The halving of bitcoins is often called “Halvening”, it is a formulated reduction of the prize coins offered to miners using a predefined blockchain algorithm.
Bitcoin halves occur approximately once every four to 4 years or for every 210,000 block transactions.
The bitcoin halving process began in 2012, approximately after 4 years of bitcoin invention, i.e. in 2008, but practically bitcoins came into play in 2009.
After the first halving of bitcoins, the reward in blocks of 50 bitcoins per transaction has been reduced to 25 bitcoins per block or transaction, afterwards this reward has been further reduced to 12.5 and will now drop to 6.25 after being halved in 2020.
The main idea of halvening is to create scarcity for coins and control inflation, since the issue of bitcoin is limited to 21 million coins according to the idea of Satoshi Nakamoto, inventor of Bitcoin.
The production of 21 million bitcoins involves 32 halvenings, now we are done with two halvenings and this could continue until or end in 2140.
To know the overview of Bitcoin Halving (in just a few minutes), check out the following infographic developed by Abishai James on WinBTC.net.