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https://www.coindesk.com/litecoin-just-halved-its-crypto-rewards-for-miners

Jim Bell's comment:Why do these mining rewards change discontinuously, by a factor of 2 in this case, rather than by some continuous factor?

because that's how 'satoshi' coded it. And yeah, halving the reward abruptly looks like a rather bad idea.

There's no real problem there, other than possibly being hard step function input to the next difficulty adjustment. Rather than hiding coinbase mining reward behind some automagic curve, a step makes clear the monetary policy in effect to everyone, and as to the next time it will occur. Bitcoin-BTC next halving is well known to bring BTC rate of money printing permanently down under that of the US Dollar, consumer inflation rates, global prime and loan rates, and worldwide gold production. The impact of that simply cannot be understated. There would also be no major news buzz on that if it were hidden away.