Bitcoin block reward is now officially halved from 12.5 BTC to 6.25. The fourth-largest mining pool, China-based AntPool was the one to mine the first block 630,000 with the 6.25 BTC per block mining cycle.

The #bitcoin halving was executed just moments ago. New block rewards are now 6.25 bitcoin. pic.twitter.com/QRo0XK1mtl

— TradeBlock (@TradeBlock) May 11, 2020

Yesterday, before the halving, the hash rate climbed to an all-time high of 145.9 Eh/s, jumping 45% in 24 hours to capture as much of the 12.5 BTC reward as the miners can.

Now, it is to be seen if this will sustain.

Already, the hash rate has dropped over 20% today and continues to fall, currently at 116.25 EH/s, as per Coinwarz.

But the bullish thing is the growth bitcoin network has seen since the last halving. This declining hash rate is still more than 6800% higher than the one recorded in 2016 halving.

The network has grown immensely since then.

As per the data provided by Glassnode, addresses with small amounts of bitcoin have surged since past halving except only those addresses that hold equal to or more than 100 BTC.

Interestingly, 11 years later since bitcoin was first created, the final bitcoin block with a reward of 12.5 BTC mined contained the following message in its coinbase transaction, by F2Pool:

“NYTimes 09/Apr/2020 With $2.3T Injection, Fed's Plan Far Exceeds 2008 Rescue”

The genesis block also had a similar message that read,

“The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”

Bitcoin was the result of the financial crisis of 2008 which came to life on January 3, 2009. And, during the third halving, bitcoin is going through a scenario where central banks are printing money, pushing interest rates to zero and further into negative, and bailing out companies.

While bitcoin had its block reward halving on Monday, from today onwards the Federal Reserve will start buying exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Today, #Bitcoin 's block reward was programmatically cut in half, as it is every four years.

Tomorrow, for the first time in the history of the United States, the Federal Reserve will purchase ETFs.

Hard vs soft. Sound vs unsound.

— Travis Kling (@Travis_Kling) May 12, 2020

The Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility will start purchasing eligible ETFs invested in corporate debt starting today. Announced first in March, since then, this played an important role in keeping a sense of calm in the financial markets.

The Primary Market Corporate Credit Facility, another one designed to buy debt directly from issuers will be launched “in the near future.”

In March, as part of the more than $2 trillion coronavirus economic relief package, Congress allocated $454 billion in equity.

In other news, the New Chicago Fed working paper is looking into a coordinated fiscal and monetary strategy to create a controlled rise of inflation to “erode a fraction of government debt,” so that the government may spend more.

The paper argues implementing a coordinated monetary and fiscal strategy, the “lesser of two evils,” to avoid stagflation, loss of central bank independence, and achieve lower macroeconomic volatility.

“Creating widespread inflation is like creating a wildfire – often you can't keep it under control and you just have to let it burn out,” said Tuur Demeester.

And yet another reason to go with the deflationary asset Bitcoin which is an inflationary hedge.

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