Created by Jonathan Gillett / gnu-user
Is it a physical currency? Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? What are they mining anyways?
Introduced to the world in 2008 in a paper published under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, a proof of concept was released to the world a year later.
Layperson explanation: “A digital currency without any centralized authority or government, where the supply and security are controlled by mathematics.”
“Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer, decentralized digital currency with a mathematically defined supply that leverages cryptography in order to provide security as a financial medium through the use of a blockchain, a ledger of all transactions, and made secure through a process called mining, which incentives users to process transactions.”
The current supply of Bitcoin is 15,581,350, with a total supply of 21,000,000 defined by the following function.
$ \frac{\displaystyle\sum_{i=0}^{32} 21000 \big[ \frac{50.10^{8}}{2^i} \big]}{10^{8}} $
The initial reward to miners was 50 BTC, with the reward halving every 210,000 blocks.
Block | Reward | Supply Increase | % of Supply |
---|---|---|---|
0 | 50.0 | 10,500,000 | 50.0% |
210,000 | 25.0 | 15,750,000 | 75.0% |
420,000 | 12.5 | 18,375,000 | 87.5% |
630,000 | 6.25 | 19,687,500 | 93.75% |
840,000 | 3.125 | 19,687,500 | 96.875% |
1,050,000 | 1.5625 | 20,343,750 | 98.4375% |
... | ... | ... | ... |
6,930,000 | 0.0 | 21,000,000 | 100.0% |
$\text{SHA256}(\text{SHA256}(B)) = (0^{\ell} || {\{0, 1\}}^{256-\ell})$
Bitcoin is a disruptive financial technology, the concept and technology have unleashed a revolution that shows no signs of slowing down.
def bit-index(measures):
sorted = measures.sort(reverse=True)
for idx, measure in enumerate(sorted):
if idx+1 >= measure:
return measure