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Topic: Limit number of coins in circulation limited by the 64 bit storage? (Read 248 times)

full member
Activity: 615
Merit: 154
CEO of Metaisland.gg and W.O.K Corp
The Bitcoin wallet cannot hold more than 22 Billions. After that it goes in negative.
That's my experience when doing an altcoin.

Of course for Bitcoin this will never happen, but when doing an altcoin this has to be taken in account.

Transaction limits are 22,518,000 coins due to the 52 bits representation internally. Thanks to Cryddit for this precious answer (in pv)
legendary
Activity: 2114
Merit: 1293
There is trouble abrewing
there is no limit of how big a number you can use in programming. lookup big numbers in each programming language and you can find a set of functions that deals with them. if you wanted a coin with a much larger supply all you needed to do was to set a different kind of variable for the amount!

besides there are many different methods of representing a number too. you don't have to stick to one fixed sized already-defined variable.
for instance you could have a number as big as n*Uint64 like this:
[1byte telling us the length][8byte UInt64][...n times...]
for instance:
[1][8bytes]
or
[2][8byte][8byte]
or
[3][8byte][8byte][8byte]
hero member
Activity: 1498
Merit: 506
Is there a limit of Bitcoin technically possible to be issued?

I know that Bitcoin is limited to around 21 Millions, but if this limit would be lifted, is there a limit in the 64 bit representation that would for example limit the number of coins to 5-9 Billions, just because otherwise it would not be able to represent this number in the code internally?

Or Satoshi did limit to 21 Millions for some personal reasons, but Bitcoin as a program can (assuming that halfing is modified and the number of coin issued per block as well) handle a way larger number of Bitcoin? In that case what would be the maximum number of coins that could be represented in the blockchain?

Ref: https://bitzuma.com/posts/the-21-million-bitcoin-question/
In my point of view bitcoin is very vast and very huge and there are lots of scope in working with bitcoin and this is the reason why bitcoin is able to provide employment to millions of people around the world and I don’t that there are limited number of bitcoin in the circulation as miners keep on mining the bitcoin and keep adding bitcoin into the circulation and if we compare bitcoin with Fiat currencies then also central banks keep on adding them into circulation every time so I don’t think that there are limited number of bitcoins in the circulation.
full member
Activity: 615
Merit: 154
CEO of Metaisland.gg and W.O.K Corp
satoshi liked maths and the Fibonacci sequence

its well documented
ill show you just 2 numbers found in the Fibonacci sequence and leave you to see how often they appear

21
144
1

Amazing, thanks!
legendary
Activity: 4410
Merit: 4766
satoshi liked maths and the Fibonacci sequence

its well documented
ill show you just 2 numbers found in the Fibonacci sequence and leave you to see how often they appear

21
144
full member
Activity: 615
Merit: 154
CEO of Metaisland.gg and W.O.K Corp
Oops I have found a thread that answers to my question here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/stop-using-floating-point-13837

UINT64_MAX = 18446744073709551615
BITCOIN_MAX = 21000000 * 10^ 8 = 2100000000000000


So the maximum number of Bitcoin possible based on that is 184467440737.09551615 . this limit is due to the int 64 internal representation. That is btw the max number of Doge or Bytecoin.
full member
Activity: 615
Merit: 154
CEO of Metaisland.gg and W.O.K Corp
Is there a limit of Bitcoin technically possible to be issued?

I know that Bitcoin is limited to around 21 Millions, but if this limit would be lifted, is there a limit in the 64 bit representation that would for example limit the number of coins to 5-9 Billions, just because otherwise it would not be able to represent this number in the code internally?

Or Satoshi did limit to 21 Millions for some personal reasons, but Bitcoin as a program can (assuming that halfing is modified and the number of coin issued per block as well) handle a way larger number of Bitcoin? In that case what would be the maximum number of coins that could be represented in the blockchain?

Ref: https://bitzuma.com/posts/the-21-million-bitcoin-question/
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