We must have been hearing the name Bitcoin in the crypto space and everywhere around us and we might be wondering what's so special about it. This currency was the first successful digital currency that was launched in the year 2009 by Nakatomi Satoshi.

This currency is built on a blockchain which uses the proof of work mechanism whereby miners are needed to ensure the currency is well developed and regulate the price fluctuation as it may seem.

The currency was launched with 21 million supply and has been estimated that the total supply will be reached not until 2140.

This is what brings us to halving, miners gets a certain reward of Bitcoin whenever they mine and complete a block, this reward has been scheduled to be halved after some certain time or under certain circumstances.

In a nutshell Bitcoin halving is an occurrence whereby the reward that a miner gets after successful completion of a block is halved after a particular time.

This means that miners will recieves 50% of what they receive initially before the halving. This halving is stated to occur whenever the block reaches 210,000 blocks which has been estimated to equate to about 4 years to get the amount of block speculated.

What is Bitcoin Halving

Bitcoin halving is an event where the block reward for mining new bitcoin is halved, meaning that bitcoin miners will receive 50% less bitcoin for every transaction they verify. BTC halving occurs every 210,000 blocks, which equates to a halving occurring approximately every 4 years.

Wait, it seems like this is gibberish or I am trying to confuse you, whenever a block of BTC is successfully mined, the Bitcoin miner gets a reward which is in BTC.

The mining uses such high computational power and energy and that's why the miners are rewarded it's not just a free money.

To keep the price of BTC stable and deflationary, this is why BTC is mined because BTC has a fixed supply which is reduced over time.

HISTORY OF BITCOIN HALVING

Let's briefly look at the history of Bitcoin Halving to see what and how bitcoin halving originated and where it kick-start

At the launch of Bitcoin in 2019, miners were rewarded with 50 BTC per successful block mined after which the first halving took place in November 2012 after the 210,000 block was completed which was approximately about 4 years and reduced the reward to 25, another halving also took place in July 2016 which was the second halving when the block got to 420k block after 4 years as well the reward was then reduced to 12.5 BTC.

As seen in the screenshot above the next halving took place in May 2020 which reduced the reward to 6.25 BTC after another 210k block was mined, according to this three halving has been done so far since the emergence of BTC.

The next HALVING is scheduled to hold in 2024 or whenever the block gets to 840k.

Examples of other crypto that has been halved are ;

(1). Litecoin

(2). Ravencoin

(3). Bitcoin cash

(4). Bitcoin SV.

CONSESUS MECHANISM

A consensus mechanism or algorithm is a protocol that allows different entities or users to be in charge of the coordination of a system. It ensures that all entity in the system come to an agreement on a single truth even if some of the entity fails.

A centralized sysytem only makes use of one entity which has the overall say about the system and they do as they wish but in a Decentralized system it is a different matter entirely and this is what brings about consensus mechanism.

MAJOR TYPES OF CONSENSUS MECHANISM

The major type of consensus mechanism we have are

(1). The Proof of work (PoW)

(2). The proof of Stake (PoS).

(1). The Proof of work (PoW)

The proof of work is the father of all consensus mechanism as it was the one used in Bitcoin, this algorithm allows for validators who are also called miners to use computers to solve highly computational works which gives them a reward after they successfully solve the mathematics, this algorithm makes use of high energy to perform the mining

(2). The proof of Stake (PoS).

The Proof of stake uses people who hold a certain coin and this gives them the right to mine or validate block transactions done on the system. In this aspect the more coin one hold the higher the reward he or she getsz it doesn't make use of high computation and high consumption of energy, it was an alternative created for the proof of work defects.

BITCOIN EXPLORER

To use the Bitcoin explorer, one will load the page blockchain.com/explorer on his or her browser and then check out the information that he or she wishes to check.

There are various sections such as the block section, trànsaction section, holders number and so more. We are more concerned about the last transaction so we navigate to the trànsaction section and click on the last hash to view the last transaction.

The hash of the last transaction as at the time of my writing is

68400b17eb76cdd6af46eccc78f50d243f274b2dcdd19bf032f1fb90a6694c8b. Which detailed screenshot will be shown below.

According to the screenshot, the trànsaction hasn't been confirmed as it takes about 10 mins to confirm a trànsaction on the Bitcoin blockchain. The transaction value was at $112 as at the time of the transaction, the date, time and the wallets in which the trànsaction is happening is also shown in the screenshot above.

WHAT ARE ALT COIN SEASON?

Before we look into what Alt season is, first we need to understand what is meant by Alt coin in crypto. Alt is a short form of alternative which means an option of something else, so in crypto Alt coin refers to every other coin apart from Bitcoin which are usually the first 50 coin after Bitcoin and the coin ranking chart.

Now that we have an idea of what an alt coin is then we can talk about alt season.

Alt season is a period in the market whereby all other coin in the market except for Bitcoin are undergoing a rise in price or a pump in price prior to stagnancy or dip.

Graphically, to know an alt season we check the coin ranking platform and checkout the details if 75% of other coin ranked 1-50 apart from Bitcoin is showing green and Bitcoin shows red that's an alt season, we can also check the alt season using the trading view by comparing the chart of BTC market cap against other coins market cap as shown in the screenshot below.

The blue line on the first chart represent BTC Mcap whole the orange line represent other coin whenever we see the orange line above the blue line this indicates an alt season. As at the time.of my writing the market was in a bullish trend. The last time an alt season came into play was on the 3rd of Oct 2021.

EXAMPLES OF ALT COIN

We will be checking out other Alt coin, but choosing specifically two among them.

1. STELLAR

According to the chart which is a day chart we can see the price movement of the coin, which shows the significant rise in the price following the pattern of the bullish movement of the market.

2. POLYGON

According to the chart also there is a major drop.in the price of the asset which is showing it in the range of the oversold showing a possible reversal due to the bullish market.

BUYING OF AN ALTCOIN

FTM is a smart contract platform which is a directed acyclic graph that provides decentralized finance to users and developers and it also has its own consensus mechanism which is said to allow transaction faster on the platform. It was created in 2018 but the Opera fantom was launched in 2019, it was founded by Dr. Byung IK a aounth Korean computer scientist and the CEO is Micheal Kong..

It is ranked #47 on the coin market cap ranking with a present price of $1.35, a market cap.of $3,425,184,928 and a total supply of 2,545,006,273 FTM. It has an all.time.high of $1.93 and an all time low of $0.0019.

This coin is a good investment as it has seen significant growth over the past few years and more investors are coming in due to its new consensus mechanism and it higher scalability. It's defi functions also will bring in more investors as investors are trooping into defi which is the future of cryptocurrency.

As you can see I have 43 Usdt but I will just be using 15 Usdt according to the request of the assignment, after then I inserted the amount of Usdt equivalent to 15 dollar to buy my FTM

After the end of the purchase, it gives me 8. 991 FTM in return which is now added to my portfolio investment right now

Above is a screenshot on how to buy the FTM token, it can be bought on binance, Okex etc, I will be using the binance platform to buy the token, we navigate to the trade section and choose the spot section, then we select the coin pair which in my case I chose FTMUSDT. Then we insert the parameters needed and press the buy button, then we confirm the trànsaction.

@imagen