Bitcoin news lately has been a little bit relaxed so this Bitcoin Weekly will be dedicated to talking about The Halvening—the second time that the Bitcoin block discovery reward will be cut in half (this time from 25 BTC to 12.5 BTC) coming up in July. Keep reading to see the infographic kindly supplied by CoinJournal about the subject.

Also in this column, John McAfee—of McAfee Antivirus fame and intermittent SiliconANGLE guest columnist—has taken over an intellectual property company and is transforming it into a cryptocurrency security company. He’s also announced hiring on Roger Ver and Erik Voorhees to various boards in the company (see below for more information).

As for the Bitcoin market, it remains higher than usual with the average market value hovering around $696.20 USD (BitcoinAverage.com), which is the highest watermark since 2013 when it exceeded $1,000 on some exchanges. Just last week the market price had been hanging around $578 showing a more than $100 rise in the past seven days. The rise began on June 11 and then kept creeping up until it exceeded $700 on June 13 and has been rising and falling between $680 and $700.

Questions no doubt remain in the minds of Bitcoiners as for what will happen to the price in July when the Bitcoin rewards cut in half from The Halvening. Keep reading for that promised infographic. This and more in this week’s Bitcoin Weekly.

John McAfee joins cybersecurity company and hires on Roger Ver and Erik Voorhees

Tech celebrity John McAfee, founder and ex-CEO of McAfee Antivirus, is taking over as CEO at MGT Capital Investments, Inc. and changing the name to John McAfee Global Technologies. As his first order of business, McAfee has set the vision and mission for the company to becoming a leader in securing cryptocurrencies.

John McAfee. Screenshot via USA Today.

“As Chief Executive of MGT, I will lead a team to aggressively develop technology platforms, software, hardware and components designed to protect people and their freedoms,” said John McAfee, now CEO of John McAfee Global Technologies. “Under the technical leadership of the Company’s proposed Chief Technology Officer, Eric ‘Eijah’ Anderson, we will be laser focused on bringing these technologies to market.”

And as his second order of business, McAfee hired on renowned Bitcoin entrepreneur and evangelist Roger Ver, owner of the Bitcoin.com domain name and forum, as Chairman of the Board at the new company.

Roger Ver via Twitter.

“I can’t think of anything more exciting to be working on, or with a more exciting group of people,” said Roger Ver about his new position.

Ver’s first act as Chairman of the Board was to appoint Erik Voorhees to the company’s Cryptocurrency Advisory Board. Voorhees is best known as a luminary and entrepreneur in the Bitcoin space and as the CEO of ShapeShift.io, a unique cryptocurrency registration-less cryptocurrency exchange.

The Halvening (in infographic form)

In July, Bitcoin block mining rewards will halve. This event has happened once before (when the reward halved in 2012 to 25 BTC from 50 BTC) and this year it will drop to 12.5 BTC. This happens every 210,000 blocks that are mined, which happens approximately every four years.

This coded phenomena is part of Bitcoin’s controlled supply mechanism.

The effect of this is that the total number of bitcoins mined per day will drop and miners will find it harder to collect as much as they did before with the same mining equipment. The result will likely end up with the short-term price of BTC going up again in the market and a number of miners may drop out as mining costs go up.

Above is an infographic from CoinJournal talking about The Halvening and speculations on how it will affect the industry and the market.

Photo: Dawson/Bloomberg News