On July 9, right in accordance with initial schedule, bitcoin mining reward was halved. The event didn’t come as a surprise – the moment when the mining reward is divided by 2 is commonly known as Bitcoin halving. Some bitcoiners also call it reward halving, Bitcoin mining reward halving, or simply the halving or the Halvening.
As Satoshi Nakamoto was creating a new digital currency, bitcoin, he thought out the whole operational principle. Bitcoin relies on “mining” computers validating blocks of transactions by competing to solve mathematical puzzles every 10 minutes. The first computer to succeed gets a reward of 25 new bitcoins, worth around $13,500. Satoshi Nakamoto decided that the reward must be halved once in four years, in order to keep a lid on inflation.
http://www.coinspeaker.com/2016/07/11/bitcoin-halving-and-its-impact-on-bitcoin-price/
