138
People say the total will be 21000000 BTC.
... however:
The 1st 210000 blocks each allow creating 50 BTC.
The 2nd 210000 blocks each allow creating 25 BTC.
The 3rd 210000 blocks each allow creating 12.5 BTC.
...
The 10th 210000 blocks each allow creating 0.09765625 BTC.
The 11th 210000 blocks each allow creating 0.04882812 BTC, and not 0.048828125 BTC, ...
29
If you were a miner, what are the steps you would take to create the extra (21,000,012.5th) bitcoin?
Where in the source code is this exactly (link)?
There are two components to CVE-2018-17144. There is a crash bug and an inflation bug. Both are triggered by almost the same scenario: a transaction contains an input multiple times.
In general, how this would ...
21
Neither. The reward eventually ceases, but not at 21 million Bitcoins.
Here's the code (edited for clarity and brevity):
int halvings = nHeight / 210000;
CAmount nSubsidy = 50 * COIN; // COIN is one Bitcoin
// Subsidy is cut in half every 210,000 blocks which will occur approximately every 4 years.
return nSubsidy >> halvings;
(Source.)
Note that ...
18
At the beginning of Bitcoin, every newly mined block (about every 10 minutes) creates 50 bitcoins. This is called the block subsidy. About every 4 years, this number cuts in half. Therefore, the peak extraction rate was about the first 4 years of Bitcoin's existence.
In fact, it was from 3 January 2009 to 28 November 2012.
The block reward includes both the ...
18
According to comments by the project's founder, Bitcoin's issuance rate was indeed inspired by that of precious metals. However, it is implemented algorithmically, of course, which artificially limits the issuance rate rather than actually being an abundant resource getting consumed over time.
The bitcoin reward schedule halves the block subsidy every 210,...
16
Year #bitcoins Inflation per annum
2009 1,624,250 -
--------------------------------------------------
2010 5,020,250 209.1%
2011 8,001,400 59.4%
2012 10,733,825 34.1% (halvening November 28)
2013 12,199,725 13.7%
2014 13,671,200 12.1%
---------------------------------------------...
12
It is exactly at block 420000.
When block 420000 will be mined is not certain, as the block mining process is random and influenced by hashrate variation.
9
The Bitcoin reward schedule follows a predetermined pattern, see Controlled supply from the Bitcoin wiki.
The next reward drop will happen at block number 420000. The current block number at the time of writing this answer is 318662. There are about 101338 blocks remaining. At approximately 10 minutes per block, there are approximately 1008 blocks per week, ...
8
Colin's calculation has a mistake in that it doesn't account for partial Bitcoins not being paid out in block rewards. It rounds down the reward per day, but should round each block reward down to the satoshi. The first period changed by this correction is Halving 10.
Payout per day at 144 blocks
Start (2009) : 7200.00000000
Halving 1 (2013) : 3600....
8
According to a BIP (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal) I found, this code:
nSubsidy >>= (nHeight / 210000);
will actually wrap the reward generation back to 50 at some point in 2200 or so. Making the supply of bit coins infinite. The python code above does not have this property. The C++ code does. See BIP https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-...
8
This is the announcement of Bitcoin:
http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2009-January/014994.html
Total circulation will be 21,000,000 coins. It'll be distributed to
network nodes when they make blocks, with the amount cut in half every
4 years.
first 4 years: 10,500,000 coins
next 4 years: 5,250,000 coins
next 4 years: 2,625,000 ...
7
The first block with the halved block subsidy is 420,000. However, blocks are discovered in a random process – whereas the protocol aims to have blocks found approximately every ten minutes, in effect blocks are currently found about every 8.94 minutes. Therefore, one can only estimate the precise arrival of the Halving:
thehalvening.com estimates 2016-07-...
7
There is a maximum limit on the block reward which is 12.5 BTC but nothing prevents a miner from claiming less than 12.5 BTC. In fact, there have been times when miners forgot to claim any bitcoin at all (claimed 0 BTC), a very expensive mistake. This is probably a mistake from the miner, he could have certainly claimed more bitcoin.
As long as the block ...
7
I have created this Google sheet to calculate various metrics of the reward schedule. The numerical maximum of bitcoins that could be created is 20,999,949.9769 BTC.
0.98 × max = 20,579,950.977362
So, the network will have issued more than 98% of all bitcoins once there are more than 20,579,950.977362 BTC. Looking at the table I linked above, we see that at ...
6
On average, since the creation of Bitcoin, a new block has been created every 9 minutes and 20 seconds. This is 7% faster than the correct time of 10 minutes. Taking that into account, I predict that the next one will be at Jun 20, 2016.
6
When no Bitcoins are left to be mined, how will the Blockchain continue to be validated? [duplicate]
Mining rewards are not the only source of income for miners. There are also transaction fees. When there are no more bitcoins to be mined (happens around 2140) then miners would be mining for transaction fees only.
6
There will be 32 halvings, but the block subsidy will be reduced 33 times with the last reduction not halving it, but reducing it from 1 sat per block to 0 sats per block (see table with calculation). So there will actually be 33 eras with a block subsidy, which would mean that per your calculation the last new bitcoins would be created in 2141.
However, the ...
6
You have to distinguish between nodes' local view of the chain, and your global view when discussing here.
Every chain (meaning: a block together with all its direct and indirect ancestors) is a version of history. Within that chain, the block pays out to whomever mined the block. As far as miners on that chain goes, they are extending the chain they believe ...
5
I'm going to answer your questions directly although I know you've selected another answer. It's for all those who come across this question.
How do we know that the algorithm cannot be modified to gain control over the expansion of the monetary base?
These are part of the config settings of the Bitcoin protocol. It can be changed but all you would be ...
5
The Dogecoin reward schedule
I subsequently found the information that the Dogecoin reward schedule provides random amounts sized between 0 and a halving maximum for the first 600,000 blocks:
Block 1 — 100,000: 0-1,000,000 dogecoins
Block 100,001 — 200,000: 0-500,000 dogecoins
Block 200,001 — 300,000: 0-250,000 dogecoins
Block 300,001 — 400,000: 0-125,000 ...
5
How long it takes to mine them all?
DogeCoin has a block time target of one block per minute. According to its bitcointalk thread it follows a block reward schedule where the first 100,000 blocks get a random reward between 0 and 1,000,000 dogeCoins and every subsequent 100,000 blocks halves the of the previous reward's maximum.
Beginning with the 600,...
5
The block halving takes place every 210,000 blocks. The difficulty retargeting mechanism makes it so that 210,000 blocks take approximately 4 years, but this is not exact. If the hashrate is rapidly growing, it will take a little less than that.
For example, if the total network hashrate doubles every year, it will take about 1 month less. If it doubles ...
5
From "The Unreasonable Fundamental Incertitudes Behind Bitcoin Mining" (page 40):
With current bitcoin software [6, 7], at certain moments in time the reward for mining is divided by two in one single step. This is NOT compensated by the fact the the diffculty of mining increases all the time. It just adds sudden adjustments every 4 years to a diffculty ...
5
I think you might be referring to the hypothesis that a large portion of the mining power would switch off right at the halving. This is theorized to kick off a chain reaction:
Lower network hash rate causes slow blocks
Slow blocks increase block space competition
Block space competition increases fees
Increased fees push users off network to competing ...
5
Technically, yes, yes, and yes. However, I'm not sure if we'd still call it "Bitcoin" at that point.
Any of these changes would require a hard fork, which means that the underlying rules of the system are changing in a non-backwards-compatible way. It means that blocks/transactions from after the fork are not guaranteed to be considered valid to nodes ...
5
What if after this phase the first miner or more than 51% of them decide to keep the current production rate ? Do their block will be refused like if they had produced a wrong block ?
Exactly. This is no different than if a miner (or a majority of miners) created blocks which paid out anything more that 12.5 BTC today: the network would simply ignore the ...
5
This isn't really a Bitcoin question, just a math one, but I'll give it a shot anyways.
Let's look at the binary values for a few numbers from base 10
0 | 0
1 | 1
2 | 10
3 | 11
4 | 100
5 | 101
6 | 110
7 | 111
8 | 1000
9 | 1001
10 | 1010
Note how the powers of two set the (nth+1) bit (when read right to left) - 2^0 sets the ...
5
When the creator of Bitcoin published the original Bitcoin client, it came with rules for an inflation schedule. As a means of bootstrapping the system and distributing the initial supply, miners were allowed to create 50 new bitcoins per block, but this subsidy would get halved every 210,000 blocks. The inflation schedule is a so-called consensus rule which ...
5
I was on another forum and the claim was made that the miners using new technology GPUs
GPU mining has been obsolete for Bitcoin mining since around 2014. All mining these days is done using custom chips specifically designed for Bitcoin mining. It is orders of magnitude more power-efficient.
and because of this there will be more bitcoin produced.
...
5
This is not addressed in Bitcoin's Whitepaper, although Satoshi
Nakamoto briefly mentions the decrease of the reward, but never
explicitly talks about the amount of the reward.
Satoshi speak about the halving process since the release notes for Bitcoin v0.1 Alpha:
Total circulation will be 21,000,000 coins. It'll be distributed
to network nodes when they ...
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