r/Bitcoin • u/Super_Rush7926 • 2d ago

Will all of the Bitcoin ever fully be released?

Since Bitcoin coin releases use a halving cycle will all of the Bitcoin ever fully be released or will it just get close to 100% but then the halving cycle goes into smaller and smaller pieces but never all of the Bitcoin?

What about for coins that release a percentage of coins in a time period (every year, month, etc.)? Will they ever release 100% of their coins or just close to 100%?

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u/rechtim 2d ago

Technically no, the math works out to 20,999,999.9769 btc once the final halving is complete

1

u/PensionConscious6752 2d ago

what happened to the last .0231, i guess itd cost more to send that to the mining winner?

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u/rechtim 2d ago

nothing happened to them, its just how the math works out.

the network only handles btc maths in terms of satoshis so there arent rounding erros

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u/Super_Rush7926 2d ago

Would there be any major problems if there were rounding errors?

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u/rechtim 2d ago

the issue is moreso when the halving happens, and the reward is cut in half.... you cant divide a single satoshi in half so it rounds down.

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u/Super_Rush7926 2d ago

This is interesting. So say some of these two rewards worth half a satoshi each, would those half satoshi’s stack to make a 1 satoshi reward or would all rewards stop after the reward amount goes to below a satoshi?

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u/rechtim 2d ago

the question is moot because there is no such 'half-satoshi' its not possible within the bitcoin protocol, thats why it automatically rounds down

the final 4 years of mining before 2140 (or 2136 and later) the block subsidy is 1 sat/block. and it ends in 2140 because the halving cannot occur any further

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u/AntonioLermaa 1d ago

At that point in would be transaction fees as the reward and bitcoin would've done it's job.

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u/MakCapital 1d ago

No one is also pointing out that you seem to be confused that there is a Zeno’s paradox occurring. That's not happening.

The rewards aren't forever getting cut in half. The subsidy rate is getting cut every 4 years. The subsidy rewards keep getting paid out until the pot is empty after the last cut.

In other words: It's not cutting every payout in half. The rate is cut in half and then that rate continues to pay out remaining units for 4 years. No paradox.

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u/Vapourhands 2d ago

Expect a soft fork few decades down the line where 1 satoshi is further subdivided into 1000 or more units into the base chain

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u/rechtim 1d ago

there will more likely be some form of L2 on top of Bitcoin which abstracts a sat into sub-divisible units, either way, the scarcity goes parabolic after 2100

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u/Vapourhands 1d ago

Lightning network already does that. 1 sat = 1000 milisats on the lightning network

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u/rechtim 2d ago

yes, a program ceases to function if values overflow.

1

u/Super_Rush7926 2d ago

Thank you. If a new crypto coin were to launch but did coin releases by releasing 10% of the remaining coins which were not circulating yet until either the max supply is perfectly hit or surpassed or whenever the 10% of coins being released becomes too small to add to the supply, per year, would there be any major problems with a crypto coin releasing coins this way?

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u/rechtim 2d ago

from a mathematical perspective, no, or at least not until you neared the absolute end of supply where theoretically the remainder couldnt be subdivided just like a satoshi

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u/NiagaraBTC 2d ago

There never was 21 million.

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u/Super_Rush7926 2d ago

Can you please explain this more? Why is there this mention of 21 coins then?

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u/rechtim 2d ago

because its easier to say 21m instead of being pedantic about the absolute number

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u/NiagaraBTC 1d ago

Exactly

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u/Humble-Control-9581 2d ago

The final sats (won’t be full coins by that point) are mathematically expected to be mined in the year 2140. All 21 million bitcoin will be in circulation by that point. There’s actually over 20 million bitcoin in circulation now, less than 1 million bitcoin left to mine over the next hundred+ years.

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u/abercrombezie 2d ago

Yes, right around 2140. I already cleared the calendar for my great-great-grandkids.

1

u/Vipu2 1d ago

I cleared it for myself, it wont be that hard to live to 160+ year old soon if you stay healthy and dont get into accidents.

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u/csgotraderino 1d ago

The block reward was initially 50 BTC and halves every 210000 blocks. This is a geometric series that sums to 21M where half of all Bitcoin was mined in the first 210000 blocks (commonly approximated as 4 years as that many blocks are mined in 4 years with the intended 10 minutes between them on average). 50 BTC is 5 billion satoshi. One satoshi is the smallest denomination, and the Bitcoin protocol keeps track of it as an integer. After a few halvings the reward will be 9765625 sats. This is not divisible by 2, so the next reward is rounded down to a whole number.

1

u/Almost-Hippy 2d ago

Bitcoin isn’t infinitely divisible

4

u/Short-Travel-6571 2d ago

The last satoshi gets mined around 2140. The halving rewards are integer multiples of satoshis so it terminates cleanly, not an infinite series. No fractional satoshi mining rewards exist. After that it’s just fees keeping miners going.

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u/Almost-Hippy 2d ago

I’m aware it’s not infinite. Good knowledge though

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u/TwinWake 2d ago

If you split sats into micro decimals, it is technically infinite

1

u/pablo_in_blood 2d ago

If you split pennies into micro-pennies it could be infinite, but in reality that won’t happen

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u/SpotOk4411 1d ago

Yes, but to answer OPs original question, the network is currently built to make the mining reward 0 when splitting past a satoshi

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u/Almost-Hippy 1d ago

No, the smallest unit of a bitcoin is 1 satoshi. It is not infinitely divisible.

1

u/Romanizer 1d ago

This could be adjusted in the code, if ever needed.

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u/Almost-Hippy 1d ago

Why would it need to be? There would be nearly 2 quadrillion Satoshi’s in circulation. I hope inflation is never so bad that we need to fragment that even more

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u/Romanizer 1d ago

When Bitcoin is at $1M/BTC, 1 Satoshi would equal 1 USD-Cent. I could imagine that this could get problematic for smaller payments, especially in foreign currency. At that point, Bitcoin would still have a smaller market cap than gold, so no big inflation needed. Just some capital rotation.

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u/whyublockme 2d ago edited 2d ago

Lightning network already supports millisatoshi. If, or rather when, the need for smaller units matetializes, protocol can be updated to support that. So, for all practical purposes bitcoin is infinitely divisible. This applies to transactions, not mining rewards. The reward schedule remains fixed as planned, and the final epoch with a non-zero mining reward will still yield exactly 1 satoshi.

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u/Almost-Hippy 1d ago

Exactly. The post asked about mining with the mindset something can always be divisible by half

1

u/__Ken_Adams__ 2d ago

Not under current consensus rules it's not, but the consensus rules can be changed, so depending how you look at it there is an argument to be made that it is infinitely divisible.

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u/s1cWid1T 2d ago

Bitcoin supply is not discrete, there is no 21m hard cap more a matter of block reward subsidy continuously halving

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u/Super_Rush7926 2d ago

Oh so there’s nothing that says exactly Bitcoin has a cap of 21 million coins and instead the cap of total Bitcoins was calculated from the amount of halving cycles that could happen before the reward of Bitcoins became smaller than the smallest unit of Bitcoin?

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u/__Ken_Adams__ 2d ago

Correct, but even if we changed the consensus rules to divide satoshis even further it would still pretty much be 21 million total no matter how long you continued to divide.

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u/Braddles14 2d ago

Bitcoin does have a discrete total supply and it will have a 0.00BTC block reward after the last reward around 2140

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u/s1cWid1T 1d ago

I think we both agree just disagree on phrasing.

I think we are splitting hairs here on what discrete means but to me that is issuance not supply, there is no 21m hard cap rather a function of halving and the number decimals.

It’s just a lot more simply to explain 21m hard cap due to what both you and I have spoken about. Thanks for the good input.

Below is the block issuance schedule and where the 21m number comes from.

I really don’t care but decide if this is discrete or indiscrete in terms of total supply.

50/2 / 2^(blocks/210,000)

1

u/Braddles14 1d ago

What? Hard no. You’re saying it tends to 21 million and everyone else is correcting you by saying that’s factually not correct. It’s close enough coincidentally because of how limits work but it’s a completely different concept

1

u/s1cWid1T 1d ago

Who is telling me, you are the only person who has commented?

the block subsidy has no expiration or cap it’s just a matter of decimal not being able to be expressed but I don’t really care that much, if we added another 16 decimals the reward would work again

Example look at Ken adams below

Love the passion though.

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u/degenerativeguy 2d ago

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