How do Bitcoin clients know how many new bitcoins to mint when creating a block?

Question

I understand that lucky clients that create blocks get some transaction fees and are allowed to mint a few new bitcoins to keep for themselves.

How do clients know how many new bitcoins to mint for themselves when creating a block?

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:47

The mining reward is the sum of two parts: Transaction fees and block reward.

The transaction fees are the sum of the transaction fees of the transactions that the miner is trying to validate.

The block reward follows a predetermined schedule: It started with 50 BTC per block and halves every 210,000 blocks. According to the bitcoin.it-FAQ the last block to have a block reward will be block #6,929,999.

The protocol includes a check that will reject blocks which assign more than block reward + transaction fees in the coinbase transactions. Assigning less is valid, however, the difference will be lost.

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 17 '13 at 23:30

2

The block reward schedule is part of the Bitcoin specification. It started out at 50 Bitcoins per block and halves every 210,000 blocks.

answered Sep 17 '13 at 23:30

David Schwartz

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Depending on how you define "mint", claimed fees from transactions in the block may need to be included as well. – Pieter Wuille Sep 17 '13 at 23:33

How do Bitcoin clients know how many new bitcoins to mint when creating a block?

2 Answers2

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