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Estimates have been thrown around a lot recently as to the year in which the last Bitcoin will be mined- where are these estimates coming from? Could someone send me to the relevant code?
When will the last Bitcoin be mined?
Answers
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The estimate is 2140 based on the block reward halving frequency of four years. According to math and knowledge that there are 32 halving events, in 2136, the block reward will yield 0.00000168 BTC per day, which is 0.00000042 BTC per block. That's 42 satoshis.
It's arguable that there could be one additional halving, to a block reward of 0.00000021 BTC, but that would require a major protocol modification since the number of Bitcoin would then exceed 21 million. Additionally, to go past that, there'd have to be a protocol modification to extend divisibility past eight decimal places. It is far, far to early to worry about either of these, because we're more than a century away from this problem.
1What's the variance of the estimate of 2140? Is it plus minus 2 years, 3 years? – Pacerier – 2014-05-23T16:10:15.417
1 The time between blocks is currently 8.57 minutes. That's about 9% faster than the 10 minutes-per-block goal that puts the final block mined in 2140. The time-betwee-blocks varies pretty widely. I can't find a graph of it, unfortunately. I've see it as low as 6 minutes, and as high as 14 in the last few months.
1Why does the page you link me shows "time between blocks = 10.00 mins"? Where did you get 8.57? – Pacerier – 2014-05-27T14:08:59.957
2That value changes constantly. – Colin Dean – 2014-05-28T14:41:18.317
Any idea how is that number calculated? – Pacerier – 2014-05-29T09:22:32.473
It's as simple as (60 min * 24 hrs)/$num_blocks_last_24hrs. If there were more than 144 blocks in the last 24 hrs, then we're going faster than we should, and the difficulty is more likely to increase. If it's less, then we're going slower, and difficulty will decrease. – Colin Dean – 2014-05-31T23:42:23.650
Would you consider this chart as accurate? : http://blockchain.info/charts/avg-confirmation-time?timespan=1year&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=
Yes, that would be close enough to time-between-blocks, but it doesn't account for outlier situations. E.g., 1,000 transactions broadcast immediately after a block broadcast would skew this chart but not affect the time-between-blocks figure. – Colin Dean – 2014-06-02T13:21:48.287
@ColinDean: How did you arrive at the 42 satoshis per block? In 2136, I got 2 satoshi per block. According to my calculation, the reward will go from 74 to 37 satoshi in 2116, it never hits 42 satoshis. – Murch – 2016-04-02T22:44:38.343
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Under the assumption that halvings will occur every four years, the final block that creates new bitcoins would occur in 2140.
The "halving" occurring with block 6,930,000 would then push the reward below 1 satoshi, thus no block reward would be paid out anymore.
You can find a table with the respective calculations here: Bitcoin Reward Schedule
Really, the mining reward might be too little to pay for mining efforts much earlier: already in 2036 99% of the bitcoins will be in circulation, in 2048 it will be 99.9%.
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As per considering mining of any cryptocurrency is calculated by increasing hash rate and difficulty and decreasing block rewards. So time prediction of final block mining is 2145.
1I think you're off by one halving, and you seem to be off one year. You also don't explain how you arrived at that figure, so I don't find your answer useful. – Murch – 2016-04-02T22:40:54.980
The code is in the one of the answers to the question I am marking this as a duplicate with. (Nick's to be specific.) The accepted answer goes into more of the algoritm and schedule. – David Ogren – 2013-05-02T02:41:16.023
possible duplicate of How many bitcoins will there eventually be?
– David Ogren – 2013-05-02T02:41:37.123Actually this was the question I was really looking for. It might be a better dup of this one : http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/9959/where-in-the-code-in-the-satoshi-client-is-21-million-cap-implemented
– David Ogren – 2013-05-02T02:42:54.417