Today I Learned 1

In Block005 of The Bitcoin Journey, Tim & CJ each share a fact on something new they learned about Bitcoin in the last week. Tim talks about some interesting developments in the Lightning Network, whilst CJ explains why there will never actually be 21 million Bitcoin.

Show notes for each section are found below.
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TIL1 - There Will Never be 21 Million Bitcoin

Calculate the supply of bitcoin:
Σ[(100/(2^n)) x 210,000] = (50 x 210,000) + (25 x 210,000) + (12.5 x 210,000) + ... + (0.00000001 x 210,000) = 20999999.99755528
limit (epochs) = 33
n0 = 1

Calculate the max possible supply at a block height:
Number of epochs = current block height / 210,000
e.g. current block height = 750,000, therefore 750,000/210000 = 3.57
750000 - (3 x 210,000) = 120,000 blocks into 4th epoch
(50 x 210,000) + (25 x 210,000) + (12.5 x 210,000) + (6.25 x 120,000) = 19,125,000 bitcoin could have been minted.

Verify the actual number of minted bitcoin:
Using a full node (e.g. Bitcoin Core), run the RPC command 'gettxoutsetinfo'. On a RasPi this may take a few minutes to compute.
The 'Total Amount' value is the actual number of minted bitcoin.

Subtracting the real value should always be less than the calculated value, as some bitcoin were never minted.

Other RPC commands mentioned in the episode:
getblockhash 0 ~~> gives the hash of the genesis block
getblock [block hash] ~~> gets the block info
getrawtransaction [tx hash] ~~> gets transaction (tx) info

Article mentioned - How To Destroy Bitcoins
Author - Antoine Le Calvez

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TIL2 - The Lightning Network

Some useful resources on the lightning network and LNURL:

Jameson Lopp - Lightning Basics

Coincharge - LNURL Basics

And don't forget to follow these authors, as well as stackers.news, Ben Arc and Fiatjaf on Twitter!

Jameson Lopp @lopp

Stacker News @stacker_news

And the Stacker News founder @k00bideh

Fiatjaf @fiatjaf for more on LNURL PoS

Ben Arc @arcbtc for more on LNURL vend

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We will be releasing regular episodes discussing the best bitcoin related articles.

Follow the hosts on Twitter:

CJ  @CharlieJBitcoin

Tim  @BitcoinTimO

Podcast  @BTCJourneyPod
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Theme music is Good Times by Sensho

Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/sensho/good-times
License code: QTIPFCCWCXJOARQW