Block Reward

What Does Block Reward Mean?

The bitcoin block reward is a particular rule for the bitcoin cryptocurrency. Bitcoin’s developer, Satoshi Nakamoto, thought up the bitcoin reward as a way to control circulation. The bitcoin reward dictates what amount miners get for mining bitcoin.

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Techopedia Explains Block Reward

Miners get bitcoin rewards by successfully mining a bitcoin block in the blockchain system. The miner claims the reward by adding it to the beginning of the block. At the time that bitcoin started, the bitcoin block reward was worth 50 bitcoin. Due to a principle of reward halving (in which the reward is halved every 210,000 blocks), the value has gone down since then, and will eventually reach zero.

Block rewards are the only way that new bitcoins can be created, and therefore, are essential to sustaining the bitcoin economy.

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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…