Just a little background here. I’m a high school student, currently studying calculus. I don’t quite understand the concepts of limits or integrals thoroughly, but I was fascinated nonetheless by how the reward system of Bitcoin and its halving worked. When I initially wanted to know how many Bitcoins were mined, I would just use a calculator, and add the previous block halvings, and amounts mined. Afterwards, I realized I can make a rough approximation of this with this formula: The problem with this function is that it assumes that the mining and reward system were a smooth curve, which isn’t the case. It’s a curve that consists of a bunch of straight lines. So I had to find a formula that reflected this. My first start would be knowing that the starting block reward was 50 BTC, and that reward would halve every 210,000 blocks or ~4 years. So I started with this formula: With this formula, I got all of the lines, but they were not in the correct position, so using my knowledge, and logical reasoning, I came up with this formula for determining how many Bitcoins were mined for any given date: To get your ‘x’ value all you have to do is: x = (given date – January 3rd, 2009)144* Then input this value into the formula given above. Donations will be much appreciated! For anyone wondering, I’m planning to use this an incorporate it in my mining application (it’s still a work in progress). Thanks for taking the time to read this! submitted by /u/1MightBeAPenguin |