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I am trying to understand what is the phrase "MaxBTC" and for what is it used? I am new to bitcoins.

Thank you very much.

Murch
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elli
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  • In case you don't know, BTC is an abbreviation for bitcoin, the currency. It's similar to how US dollars can be called USD, and Euros can be called EUR. I know that's pretty basic stuff, but I'm not sure just how new you are, and I want to make sure you at least have that part down :) – Jestin Jun 16 '16 at 20:41
  • Ah! Thank you very much ! So MaxBTC is maximum value for bitcoin? :/ :/ – elli Jun 16 '16 at 21:06
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    No, I don't think so. I'm not sure where you are seeing this term, but I think MaxBTC used to be a mining pool a few years back (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68734.0). I'm not finding anything relevent when googling the term, so I'm curious why you're asking about it. – Jestin Jun 16 '16 at 21:10
  • I have found it in an article about provision : privacy=preserving proofs of solvency. And suddenly they use that term. It says "We can represent any bitcoin account with MaxBTC 2^(51) . Perhaps its something I am not getting. – elli Jun 17 '16 at 00:01

1 Answers1

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"We can represent any bitcoin account with MaxBTC 251."

It appears that MaxBTC is used here as a strict upper bound to refer to maximum number of bitcoins that will ever exist.

There will always be fewer than 21m bitcoins. All of Bitcoin's protocol logic actually is defined in terms of satoshis. There are 100 million satoshis per bitcoin. Altogether, this means that there will be fewer than 2,100,000,000,000,000 or 2.1×1015 satoshis.

Therefore, 251, which is about 2.25×1015, is larger than the total satoshis that will ever exist in the Bitcoin protocol and thus big enough to express any single amount of bitcoin that will ever need to be referenced.

Murch
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