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This article claims there are now 10,499,925 bitcoin (at the time of the reward drop from 50 to 25).
Weren't there supposed to be exactly 21,000,000 / 2 = 10,500,000 BTC mined at this point? What am I missing?
How many Bitcoins existed when block 209,999 was mined?
Answers
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I suppose this is the culprit. If we add the duplicate 50BTC that is missing and the first reward from block 21,000,000, we would have 10,500,000BTC in total.
However, my calculations would be: 21000000 blocks (ranging from Genesis Block 0, to block 20,999,999) multiplied by 50 BTC, that would give us 10,500,000 With the duplicate transaction, that would be 10,499,950 BTC total.
1IIRC there's another duplicate as well. If the OP's number is actually for block #210,000, this accounts for it. – theymos – 2012-11-30T13:21:52.673
2What is a duplicate transaction? How does it make some bitcoins invalid? Is there a thread that discusses this? – ripper234 – 2012-11-30T14:35:41.250
@ripper234 - This - http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/3030/two-blocks-two-transactions-same-hash
– ThePiachu – 2012-11-30T15:00:53.107The output of the genesis block cannot be spent. – Pieter Wuille – 2012-11-30T20:21:11.657
1@PieterWuille Hmm, that's interesting. Any reason for that? – ThePiachu – 2012-12-01T09:18:47.677
1Nobody knows, and there is no explicit comment about it in Satoshi's source code. However, no full node to date would allow him to spend it. Perhaps it was deliberate. – Pieter Wuille – 2012-12-01T14:29:52.610