Why have a “halving” every four years, you may ask?
Having a periodic “The Halvening” ritual every four years allows Bitcoiners to reconcile and forgive each other’s trespasses for one, it also gives Bitcoin a nice bump of attention in the media and on social media, and finally it gives the Bitcoin High Priests an opportunity during the ritual to re-iterate the Bitcoin Commandments (eg. “Thou shall worship fixed monetary supply” and “thou shall not worship other consensus rules”). All this strengthens the community, and thus, the consensus, and a strong consensus is part of the main selling point: to get filthy rich.
I don't like Bananas. Instead of just not buying them at the grocery store and not eating them, I'll post a negative comment whenever someone mentions Bananas.
Bananas are bad for you! Bananas suck! Bananas are a scam!
I’m providing a sociological hypothesis for something that people usually only provide technical explanations for. If you have a novel explanation for why Bananas are purchased that is unrelated to nutrition, it is worth sharing at least.
>Having a periodic "The Halvening" ritual every four years allows Bitcoiners to reconcile an dforgive each other's tresspasses
You're going to have to elaborate on this. I don't understand how the adjustment of future mining rewards has anything to do with past "trespasses."
>it also gives Bitcoin a nice bump of attention in the media
It gives bitcoin negative media attention, because people on the outside will read the headline as "Bitcoin's value is cut in half," which is not the case.
1. All rituals have a reconciliatory nature, I think you’ll see this in many psychosocial models, (especially René Girard’s). Rituals like The Halvening distract from the hostility of conflict and gives rivals a chance to cooperate on something outside their relationship. “If you celebrate with me on this Halvening, I’ll forget that you brought up a fixed miner subsidy at the last Bitcoin Council Gathering”, that sort of thing. It’ll mostly be unsaid and subconscious.
For specific examples of who is reconciling at this specific ritual, just look at this thread! Hundreds of comments from hundreds of strangers around the world, all coming together.
2. All press is good press!
Another fact that supports the ritual hypothesis is the fact that this “event” has to be a big event every four years. Why not simply adjust down the reward at every block? Because then we’d have no ritual, and thus we’d have a weaker community.
Having a periodic “The Halvening” ritual every four years allows Bitcoiners to reconcile and forgive each other’s trespasses for one, it also gives Bitcoin a nice bump of attention in the media and on social media, and finally it gives the Bitcoin High Priests an opportunity during the ritual to re-iterate the Bitcoin Commandments (eg. “Thou shall worship fixed monetary supply” and “thou shall not worship other consensus rules”). All this strengthens the community, and thus, the consensus, and a strong consensus is part of the main selling point: to get filthy rich.