143
votes
Accepted
Will there be 21 million bitcoins eventually?
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 ...
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29
votes
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How does the most recently found critical vulnerability (CVE-2018-17144) work?
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 ...
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21
votes
Will there be 21 million bitcoins eventually?
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 ...
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18
votes
When, if ever, will "peak bitcoin" occur?
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 ...
- 536
18
votes
When, if ever, will "peak bitcoin" occur?
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 ...
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16
votes
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How much inflation does Bitcoin have, year by year?
Year #bitcoins Inflation per annum
2009 1,624,250 -
--------------------------------------------------
2010 5,020,250 209.1%
2011 8,001,400 59.4%
2012 ...
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12
votes
Bitcoin halving conflict? Is this a rumor
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.
- 82.8k
9
votes
When will next halving events occur?
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 ...
- 3,401
8
votes
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How many Bitcoin are mined per day?
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 ...
- 62.5k
8
votes
How many bitcoins will there eventually be?
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 ...
- 201
8
votes
Who added the 21 million limit to Bitcoin?
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 ...
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8
votes
Accepted
Will a post-subsidy block with no transactions include a coinbase transaction?
Every Bitcoin block is required to have a coinbase transaction, regardless of fees or subsidy.
Additionally, every transaction (including the coinbase), must have at least one output (possibly 0-...
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7
votes
What date does the 2016 halving happen at?
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 ...
- 62.5k
7
votes
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Why does Bitcoin block 526,591 have a 6.25 (instead of 12.5) block reward?
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 ...
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7
votes
How do you calculate when 98% of Bitcoin will be mined?
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,...
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6
votes
When will next halving events occur?
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 ...
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6
votes
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When no Bitcoins are left to be mined, how will the Blockchain continue to be validated?
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 ...
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6
votes
Accepted
when is the mining of the last bitcoin?
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). ...
- 62.5k
6
votes
Accepted
How/When is mining reward given in the presence of forking / orphan chain?
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 ...
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5
votes
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Is the Bitcoin rewards formula flawed?
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 ...
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5
votes
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What are the possible Doomsday scenarios for the 2016 Halving from 25 to 12.5 BTC per block solved?
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 ...
- 62.5k
5
votes
Is it technically possible to change the total amount of Bitcoin?
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 ...
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5
votes
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What would happen if miners refused halving
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 ...
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5
votes
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Understanding the bitwise left shift logic on determining nSubsidy
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 | ...
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5
votes
Who decides the block reward in Bitcoin?
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 ...
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5
votes
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Does adding more miners create more bitcoin?
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 ...
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5
votes
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Does Bitcoin mining reward halving have documentation? Or is it just in the code?
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 ...
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4
votes
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How much will one bitcoin cost when the 21 millionth bitcoin (the last one) is mined?
Nobody knows. It depends on what the demand is for Bitcoins by that time. If everything goes as planned, the last bitcoin will be mined about 125 years from now, and I don't think anyone has a good ...
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4
votes
Is it possible for more than 21 million bitcoins to exist if 51% agree?
Maybe. It would require a split in bitcoin users. Those who wanted the change could switch to a new version of the bitcoin software with the code changed to allow it. The problem comes from the fact ...
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4
votes
Where is the source code that allows new coins to be generated?
You are looking for the method CAmount GetBlockSubsidy(int nHeight, const Consensus::Params& consensusParams) in validation.cpp.
CAmount GetBlockSubsidy(int nHeight, const Consensus::Params& ...
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