I found on a Telegram chat a reference to a very interesting Reddit post:
People talk often about having some percentage of the total bitcoin supply, such as 21 BTC being 1 millionth of the total supply, but I want to promote a different way of viewing amounts of Bitcoin.
Time is money is an old adage that is covered quite thoroughly in The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous. He posits that the only truly scare resource (prior to Bitcoin) was human time. Now we can add Bitcoin to that short list of scarce resources, but perhaps we also need to add Bitcoin blockchain network time.
When the Bitcoin network was young there was very little value in bitcoins and they flowed freely, being given away up to 5 at a time from faucets and being offered for sale at 10,000 for $50 without any buyers coming forward, 10,000 BTC for a couple of supreme pizzas. In that epoch the block subsidy was 50 BTC every 10 minutes. We can consider 10 minutes of Bitcoin network time to have been worth about 50 bitcoins in the period prior to the first halving. Now that we’ve had three halvings the block subsidy is only 6.25 BTC every 10 minutes. Transaction fees are added to the block subsidy, but transaction fees usually total between 0.5-1.1 BTC at this time.
As time is a scarce resource both for humans and the Bitcoin blockchain, I have stopped thinking in terms of total supply and started thinking about my Bitcoin balance as a claim on ownership of blockchain time. If someone had 50 BTC from the first epoch that would have represented 10 minutes of network time, but that same 50 BTC now represents 80 minutes of network time on the most powerful computer network in the world. After the next halving, it will be 160 minutes, then 320, 640, 1280, etc.
In the last epoch in which there is a block subsidy (about 2136-2140 Anno Domini) only 0.00216 BTC will be created in the entire 4 year period. If you own ~0.002 BTC you own the entire network production for that 4 year period.
Before anyone mentions it, yes, I realize that long before that epoch the network will be incentivized far more by transaction fees than block subsidies. In fact, the change from block subsidy to transaction fees as the main source of network funding will occur no later than 2032 when the average transaction fees will outpace the block subsidy, which will drop to 0.78125 BTC.
I am posting this to give people hope who are feeling left behind because a whole coin is out of reach for so many. Maybe you’ll never get to a whole coin, but can you get to 0.05? Because that is more than the block subsidy will be between 2048 and 2052. If you have 0.05 you own 10 minutes of the Bitcoin's network time in 2048.
Stop thinking in percentages of the total supply, and think about building your claim on the network’s time. It’s a happier thought, provides more achievable goals, and it’s cool to think about having control over the time of a network as dispersed, diverse, and decentralized as Bitcoin.
Block subsidy schedule through 2052:
2009-2012: 50
2012-2016: 25
2016-2020: 12.5
2020-2024: 6.25
2024-2028: 3.125
2028-2032: 1.5625
2032-2036: 0.78125
2036-2040: 0.390625
2040-2044: 0.1953125
2044-2048: 0.09765625
2048-2052: 0.04882813
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/mnh5qa/a_different_way_to_view_your_bitcoin_balance/Wow, it is a very interesting concept.
Everyone has in his own mind a vague representation of the bitcoin issuance curve.
Namely, some graph like this one:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supplyBut what does it really means?
I did a quick Excel, as usual trying to figure it out.
I came with my own version of many spreadsheets available over the net:
We see that the rhythm of BTC issuance decreases a lot.
But
our brain is not wired to understand exponential numbers, so I tried to answer this question:
"How long does it takes to mine a Bitcoin?"
On the first Epoch, 50 Bitcoin were mined every 10 minutes (average, protocol standard). So I computed every Bitcoin had a network Time of 10 minutes/50= (10*60)/50 sec. = 600/50 sec.= 12 sec.
Obviously, in the second Epoch, the reward was halved, so each bitcoin had double the network time or 24 seconds.
So I call "network time" the amount of time needed by the network to "generate" that amount of Bitcoins.
Let's see how network times evolve across the various epochs:
Now we start to understand.
We see how fast the BTC creation fall.
Only in the first 6 Epoch, there will be more than 1 bitcoin per block.
Only in the first 24 Epoch, there will be more than 1 bitcoin per Epoch.
After the year 2102, there will be less than one bitcoin mined.
Of course, the network time is "theoretical" after Epoch 24.
If a Bitcoin takes more than an Epoch to be mined, then it will actually take longer as it will be mined at a slower and slower speed going on with the epoch.
This is why, after Epoch 24 the Network time don't match the actual bitcoin issuance.
So we can try to equate the amount of time needed to generate one Bitcoin, using Equivalent Times, or Network Times * BTC amounts.
So 50 original Bitcoin in Epoch 0 is equal to 10 minutes of Network time. Today those are equivalent to 6.25 BTC or the same 10 minutes of network times.
We can also move Backwards in time:
1 Bitcoin today is equivalent to 1 minute and 36 seconds of network time. That bitcoin in January 2010, in Epoch 1, was equivalent to 8 Bitcoins, or the same 1 minute and 36 seconds of network time.
So I added a calculator on the spreadsheet, where you can play with those equivalences, to see how lucky you are to live in these incredible times.
Link to Excel.Have fun.
Please let me know your feedback.
