As halving approaches and mining profits decline, Bitcoin miners are at a crossroads

With the Bitcoin halving approaching, questions such as “Can miners work together to avoid the halving?”, “What happens if the software used by miners removes the halving function and continues to produce blocks with a reward of 12.5 BTC?”, and “Can miners change the consensus rules?” are increasingly becoming the focus of discussion in the crypto community.

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Bitcoin evangelist and analyst Andreas Antonopoulos also spoke about these issues in a recent podcast, saying that there is no way miners can collude to avoid the Bitcoin halving because it is not just a matter of miners running a piece of code. He said:

“This is a piece of code that is run by every Bitcoin node that participates in the consensus mechanism, and these consensus rules cannot be changed at will. Therefore, if a miner mines a block of 12.5 BTC and broadcasts it on the Bitcoin network, miners who are not participating in this scheme will check this block and evaluate it using the code, thus rejecting the block.”

The mechanism is simple. When the two block rewards do not match, other miners will abandon this particular block and consider it invalid. When other miners observe such invalid transactions, they will ban the miner as a participant in the "defense mechanism." Antonopoulos elaborated on the principle of how Bitcoin operates through a system of checks and balances, in which all parties including miners, exchanges, merchants, developers, wallets or users with economic activities need to participate in consensus decision-making. Antonopoulos said:

“All five parties must reach consensus, and if one of them tries to break the rules, the other four will reject their transactions and blocks, and they will face huge financial losses.”

Antonopoulos stressed that the decision of whether to continue mining with profit margins in mind is not just something that happens during Bitcoin halvings, but it actually happens every day:

“Whether to halve or not halve depends on many different factors. These factors include electricity costs, Bitcoin price to fiat currency, operational efficiency of employees, facilities, mining density, and equipment you have. Five years ago, upgrades like Lightning Network (LN) and others were not even good ideas, so it is impossible to predict how Bitcoin and its consensus mechanism will change.”

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