I've been seeing lots of people posting about how the 20 millionth Bitcoin was mined...yesterday or earlier today or will be mined later tonight.
What's up with the confusion?
Here's what my node says about the supply:
block: 940048
supply: 19,999,923.03074584
So, supply hasn't hit 20 milly yet. But has the 20 millionth Bitcoin been mined?
Each epoch is 210,000 blocks. 1st epoch block reward was 50 btc. Halved at the next epoch to 25. Halved again to 12.5. And again to 6.25 and now is 3.125.
So:
210000 * 50 = 10.5 million
210000 * 25 = 5.25 million
210000 * 12.5 = 2.625 million
210000 * 6.25 = 1.3125 million
100,000 * 3.125 = 0.3125 million
= 20 million
So, block 940,000 should have seen the 20 millionth Bitcoin mined.
But Clark Moody's dashboard doesn't show that:
Time chain Calendarshowed supply at 20 million at block 939984, but I think this was mostly a rounding thing.
About 10 hours ago, wicked posted this on X:
So what's the deal? @lopp has some answers:
The genesis block 50 didn't get mined and 29 bitcoins that were not claimed as subsidies (though they could have been): so I think the earliest we get 20 million bitcoin isn't until block 940073?
I had never heard of unclaimed subsidies. How does that work?
I believe that the miner is in charge of creating the coinbase transaction they include in their block template. If they find a successful block, this tx sends up to the epoch's limit of coins to the addresses they designate. But they also can send less than the full subsidy amount, effectively not claiming it all. That amount of Bitcoin just never gets mined.
I assume of was early bitcoiners who were experimenting or of was accidental.
good explanation, you and Lopp covered all the bases
I noticed the same thing on Clark Moody then ate a sandwich and forgot about it
Yes, its not really a big deal one way or another. But it is fun when calling commands on your own node comes in handy for social media debates.
Interesting quirk. Hadn't heard of that before.
While the block does have a coinbase tx, it's been hardcoded to not be included in the utxo set.
Testing in production. What a shame. A shame for those sans subsidy but a gift to the rest of us. If anyone wants to make a similar decentralized gift, please see #4.
https://twiiit.com/w_s_bitcoin/status/2031014209392136437
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