In the final minutes before Bitcoin did its third halving, the last block was mined. The halving cut the block reward from 12.5 Bitcoins to 6.25 Bitcoins. The miner who extracted the last block of the cryptocurrency before the halving had a message to share to others who were working on the project.

The miner who was responsible for extracting block 629,999 is F2pool. They made a New York Times headliner about the Bitcoin blockchain halving right before it happened on May 11. Not long before Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin during the financial crisis and Great Recession of 2008, the idea of government bailouts was not on the minds of Americans. It seemed like just about overnight the housing market fell apart. Stock prices plummeted and the number of unemployed Americans skyrocketed.

While Barack Obama was president, the United States Federal Reserve put close to $500 billion worth of emergency loan and incentive programs in place to try to halt the damage. Almost 12 years later, the United States is now in a terrible situation in which there is no bipartisan cooperation under the President. The COVID-19 pandemic has killed more than 82,000 Americans as of May 12, and nearly 300,000 around the world.

The financial crisis has been worsened by the political turmoil and the disease. The Federal Reserve has proposed a $2.3 trillion bailout for American businesses and citizens. That bailout could have an impact on the global cryptocurrency never imagined by the miners who have been involved in Bitcoin since its inception.

Everybody who is a part of the cryptocurrency community will end up looking back on F2pool's work and their warning when the fourth halving of Bitcoin takes place in 2024. For most investors who are worried about the impacts of the pandemic, 2024 might as well be 3024. It seems so far off at this point that there is no way to tell what it could do to the value of Bitcoin or the value of the United States dollar. The world will have to get through this pandemic and hope another doesn't soon follow.