z

[dooglus]

Check it out: http://blockexplorer.com/address/1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa <-- address of the genesis block's generation transaction.
While the 50 BTC can't be spent, it should be possible to spend the additional 6.57403164 BTC.

Oh, I see.  Yes, that's my understanding of the situation as well.

[bg002h]

According to bitcoincharts...yes, 2 million coins could be sold:

Sell 2000000 BTC for 1987718.05 USD...or about a buck a piece.

Interesting.... didn't pirate say something about taking the price down to $1?

I recall reading that too. I guess we know how many btc he controls.

[makomk]

I meant the general design (the ideas, e.g. distributed proof of work),
and the practical implementation details (the nitty-gritty, e.g. the fact
that the user visible part of the crypto is base58 and checksummed).

Actually, there are some really unfortunate flaws in how Satoshi implemented Bitcoin that the developers have had to work around, at least one of which I'm not really meant to publicly talk about yet (or even know about in the first place for that matters).

[makomk]

Well, the issue has now been announced by forrestv, who discovered it: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=102395.0 Design flaw in the way Bitcoin computes merkle hashes that allows an attacker to create invalid blocks with the same hash as valid blocks. Can be used to carry out a 6+ confirmation double spend with essentially no computational resources. Very feasable attack from what I can tell.

[keystroke]

Why is it that the coins mined in the genesis block can't be spent?

[niko]

Why is it that the coins mined in the genesis block can't be spent?

Because it wouldn't be fair: there are no miners to compete for the reward. One more thing about Satoshi.

[Vladimir]

I just ran a quick analysis on the blockchain.

Out of the 192386 blocks currently mined, very many of them
have a BTC 50 block reward that has never been spent.

To be exact, 41493 blocks have an unspent reward.

That is worth approximately BTC 2'074'650.00 (not counting fees).

That's 2 Million+ pristine coins hoarded, or about 20% of the BTC market cap.

Lots of smart people around here.

[keystroke]

Why is it that the coins mined in the genesis block can't be spent?

Because it wouldn't be fair: there are no miners to compete for the reward. One more thing about Satoshi.

Sorry, I meant technically what prevents it. But I think the answer is in how the client deals with the block. Yea I agree Satoshi is/was awesome

[molecular]

I just ran a quick analysis on the blockchain.

Out of the 192386 blocks currently mined, very many of them
have a BTC 50 block reward that has never been spent.

To be exact, 41493 blocks have an unspent reward.

That is worth approximately BTC 2'074'650.00 (not counting fees).

That's 2 Million+ pristine coins hoarded, or about 20% of the BTC market cap.

Lots of smart people around here.

or: lots of extremely careless ones (although I doubt it)

[Vladimir]

I just ran a quick analysis on the blockchain.

Out of the 192386 blocks currently mined, very many of them
have a BTC 50 block reward that has never been spent.

To be exact, 41493 blocks have an unspent reward.

That is worth approximately BTC 2'074'650.00 (not counting fees).

That's 2 Million+ pristine coins hoarded, or about 20% of the BTC market cap.

Lots of smart people around here.

or: lots of extremely careless ones (although I doubt it)

nahh it is a nobrainer.   like buying a call option (with say 10-20 years before expiration) or shares of a 5$ stock (with known dillution schedule) that has decent chances to go to 10 000$. and with no counterpart risks.

Just try to value Bitcoin like a stock. It easily worth 100-200$ right now.

[teste]

Hi,

I requested to Piuk from blockchain.info to create a new chart for addresses without activity, see: http://blockchain.uservoice.com/forums/152743-general-ideas/suggestions/3177586-new-chart-for-addresses-without-activity

[kjlimo]

I just ran a quick analysis on the blockchain.

Out of the 192386 blocks currently mined, very many of them
have a BTC 50 block reward that has never been spent.

To be exact, 41493 blocks have an unspent reward.

That is worth approximately BTC 2'074'650.00 (not counting fees).

That's 2 Million+ pristine coins hoarded, or about 20% of the BTC market cap.

Lots of smart people around here.

or: lots of extremely careless ones (although I doubt it)

nahh it is a nobrainer.   like buying a call option (with say 10-20 years before expiration) or shares of a 5$ stock (with known dillution schedule) that has decent chances to go to 10 000$. and with no counterpart risks.

Just try to value Bitcoin like a stock. It easily worth 100-200$ right now.

I value a bitcoin the same way I value a stock - current market price:

about $12.50.

But I understand what you're getting at.

[allthingsluxury]

That is a lot of money. Hopefully a large chunk of those are simply people that have faith in the market and are waiting for a more stable time. I can't see someone dumping them all on the market at once. It would make their hoard useless.

[Nite69]

Check it out: http://blockexplorer.com/address/1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa <-- address of the genesis block's generation transaction.
While the 50 BTC can't be spent, it should be possible to spend the additional 6.57403164 BTC.

:-D Looks like some smartass has sent a message at 9.11 2012 ~5am to the genesis block address:

01010101 = 0x55 U (0x55 start symbol?)
01100010 = 0x62 b
01110100 = 0x74 t
01100011 = 0x63 c
00100000 = 0x20
01101001 = 0x69 i
01110011 = 0x73 s
00100000 = 0x20
01100001 = 0x61 a
00100000 = 0x20
01110011 = 0x73 s
01100011 = 0x63 c
01100001 = 0x61 a
01101101 = 0x6d m

---------------
17gNvfoD2FDqTfESUxNEmTukGbGVAiJhXp

[Nite69]

I just ran a quick analysis on the blockchain.

Out of the 192386 blocks currently mined, very many of them
have a BTC 50 block reward that has never been spent.

To be exact, 41493 blocks have an unspent reward.

That is worth approximately BTC 2'074'650.00 (not counting fees).

That's 2 Million+ pristine coins hoarded, or about 20% of the BTC market cap.

Can you make an analysis to check if these coins really are lost:

"Bitomat.pl Loss
Time: 2011-07-26"
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83794.0

Or maybe someone has been able to actually spend them after 'losing' them?

[molecular]

I just ran a quick analysis on the blockchain.

Out of the 192386 blocks currently mined, very many of them
have a BTC 50 block reward that has never been spent.

To be exact, 41493 blocks have an unspent reward.

That is worth approximately BTC 2'074'650.00 (not counting fees).

That's 2 Million+ pristine coins hoarded, or about 20% of the BTC market cap.

Can you make an analysis to check if these coins really are lost:

"Bitomat.pl Loss
Time: 2011-07-26"
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83794.0

Or maybe someone has been able to actually spend them after 'losing' them?

If the private key is lost, it's prohibitively expensive (both time and effort) to recover it (you need to guess). Equally expensive as recovering the private key to any address. Not going to happen. Lost is lost, you can subtract the lost coins from the bitcoin money supply.

I lost BTC 10 myself .

Thanks for link to interesting thread.

[chaut0]

Is it possible to "expire" coins after a certain amount of time?
That introduce an upgrade and deploy it after 2-3 years when the network is ready? While the expired coins will be a reward of the new block. And encourage mining after the reward becomes lower and lower.
(I am new here, just thinking about it. Please don't blame me.  )

[The_Duke]

Is it possible to "expire" coins after a certain amount of time?
That introduce an upgrade and deploy it after 2-3 years when the network is ready? While the expired coins will be a reward of the new block. And encourage mining after the reward becomes lower and lower.
(I am new here, just thinking about it. Please don't blame me.  )

"Sorry, your pension savings and child tuition money adresses have expired."

No thanks.

[Nite69]

I just ran a quick analysis on the blockchain.

Out of the 192386 blocks currently mined, very many of them
have a BTC 50 block reward that has never been spent.

To be exact, 41493 blocks have an unspent reward.

That is worth approximately BTC 2'074'650.00 (not counting fees).

That's 2 Million+ pristine coins hoarded, or about 20% of the BTC market cap.

Can you make an analysis to check if these coins really are lost:

"Bitomat.pl Loss
Time: 2011-07-26"
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83794.0

Or maybe someone has been able to actually spend them after 'losing' them?

If the private key is lost, it's prohibitively expensive (both time and effort) to recover it (you need to guess). Equally expensive as recovering the private key to any address. Not going to happen. Lost is lost, you can subtract the lost coins from the bitcoin money supply.

I lost BTC 10 myself .

Thanks for link to interesting thread.

Yes, of course, if it really is lost... ;-) But could we find out, if the claimed lost coins has actually been used afterwards? Just by examining the block chain?

[molecular]

I just ran a quick analysis on the blockchain.

Out of the 192386 blocks currently mined, very many of them
have a BTC 50 block reward that has never been spent.

To be exact, 41493 blocks have an unspent reward.

That is worth approximately BTC 2'074'650.00 (not counting fees).

That's 2 Million+ pristine coins hoarded, or about 20% of the BTC market cap.

Can you make an analysis to check if these coins really are lost:

"Bitomat.pl Loss
Time: 2011-07-26"
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83794.0

Or maybe someone has been able to actually spend them after 'losing' them?

If the private key is lost, it's prohibitively expensive (both time and effort) to recover it (you need to guess). Equally expensive as recovering the private key to any address. Not going to happen. Lost is lost, you can subtract the lost coins from the bitcoin money supply.

I lost BTC 10 myself .

Thanks for link to interesting thread.

Yes, of course, if it really is lost... ;-) But could we find out, if the claimed lost coins has actually been used afterwards? Just by examining the block chain?

Of course we could find out. Just enter the address into blockchain.info.