In order to avoid inflation and to achieve an increase in value of the crypto currency, the Bitcoin code stipulates that there may only be a total of 21 million Bitcoins - around 18 million of which have already been generated. To ensure that the maximum amount of Bitcoins is not exceeded, the code also contains a halving mechanism. This ensures that each time after 210,000 blocks have been generated in the Bitcoin network, the reward for generating additional blocks is halved. The miners then receive fewer Bitcoins for their work, and the total amount of available Bitcoins increases more slowly.
