21 million coins question (programming related)

whiskers75

hero member

Activity: 658

Merit: 502

Doesn't use these forums that often.

Quote from: Watermellon on April 07, 2013, 01:29:25 AM

Is the 21 million coin limit hard coded into the program?

Or is it just a result of the reward halving every few years?

Could someone easily change the bitcoin source code to make an inflationary coin that has no
upper bound, and the reward never halves? Or would major changes have to be made to the source?

(I know an int64 can store a number as big as 18,446,744,073,709,551,615)

*cough* Litecoin *cough* Cheesy

maxmint

hero member

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Merit: 500

I started a thread about this a while ago: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/is-the-21-million-bitcoin-limit-unchangeable-153330

kelly153

full member

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Merit: 100

Quote from: Watermellon on April 07, 2013, 01:29:25 AM

Is the 21 million coin limit hard coded into the program?

Yes, it is hard. Very hard.

DannyHamilton

legendary

Activity: 3472

Merit: 4801

Quote from: Watermellon on April 07, 2013, 01:29:25 AM

Is the 21 million coin limit hard coded into the program?

Yes.

Quote from: Watermellon on April 07, 2013, 01:29:25 AM

Or is it just a result of the reward halving every few years?

Yes.

Quote from: Watermellon on April 07, 2013, 01:29:25 AM

Could someone easily change the bitcoin source code to make an inflationary coin that has no
upper bound, and the reward never halves?

Yes.

Quote from: Watermellon on April 07, 2013, 01:29:25 AM

Or would major changes have to be made to the source?

No. (But you would have to take into consideration the possibility that an amount could be sent/stored/received that exceeded the number of bytes that the program uses to store it).

Quote from: Watermellon on April 07, 2013, 01:29:25 AM

(I know an int64 can store a number as big as 18,446,744,073,709,551,615)

That would be uint64_t

int64_t can only store a number as big as 9,223,372,036,854,775,807

Seeing as the smallest integer unit of currency represented in the source code is the Satoshi, maximum bitcoin is a bit less than 2,100,000,000,000,000

Oshero

newbie

Activity: 28

Merit: 0

That's ppcoin you're describing.

Look it up. Cheesy

Watermellon

newbie

Activity: 12

Merit: 0

Is the 21 million coin limit hard coded into the program?

Or is it just a result of the reward halving every few years?

Could someone easily change the bitcoin source code to make an inflationary coin that has no
upper bound, and the reward never halves? Or would major changes have to be made to the source?

(I know an int64 can store a number as big as 18,446,744,073,709,551,615)

Topic: 21 million coins question (programming related) (Read 501 times)