Bitcoin Block Reward value

Question

How can someone calculate the current/real-time value of a Bitcoin block?

What is the equation/algorithm used to determine this?

I've found a few resource online, but I'm a little confused

By value, are you asking about the size of the reward, or the rules about whether it's valid? Or are you talking about the value of Bitcoin? — Nick ODell, Apr 09 '15 at 18:03

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 09 '15 at 18:27

How can someone calculate the current/real-time value of a Bitcoin block?

Steps:

run bitcoin-cli getblockcount to get current block_height
current_block_reward = 50 / [(block_height MOD 210000) + 1]

What is the equation/algorithm used to determine this?

Value the of a Bitcoin block defined here. The default value is 50 * 100,000,000 Satoshis.

After every "SubsidyHalvingInterval" blocks, the reward of each block halved. The SubsidyHalvingInterval is defined here

CAmount GetBlockValue(int nHeight, const CAmount& nFees)
{
    CAmount nSubsidy = 50 * COIN;
    int halvings = nHeight / Params().SubsidyHalvingInterval();

    // Force block reward to zero when right shift is undefined.
    if (halvings >= 64)
        return nFees;

    // Subsidy is cut in half every 210,000 blocks which will occur approximately every 4 years.
    nSubsidy >>= halvings;

    return nSubsidy + nFees;
}

Actually the block reward is 50/(2**(630001 // 210000)) – ManuelSchneid3r Mar 18 '23 at 09:33 — ManuelSchneid3r, Mar 18 '23 at 09:33

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 14 '15 at 08:11

You can also use the BlockExplorer API totalbc query: http://blockexplorer.com/q/totalbc/####, where #### can be a past or future block number, and the return value is the total BTC in circulation. bcperblock may also be helpful.

See BlockExplorer.com/q/ for a full list of queries.

Bitcoin Block Reward value

2 Answers2