Learn to gain real rewards
Collect Bits, boost your Degree and gain actual rewards!
Learn by real-life examples: Select, Track & Understand any cryptos with the unique Learnlist feature!
Understand what Ethereum Triple Halving is & when’s the estimated halving date
Market Cap
$289,557,209,717
Circulating Supply
120,184,171 ETH
Max Supply
--
Current Block
18,976,734
Ever since the Ethereum Merge was first announced, the hype and anticipation within the general crypto community have been growing steadily. Even after the Merge finally happened, back on September 15, 2022, the topic of Ethereum Triple Halving still comes up all around the web. It’s about time we take a look at what it is, as well as how it relates to the Merge event.
Before anything else, let’s first get the definitions out of the way.
The Ethereum Triple Halving is a process that consists of three parts - staking, ETH gas fee burning, and reduced token issuance. This halving, unlike those of other cryptocurrencies, doesn’t have a specific, set date - since it happens in phases, it’s actually a continuous process.
Out of all of the halving events that happen within the crypto industry, the Ethereum Triple Halving is probably among the most complicated-to-understand ones. In order to get a complete picture of the Ethereum halving phenomenon, you’ll need to have some background context first.
If you’re reading this text about the ETH halving process, I probably don’t need to tell you that Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency on the market, standing firmly behind Bitcoin.
ETH has a very interesting and rocky history, but with it being such a broad topic, here, we’ll focus only on the things that relate to the Ethereum Triple Halving. A key element in that would be the Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism.
As you might know, in the world of crypto, two groups of people exist - miners and stakers. The former group participates in crypto mining - they employ their computers or special machines to earn cryptocurrency coins or tokens for confirming legitimate transactions (blocks) on the blockchain.
As opposed to that, staking is a process where you take your existing crypto and employ it to validate transactions. The end result is the same – block confirmations and a more secure network – but the actual processes differ dramatically.
Ever since it was created back in 2015, Ethereum has employed the Proof-of-Work model. This would mean that you could earn ETH by mining it – the same as, say, Bitcoin. Indeed, Proof-of-Work is, to this day, the most popular consensus mechanism.
That being said, PoW does come with a lot of issues, too, the biggest of which is the damage that it does to the environment. Mining requires an unprecedented amount of electricity, which, in turn, contributes to the global warming phenomenon.
Furthermore, Proof-of-Work is also far from being an ideal choice for ETH from a network efficiency perspective. Ethereum has, for the longest time, dealt with scalability issues, security concerns, and huge network transaction fees. Eventually, new and vastly improved blockchain technologies started popping up all around, promising far better statistics than those of ETH.
Thus, Ethereum needed to do something in order to circumvent all of these issues. EIP-1559 and the Merge, accompanied by the Ethereum Triple Halving, is that “something”.
EIP-1559, or Ethereum Improvement Proposal, also known as the London Hard Fork, is an update that occurred on Ethereum’s network on August 5, 2021. This update brought a variety of features and changes to ETH, but the one that received the most attention (and that’s most relevant to ETH halving) was the gas fee burn.
To put it very simply, EIP-1559 implemented gas fee burn mechanics into ETH. This would, over a long period of time, burn a lot of ETH coins and, thus, facilitate the deflationary features of the asset.
Since Ethereum isn’t hard-capped - meaning that there’s no limit to how much ETH there will ever be - deflationary mechanics are absolutely essential in keeping the coin relevant and maintaining its price long-term.
Then, there’s the Merge. Essentially, it’s the biggest update that the Ethereum network has experienced to date.
It’s not an over-exaggeration, either - during the Merge, the Ethereum network transitioned from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake. This means that there are no more miners on the network - instead, ETH is now stakeable.
Naturally, there were multiple other benefits that came along with this - security, scalability, and so on. However, when it comes to the Ethereum Triple Halving, the staking functionality is at the top of the importance list.
Before the Merge, there were many speculations on what this new Ethereum would look like - how it would work, how the market would react, what would happen with all of the staked ETH (more on that a bit later), and so on. It makes sense - it’s really the first update of its kind in the entire crypto industry!
The Merge was implemented successfully on September 15, 2022. This was a huge sigh of relief to many crypto enthusiasts around the world. However, as I mentioned at the beginning of the text, people started asking about the Ethereum Triple halving date, as well as how this halving would look. Let’s break it down, shall we?
As I’ve told you earlier, the Ethereum Triple Halving is a process that doesn’t have a specific date. This is the very first thing that makes it unique and different from, say, Bitcoin halving.
While BTC halving happens every 4 years or so, ETH halving is a bit more complex in the sense that it’s continuous. While this isn’t a clear-cut consensus within the community, you could say that ETH halving began with the earlier-discussed EIP-1559 update.
Why is it called “triple halving”, though? Well, simply because it consists of three aforementioned parts:
The fee-burning mechanics call back to EIP-1559 - we’ve covered that part already. Staking is also something that we’ve discussed - there is one thing concerning this topic that I’ve yet to mention, however.
That thing has to do with the staked ETH on the Beacon chain.
The Beacon chain is the now-main blockchain of Ethereum. It was launched on December 1, 2020, and worked beside the old Ethereum Proof-of-Work blockchain. Eventually, when the Merge finally happened, ETH transitioned to the Beacon chain as its main blockchain network.
Why is all of that important when it comes to the Ethereum Triple Halving? Well, crypto enthusiasts could stake their ETH on the Beacon chain before it was launched to help facilitate its development. With a minimum entry bar of 32 ETH, the chain managed to amass nearly 14 million ETH, totaling in a staggering value of almost $21 billion.
Now, imagine if that $21 billion worth of ETH were to unlock, all at once, upon the completion of the Merge, and if the holders of that Ethereum decided to then dump it into the market. This would likely mean a complete and total crash of not only Ethereum but the rest of the crypto market!
Thankfully, this is something that’s also part of the Ethereum Triple Halving - the locked-up ETH will be released periodically without impacting the market too much.
Well, at least theoretically.
The last component of the ETH Triple Halving is the token issuance question.
When Ethereum was still in its Proof-of-Work days, the issuance rate for the crypto in question was huge. Every single day, around 13,000 ETH would be issued (minted) to miners - that’s an absolutely insane number to think about! However, with the transition to Proof-of-Stake, this number has dropped to approximately 1,700 ETH per day.
Well, that’s the case, according to the official data. Some other sources are even more positive about this aspect - they claim that ETH is on the verge of becoming deflationary and that if this keeps up, there will be more Ethereum burned than that which is coming into the market on a yearly basis.
So, all three of these aspects come together to make up the Ethereum Triple Halving. Interestingly enough, it’s not even a halving process, per se - instead, it simply adopted this name due to halvings being a phenomenon with similar technicalities surrounding it.
While we’ve established that the ETH halving dates back to EIP-1559 and even before that, when is it going to finish, though? Does this process even have an objective, established end date?
Not really, no. However, the answers to these questions seem to be very inconclusive.
Some experts say that the Ethereum Triple Halving is a done deal - that it finished with the Merge event. This, however, wouldn’t be the correct assumption to make, granted that 1) the Merge happened not too long ago, and the staking process still needs time to manifest any notable results, and 2) the staked ETH will only start unlocking about half a year after the Merge.
So, in other words, it probably wouldn’t be incorrect to assume that the Ethereum Triple Halving is still happening to this day. When will it end, then?
Once again, it’s impossible to say for sure - there’s no specific, set date for when the ETH halving is set to finish. Since it’s not really an objective process but rather an abstract concept, everyone will have their own opinions on matters that are seemingly objective - i.e., the start and end dates of the phenomenon.
Up to this point in the text, we’ve discussed some of the more technical aspects surrounding the Ethereum Triple Halving. The one topic that I’ve been avoiding (consciously, mind you) is the effect that the ETH halving has had – and will have – on the price of the asset.
Why was I avoiding this question? It’s pretty simple, really - it’s such a popular topic that it deserves a separate chapter in and of itself.
So, then, let’s not waste any time and get right into it - take a look at the Ethereum price chart below:
As you can see, the two lines represent the Beacon chain launch, as well as the Merge (Ethereum 2.0 transition) periods. There’s quite a bit of unpacking to do here.
First and foremost, if you know nothing about the crypto market, your immediate assumption might be that the Beacon chain launch – and the weeks leading to it – were the reason for Ethereum’s massive price explosion right afterwards.
While that certainly might have added to it, the reality isn’t quite this simple. Instead, the whole crypto market experienced a massive bullish period from the beginning of 2021, and the reasons for that were quite varied.
After the huge uptick in price, ETH started tumbling and fluctuated around the period of the Merge. However, this is a very interesting phenomenon to observe as well.
Countless people believed that ETH would start rising in price exponentially, thanks to the Merge as well as the Ethereum Triple Halving. A single look at the chart will reveal that this wasn’t the case - instead, right as the Merge happened, the price of ETH fell.
Was this surprising? No, not at all. Crypto investors might have simply “bought the rumor, sold the news” - they waited for the hype surrounding the Merge to grow so that they could maximize their potential profits and then sell when the event finally happened.
This isn’t really indicative of the bigger picture, though, especially when it comes to the ETH halving. While the Merge date might have brought underwhelming results, asset price-wise, the Ethereum Triple Halving is a long-term process - it is expected that ETH will grow in price in the future, and the short-term fluctuations won’t really affect it all that much.
Naturally, if we’re talking about the future of Ethereum, as well as the ETH Triple Halving, it would be impossible to ignore the giant elephant in the room that is price predictions.
Indeed - even after the Merge finally happened and ETH crashed in price, this topic has remained unquestionably relevant and widely discussed among the different circles of crypto enthusiasts around the world.
Now, if there’s one thing that we should clear up, it’s the fact that no one can predict the actual price that ETH (or any other cryptocurrency) will hit at a specified point in time. Truth be told, while that *is* the case generally, with Ethereum, it’s even more-so complicated.
That’s simply due to the fact that ETH is so popular and, thus, by extension, so widely used and adopted. Major crypto news can really impact Ethereum’s price in either direction!
That being said, let’s still make some educated guesses on what ETH might do next, price-wise.
The sentiments online surrounding ETH will differ depending on when it is that you look at them. It’s really a combination of multiple factors that are at play - general crypto (or global) news, some popular posts or videos about the Merge, people questioning what is the Ethereum Triple Halving, and so on.
All of these things (and much more) work to create a general market trend. If they are positive, the prices of cryptocurrencies (including ETH) tend to go up. If things are a bit shakier and the market has entered a bearish period, then the outlook might not be as favorable.
All of that is, admittedly, very self-explanatory. However, there really is no mystery surrounding the matter - the whole market follows the same logic!
So, if you’re looking for price predictions or are interested in whether the price of ETH will rise or fall in the near future, you should keep an eye on these factors - read the news, follow the recent market trends, and check to see how the crypto market reacts to all of it. Educating yourself about the Ethereum Triple Halving is definitely necessary as well!
Now, before we finish off our ETH halving discussion, there’s one more notable point to talk about - the significance of this phenomenon as it relates to the different types of crypto enthusiasts out there.
We’ll start off with the most obvious group of people - ETH miners.
Miners are certainly the most impacted group when we’re talking about the Ethereum halving dates. The reason behind this is pretty obvious as well - thanks to the Merge, there’s no more ETH mining. Instead, Ethereum can now only be staked.
Admittedly, the reactions from miners regarding this simple factor were quite varied. As you might expect, negative sentiments dominated the space - if you’re an ETH miner, you probably have some kind of a mining machine, and these devices cost money.
With ETH no longer being mineable, you can see how this would be a serious problem.
Some miners opted to search for new crypto assets to mine, so as to not make their investments go to waste. Others quit mining altogether. Then, you have those people who transitioned to staking Ethereum, too. However, if you used to be an ETH miner and still have all of your mining equipment, this might not have been the most popular option.
The one mitigating factor, however, is the fact that miners did have a lot of time to come up with a plan and decide on what they wanted to do after the Merge. This is because both ETH 2.0 and the Ethereum Triple Halving are concepts that had been talked about and analyzed for a very long time before they actually took place!
When it comes to the Ethereum halving, investors are probably the most straightforward group to discuss. Their objective is quite obvious - to maximize their investments. If you’re an investor in Ethereum, though, your experience with the Merge and ETH halving might be quite a rollercoaster!
As I told you earlier in the text, most investors believed that the Ethereum Merge event would cause the price of Ethereum to skyrocket. When this didn’t happen, some people panicked and started offloading their ETH into the market. This, in turn, caused the price of the asset in question to dip.
If you’re a long-term investor, though, and not a day trader, your sentiments might be a bit different. Long-term investors are usually believers in the projects that they’ve chosen to invest in, and following that logic, they tend to look into the details as well.
In that type of scenario, you’re probably well aware of what the Merge is and how the Ethereum Triple Halving would affect the market or the short-term price of ETH. It’s quite interesting how the sentiments can differ, depending on which side of the fence you find yourself on!
Last but not least, we have the general crypto community - people who might not be investors in ETH or even fans of the network behind the token, but do still find themselves orbiting the crypto space in one way or another.
So, how does Ethereum Triple Halving, as well as the Merge to ETH 2.0, affect these people?
Well, you do already know that Ethereum is an absolutely major crypto project that has thousands of other, smaller projects built on top of it. Thus, if something affects ETH, it certainly affects the rest of the crypto space as well!
Following that logic, major events such as the Merge act as huge milestones in the development of the space. It’s always a risky concept – if something were to go wrong, it would mean major losses all over the crypto industry.
Granted that the Merge was successful and the Ethereum Triple Halving phenomenon is still at play, the above is thankfully a scenario that was avoided. So, in short, whether you’re looking to invest in ETH, stake it, or are simply interested in observing the journey of this piece of crypto technology from afar, the Merge was mostly a positive event, as far as the rest of the space is concerned.
The Ethereum Triple Halving is among the most confusing halving concepts out there. While we’ve covered it extensively in the text above, let’s have a quick summary of the main points, shall we?
The key takeaways are:
If you keep these key points in mind, you should have a pretty good idea of what is ETH Triple Halving, how it works, and how it influences the rest of the crypto space in general.
That wraps up our guide on Ethereum Triple halving - thanks for reading!
Make sure to look into other cryptocurrency halvings, as well. Bitcoin is a prime example - the halvings of this cryptocurrency are among the most notable events in the crypto space, so it’s definitely important to understand them!