diff --git a/docs/emails/mike-hearn/11.md b/docs/emails/mike-hearn/11.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b25039e --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/emails/mike-hearn/11.md @@ -0,0 +1,54 @@ +--- +layout: default +title: 'Re: More BitCoin questions' +date: 2011-01-10 16:34 +grand_parent: Emails +parent: Mike Hearn +nav_order: 10 +--- + +# Re: More BitCoin questions + +The email on the Cryptography Mailing List that announced Bitcoin publicly to the world. +{: .fs-6 .fw-300 } + +--- + +``` +From: Satoshi Nakamoto +Date: Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 4:34 PM +To: Mike Hearn +Subject: Re: More BitCoin questions + +>Open source. + +Perfect. Once your code shows how to simplify it down, other authors can follow your lead. Client is a less daunting challenge than full implementation. If it's within reach of more developers, they'll come up with more polished UI and other things I didn't think of. I expect the original software will become the industrial old thing used by GPU farms and pool servers. + +BTW, later a good feature for a client version is to keep your private keys encrypted and you give your password each time you send. + +>I managed to spend my first coins on the testnet with my app a few +>days ago, hopefully will get another chance to make progress this +>weekend. Probably will have something to show publically sometime in +>Feb, touch wood. + +Great, keep me updated. + +>I wanted something +>that would be not too low if it was very popular and not too high if it +>wasn't. +> +>It'd be interesting to see the working for this. In some sense the +>number of coins is arbitrary as the nanocoin representation means the +>issuance is so huge it's practically infinite. + +It works out to an even 10 minutes per block: +21000000 / (50 BTC * 24hrs * 365days * 4years * 2) = 5.99 blocks/hour + +I fudged it to 364.58333 days/year. The halving of 50 BTC to 25 BTC is after 210000 blocks or around 3.9954 years, which is approximate anyway based on the retargeting mechanism's best effort. + +I thought about 100 BTC and 42 million, but 42 million seemed high. + +I wanted typical amounts to be in a familiar range. If you're tossing around 100000 units, it doesn't feel scarce. The brain is better able to work with numbers from 0.01 to 1000. + +If it gets really big, the decimal can move two places and cents become the new coins. +```