takes place roughly every four years, and the event itself forms a key part of bitcoin's digital scarcity model. With each halving, fewer bitcoins are produced with each block. Over the course of its lifetime, the bitcoin network will see the production of just 21 million BTC.

AntPool is, per estimates, the third-largest mining pool on the network today. According to data from U.K.-based firm Blockchain, AntPool mined 79 blocks in the past four days.