Quote from: Brewins on August 08, 2014, 09:31:21 PM

Quote from: polynesia on August 08, 2014, 01:27:06 AM

Quote from: Ayers on August 07, 2014, 07:21:40 PM

Quote from: odolvlobo on August 07, 2014, 04:21:12 PM

Quote from: Ayers on August 07, 2014, 02:42:41 PM

was arbitratry for bitcoin also? i remember 21M come up from a math equation or some other calculation

50 BTC every 10 minutes, halved every 4 years --> 21 million BTC total

Other coins use different numbers and different distribution plans. Many coins are not capped.

so satoshi started from the block reward, to build bitcoin

Not really. You can also start from the total number and then work backwards.

What do you mean? Start with 21M coins premined, then "desmine" the coins along the way?

Nope. Was talking about the calculations.
You can fix an arbit number for the total number of coins, and then back calculate the block reward.