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?
Does this theory includes BTC LN network?
If this refers to supply of Bitcoin in circulation, yes. It includes all Bitcoin in circulation (hot wallets, cold storage, exchanges, utxos that have funds locked in the LN, the Bitcoin down the back of your couch, in Michael Saylor's and Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez's underpants.
If this refers to the Bitcoin that has been mined, then layer one Bitcoin chain only.
I think the only difference between bitcoin in supply and bitcoin that has been mined, is the bitcoin that has been provably burned (sent to addresses that can be verified as unspendable).
If Larry Fink claims to have 30 million bitcoin, it doesn't change the supply in my book. So, I think when you run
gettxoutsetinfoon your node, it returns the actual circulating supply as theamount.There's no difference. Same thing.
LN (the lightning network) is THE payment network of Bitcoin.
Only shitcoiners consider that LN is like a separate network from Bitcoin.
Read more about HTLC:
Homework for me ✔️
I wrote also more explanations here, (for like 5yrs old)
Haha 😄 🤣 ok my level then 🤣
How much of the circulated supply is economically unspendable?
I'd say zero.
You can pay a miner in fiat to mine your dust outputs.
Just thinking here, what's the total amount of dust? I imagine nobody's bothered thinking about how to put that back into circulation in the future, have they?
Current supply means they can be spent. Maybe you're asking about the difference between mined coins and spendable ones.
The Genesis block and the two duplicate coinbase outputs each lost us 50 ₿, and there were over 1000 blocks that didn't collect the whole block reward. On top of that, some bitcoins were burned in Proof of Burn schemes or OP_RETURN outputs.
We had already crossed the 20Mth bitcoin that could have been mined per the reward schedule, but the supply in circulation is lagging behind a bit.
Pieter has a great explanation here from a few years ago: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/38994
Mine is.
Height: 940111,
Total amount: 20000119
And was over 20m at 940048 it seems. Maybe your node has filtered out some blocks?
I would be very surprised if our nodes disagreed on this point (it would mean we were on different chains).
We can work backwards, thoigh: At a current subsidy of 3.125 btc per block, the 119 btc past 20 million would take 38 blocks. So 940111-38 blocks is the block height you got to 20 million: 940073.
You are right, my math was off.
If we took out 79 bitcoins, by my calculations, it was at 940025.
Perhaps that is the correct answer as to when the 20 millionth bitcoin was mined.
As far as supply goes, it is the case that by block 940048 my node still hadn't seen the supply of bitcoins reach 20 million.
The command I ran
gettxoutsetinfosums satoshis in every unspent tx output. So, it isn't really returning the total mined, so much as the total bitcoin that can be spent.I was just looking up what that function actually returns. If it's the total that can be spent, then we can say it's the current bitcoin supply, which is different from the total mined.
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.
Yeah, someone tried to mine a sat less than they could and forgot to collect their transaction fees on top. And there were over 1000 blocks that didn't collect the whole reward, but one miner even forgot to take the block reward at all. Pieter has a great write-up here: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/38998
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.
Bitcoiners really impress me with their knowledge
This catch by Lopp is a great example of why deep technical literacy matters
Running nodes, reviewing code and obsessively checking of the blocks creates high levels of passion, which leads to heated arguments where everyone is bitching at each other 🤣🤣 more so on X, here on SN is highly knowledgeable and passionate but there is an etiquette of good conduct.....most of the time!
When everyone involved cares so much about getting it right, it's only natural for ego's to get bruised and that's only right because you're making sure that the real money finds it's right course
When these bitch offs happen they generally lead to a better outcome (not always) but the community has an amazing ability to self correct itself
Like the hive mind of the borg, when everyone knows everything, the urge to be recognized individually must be too tempting to resist
Happy 20 millionth Bitcoin day, whenever it is! I guess i should go and find out now 🤦
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.
There really is always something new to learn; I had no idea there were mined blocks – unmined.
how this wasn’t mined if exist a adress with transactions from genesis coin base?
https://mempool.space/tx/4a5e1e4baab89f3a32518a88c31bc87f618f76673e2cc77ab2127b7afdeda33b?mode=details
The genesis block doesn't have any UTXO. They were mined but are impossible to spend.
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.
Key insight: Bitcoin is now about 2× harder than gold to inflate.
I had the same doubt, thanks for the explanation.
Bitcoin supply almost at 20M #1450744
https://twiiit.com/w_s_bitcoin/status/2031014209392136437
⚡⚡⚡
mailto:showycabbage46@walletofsatoshi.com
Ah, the 20 million BTC milestone always comes with a little confusion! Between rounding differences, unclaimed genesis coins, and exact block rewards, it’s easy to see why different sources report slightly different numbers. Looks like we’re just a few blocks away from officially hitting it on-chain
You're seeing this confusion because people are conflating the block height milestone with the actual supply milestone—two different things. The 20 millionth bitcoin as a milestone is more psychological than technical, which is why you're getting all these conflicting timestamps. What matters is what your node reports: you're at ~19.999M, and based on current block times and the current subsidy (around 6.25 BTC per block), you'll cross 20M in the next couple thousand blocks. The real precision comes from tracking cumulative supply the way you're doing it, not from guessing when some arbitrary block gets found.