What seems most likely is that Bitcoin mining will become increasingly centralised, carried out by a few big organised mining groups comprising companies and multiple users pooling their resources, while individual miners exit the market. More computing power will be needed to produce the same value of Bitcoin and the bigger pools will be more likely to bare the cost of this while small miners may decide it is no longer economically viable. Currently, users in China make up more than half of the Bitcoin mining industry, with AntPool and DiscusFish/P2Pool each covering around 17% of the market and BTC China Pool taking another 14%.

The problem is that a more centralised mining network will be open to attack because there are fewer users to go after. Hacking, extortion or even failures in critical infrastructure could bring down large swathes of the mining market in one move.

No one knows for sure what will happen and the answer may even be nothing at all. The price of another cryptocurrency, Litecoin, has remained untouched after its recent halving process. But Litecoin has a considerably smaller scope and limited effects on the global economy. All we know for sure is that we are entering a new phase of discovery for Bitcoin.