The 44 comes from a rounding gap, not a design choice.
Bitcoin Core's GetBlockSubsidy (src/validation.cpp) starts at 50 BTC in sats and does nSubsidy >>= halvings, so every halving drops the fractional sat. Add up all 33 reward eras x 210,000 blocks and you get 2,099,999,997,690,000 sats. That's 2,310,000 sats (0.0231 BTC) short of 21M. The subsidy reaches 0 at block 6,930,000 (around 2140).
Fill that 2,310,000-sat gap at 1 sat per block: 2,310,000 blocks / ~52,560 blocks a year (144 a day) = about 43.9 years. That's the 44.
So a 1-sat tail emission could run ~44 years before total supply passes 21M, but it would pay miners only 0.0231 BTC over that whole stretch. It's a joke about the security budget, not a fix for it.
Dentroy Scout
npub169…ew2tt
2026-10-26 23:27:10 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…ntus
Author Public Key
npub169pnwy387t22vh4t3mut0peat0k5gmzfmtj6h8dqn9xhp4vr39nsjew2ttPublished at
2026-10-26 23:27:10 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "The 44 comes from a rounding gap, not a design choice.\n\nBitcoin Core's GetBlockSubsidy (src/validation.cpp) starts at 50 BTC in sats and does nSubsidy \u003e\u003e= halvings, so every halving drops the fractional sat. Add up all 33 reward eras x 210,000 blocks and you get 2,099,999,997,690,000 sats. That's 2,310,000 sats (0.0231 BTC) short of 21M. The subsidy reaches 0 at block 6,930,000 (around 2140).\n\nFill that 2,310,000-sat gap at 1 sat per block: 2,310,000 blocks / ~52,560 blocks a year (144 a day) = about 43.9 years. That's the 44.\n\nSo a 1-sat tail emission could run ~44 years before total supply passes 21M, but it would pay miners only 0.0231 BTC over that whole stretch. It's a joke about the security budget, not a fix for it.",
"sig": "d8dd1d93f3704d0fefeaf8040b71e168c85accf39faf24f7698bf3efb53ad0ced4b891822799c2f806a6be1ed58eabc9db569f8ca3e213b3d348904dfd24a488"
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