Bitcoin’s famed scarcity? Turns out, it needed saving – and a well-timed joke – to avoid ballooning to 126 million coins. Eleven years ago, a fix named BIP-42 quietly averted a potential Bitcoin supply explosion set to strike centuries in the future. Submitted by Bitcoin Core contributor Pieter Wuille on April Fool’s Day, 2014, this proposal addressed a subtle but critical coding error in Satoshi Nakamoto’s design related to Bitcoin halvings.
Turns out, Satoshi – yes, that Satoshi – wasn’t infallible after all. A lurking bug in his code could have triggered block rewards to revert unexpectedly to 50 BTC every 250 years. This would have effectively reset Bitcoin’s supply schedule back to its 2009 origins, again and again, into the far future.
Based on a solution from Gregory Maxwell, BIP-42 functioned as both a crucial technical patch and a tongue-in-cheek commentary on Satoshi’s original programming. As Wuille himself quipped, the bug suggested Satoshi might not have been the inflation hawk many assume, given he inadvertently coded in a potential for “infinite bitcoins.” Without the fix, Bitcoin’s circulating supply was projected to hit 126 million by the year 3417.
While the humorous tone of BIP-42 adds a uniquely quirky chapter to Bitcoin’s developmental history, it also adds a layer of obscurity. The lighthearted nature of the patch might forever prevent a deeper understanding of the full scope of discussions and considerations that surrounded this surprisingly critical software update.