Bitcoin Testnet supply question

So, does anyone know when testnet3 is gonna hit its maximum supply?

What do you mean? Bitcoin Testnet I think does not have a fixed maximum supply it's not the same as Bitcoin in Mainnet which has a 21m total supply. The concept of a maximum supply doesn't apply to Testnet it should be used only for testing purposes by developers with no real value.

Testnet is a different blockchain from Bitcoin, since it is different from Bitcoin, supposed to have no value and is used for testing purposes, why is the supply limited? Testnet3 was introduced to avoid the problem of high difficulty and limited supply would increase that difficulty.

Testnet coin versions are also periodically changed when too many people mine & hold them and even worse - sell them to idjits who think they have some sort of value. Each new version make the older ones unusable. As has been said earlier it only takes a small amount of tBTC to test software and in most cases once your testing is done you are supposed to return the tBTC to the sources you got it from which makes limits a moot point.

I think OP actually want to ask "When will Bitcoin Testnet mining reward (excluding reward from TX fee) reach 0?". Since BTC and tBTC have same method of supply generation, it'll happen on block #6930000. Current block height on testnet is already at #2582202. At current pace and considering people sell/buy tBTC, i expect it'll happen within 10 years or less.

I will buy tBTC do you have any to sell? They have value even if they were meant only for testing. The fact that users need them creates value and demand. without a doubt these testnet tokens will sell for atleast 1% of the main nets price eventually. Maybe even 10%... I think the testnet value can help the mainnet and onboard more users looking to try Bitcoin out before they go in deeper. It'll ease congestion on the main since Ordinals was created. gives a chance for newbies to get in on the action and actual hold some coins instead of fractions of 1. Its like a second chance to people who passed or get distracted. I'm working on bringing value to the testnet hoping they wont reset this one since its been running for over 10 years now. The testnet should not effect the main in any negative way if Bitcoin is really a solid protocol. No worries just adoption the testnet should never be more important then the main but it should have value. less than 1% of the main net wallets hold most of the Bitcoin. When you got the CEO of Binance saying they have the power to rollback the blockchain is scary. No one should have that much power.

I only have tiny amount of tBTC and i don't plan to sell those. However, 1. You can try either tBTC faucet or exchange. 2. Depending on your needs, you could setup regtest (testnet on private environment) or obtain signet (newer iteration of testnet with few differences) Bitcoin.

Given that it is easy to mine and that its purpose for testing, it is not supposed to have value, and if people continue to buy it to get an airdrop, Testnet3 will be reset with a different genesis block. Do not put your money into buying Testnet3 or keeping it long-term.

Of course even though tBTC has no real value there are still idjits out there who will buy & sell it. When it gets bad enough with them doing it there be another reset making their stash unusable. They deserve to lose their money from doing it.

In another topic, he was trying to buy about 50k or more. I don’t know whether 50k Bitcoin or 50k dollars, but if more threads continue like this, a reset will happen during this year.

There hasn't been a reset in over 10 years. The supply may reach its max in another 10 years. It would be stupid to reset it in my opinion but I'm aware it can happen. It is worth the risk now that bitcoins reward will be less than 1 BTC in 8 years. They should at least wait until the max is reached to see it complete and be tested. All of us will have disembodied before Bitcoin's mainnet reaches its max supply. We can at least get to see the testnet3 reach that point and experiment with it. It should bring more scarcity to the mainnet and push up the value. I could see a reset happening before or after max because of the low reward of the main. But they should leave it alone since its been over 10 years until it is complete!!!

I have 50k or more Testnet coins available on my website. (You can also use limit orders.) V3:  https://altquick.com/exchange/market/BitcoinTestnet3 V4:  https://altquick.com/exchange/market/BitcoinTestnet4 Sorry for the late reply, I found this on a google search. Also, the "reset" propaganda was massively misleading.  There is no reset button.

Developers are quite worried about testnet gaining value on your swap exchange, it's against the motive of the testnet ecosystem, although faucets are not meant to be abused, and users may not get the number of token they need through faucet services buying to hold and trade later is much more like the main net this time. Though it's nobody's business, people with large volume of testnet coins like yourself give it out and advice the receiver to return it once they're done testing their apps. Since many of them may not return it anymore due to the value it's attracting in marketplaces, it derails the test coin circulation.

I feel like there are bigger fish to fry and focus on.  Stuff has changed since 2011. It's against the ideology and a bit taboo, but I firmly believe it is for the best and I'll explain why + show examples. I believe that ideology is or should be dead due to the maturity that Bitcoin has reached. We were a faucet before we were an exchange.  Our faucet can be found here and we give away 0.005 TBTC to users once every ten minutes. A business model like ours does indeed absorb fellow faucets, but if those faucets had a sound business plan... they would be making money hand over fist from the traffic and demand we drive to them.  I've taken some steps to prevent people from directly hitting third-party faucets and depositing directly into their exchange accounts. Rarely do we run out of v3 Testnet and we've never ran out of v4 before.  Users are *not* required to buy any Testnet to participate, but a faucet with a poor business model will likely get rekt. I agree with this. If the dude from above wants to buy 50,000 Testnet for 20 BTC (v3) or 0.01755315 BTC (v4)... who cares? (Calculated with a market order @ the time of this edit) Perhaps he wants to build a mega faucet, having access to 50,000 Testnet in 10 minutes is worth it to them, and suddenly the ecosystem has access to a huge stash of "free" coins. Very few people return free Testnet coins.  The ideology that they are worthless contributed to the scarcity in v3. If you live in America, drive around a Walmart parking lot vs an Aldi parking lot (grocery stores) and see which one has more carts not put up.  Walmart gives carts out for free and Aldi requires a 25-cent deposit that is refunded when you put your cart back.  Walmarts parking lot is generally a shit show... where as Aldi has the customers bringing the cart back to the front door for their quarter back + customers/kids/bums/me (lol) patrolling the parking lot for carts to put up to get a free quarter. That little quarter appears to go a long way. I argue that it improves circulation and contributes to a greater amount of testing, as well as more users. Faucets are running dry and developers are sending dust from their +9,000 v3 TBTC stashes.  This seems more derailing than offering a way to circulate Testnet to people who need or want it. We've moved over 90,000 Testnet v3/v4 this week... that is a coin, attached to Bitcoins success, that is dying to express itself. It's really a lovely little area of Bitcoin.  Please keep the Billionaires, Wall Street, drugs, extortion, and all that in Bitcoin.  Let the Testnet be a safe zone for scrubs testing, however they please.  Not all of us test code, I test users and ideas... tbh, both have kinda blown my mind over the years (we listed Testnet Nov 2022). V4 next halving is in 2027.  V3 has like 600 coins till it hits its cap and spins on miner fees only. (Which will be interesting to see.)

I don't live in the US, but your business model implies similar strategy as the Aldi grocery store, to help the returning of Bitcoin testnet due to the value surrounding it on your exchange. I forgot to mention it on my first response, so it's kind of deposit certain cents before getting the testnet and then come take it back once it's returned. Instead of leaving it dormant and untouched after usage people can sell it so others get to see it next time to purchase. It's your world now, you make the prices what you want it to be, but why is it scarce actually, I'd still argue that it's not because people didn't return free gotten testnets. One user above said it's easy to mine, to tackle your kind of business model developers can gather enough of it and circulate for free to users. Imagine a platform with your kind of traffic giving out a substantial amount of testnet completely for free. Do you think it'll make you more money? I'm also curious about the Bitcoin testnet box that's run on the Bitcoin core regtest mode, why is a lot of users not going for it? And create blocks manually to earn rewards about 50tbtc per block I guess so. It's clear that everyone else who are not testing projects are testing users too. Lastly, you having to share that thread here is quite funny, I read it when it was published, and didn't know about you selling testnets, and it got me wondering why you didn't ask for testnet like the other members did, now I understand that developers now know of you, and may decline testnet coin request coming through you, do you see it as a challenge?

It's true. But let's see how long testnet3 remains alive when Bitcoin Core and other software dropped support for testnet3. AFAIK testnet1 and testnet2 no longer alive today. FWIW, running your own testnet or signet would be cheaper. It's so easy that i found someone build and share their own signet on I setup a new bitcoin signet, welcome to use it. To reader with a bit of technical skill, you can follow this guide https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Signet.

After all halvings. We are getting there, because currently, you have 4768 satoshis as the basic block reward, everything else comes from transaction fees. We already had 20 halvings, out of 32, so only 12 halvings left. https://developer.bitcoin.org/reference/block_chain.html So, we currently are around block number 4,300,000, and because of frequent blockstorms, we will probably get there soon. So, if April 2025 is around block 4,300,000, and November 2024 was on block 3,300,000, that means around million blocks in half a year. So, by roughly estimating things, I expect in 2026, maybe in 2027, we will get there. It mainly depends, if someone will accelerate the process by abusing blockstorms with timewarp, or not. It has almost identical rules to the mainnet, the only major difference is in difficulty adjustments, which caused blockstorms. Because the main goal of testnet is to test things. And if you want to test Bitcoin, and not something else, then you want to avoid changing rules, unless it is strictly necessary. And after many years, we can see, that allowing the difficulty to drop, was a mistake. Because that's why people created signet at all, if testnet3 would be more stable, then making signet may never be needed. Limited supply is needed to test, how the network behaves, when most coins are mined out of transaction fees. And by seeing, what happens in testnet3 in practice, we can see, that if you want to earn anything, then you are forced to confirm a lot of spam, because they are paying the biggest fees, and they are keeping testnet3 alive. Not really. Each new version simply drops the support for the old network, but you can still use it. Nobody stops you from using testnet2 or testnet1 in practice, but there were not enough users, to keep any of these networks alive. However, in case of testnet3, it will probably live as an altcoin, at least for a while, because of quite significant chainwork, support of some centralized exchanges, and a long chain, maintained for years by many people, and also connections with some altcoins with non-zero value. If anyone would really want to make the old testnet3 unusable, then it would require releasing for example testnet5, by mining on top of the same Genesis Block, as we have in testnet3, and reorging the whole testnet3 chain, by producing a stronger chain. Then, it could be really called "reset", and not "abandon". This thing was never implemented, because testnet has no demurrage, and no coins have any expiration date, after which they could be burned, or taken by miners. A good question is: should testnet5 be created with such consensus rules? You underestimate, how many blocks were created quite recently. It would be the case, if we would have only regular blockstorms, and nothing else. But if you connect blockstorms with timewarp, then you can tweak timestamps, and produce a lot of blocks (to the point, that it will break some services, which use testnet3, as it was the case, when Jameson Lopp did it). Current blockstorms in testnet3 are producing more blocks, than they were in the past, but it is still far from the maximum speed of six blocks per second, repeated during each difficulty adjustment.

Signet is a nice solution but it's centrally controlled and won't meet the needs testnets provides for its traders, I'd classify it under regtest in terms of providing a testing environment. Developing your own signet will take you away from the main signet, hence you may never interact with other projects on the main signet. So the self developed signet you shared may not be transferred to other signet. Murch on stack exchange has two responses consecutively for the both links you shared. 1. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5501712.0 Link1 2. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Signet#Custom_Signet Link2

I don't know. I frequently joke around that when we are no longer the number one source, we will be rich.  The irony of being victorious by losing is pretty beautiful to me. Not at all.  I don't think anyone can ban me from anything on the internet that I don't want to be banned from.   Persistence is the key to resistance. I think the interesting question in regards to this is:  How long will it take services to update to v4?   As of right now, in Bitcoin terms, where Bitcoin = whatever version has the most value + acceptance... v3 would be considered "Testnet" and v4 is just an altcoin fork.  It'll be interesting to see how the experiment goes. Good for some people, but this does not meet the needs of those trying to test by interacting with each other in a noncentralized environment. You wouldn't believe how many request I get for a signet market... These folks are truly baffling. Tbh, the honest blockstorms are nice... things confirm really fast, and happy users move their coins around the network swiftly. It actually helped our service.  It killed the miners, but Testnet miners don't care.  They are just excited to see blocks. Testnet is a Honey Badger as well, as it should be. Also Saint, I responded to your Bitcoin Mailing list via email. "This will only contribute to Testnets value increasing.  People buy Testnet for the moment because they do not want to waste time.  They are not buying to hold... they are buying to test."

Just to put v3 into perspective: https://mempool.space/testnet/address/tb1qm6juaswhsmdl4w4ezj7lqx5c6xdz7ct99weumg That's a lot of grocery carts returned.  I think that address speaks for itself. I own <1000 v3, and I give those away with the faucet + sell them as I get them. Voting with your feet seems like a good way to help prove Testnet is worthless + stack a few sats.  *shrugs* I'm going to match Michael Saylors & other VC's Bitcoin stashes in v4 though!  It's cool in Bitcoin and lame af in Bitcoin Testnet, that's kinda art right?   >300,000 locked in, which is kind of cool because early in Bitcoin three friends each acquired 300,000 BTC each... I can't remember their names, I paid one of them 1 Bitcoin for his opinion one time. This miner is sitting at 900,000.  I admire their consistency. v4 Perspective:  https://mempool.space/testnet4/address/tb1qf6yq8r42p3dpmpn7nxexhm628uduj7spm0skmc I don't, though; it's a free market, and that market is much larger and smarter than I am.  We just host the arena. I learned a long time ago that you shouldn't fight or think you are bigger than the invisible hand in markets. I do have to go against the flow to deal with large amounts.  Buy when people are selling, then sell when people are buying.  It's a fine line.  This is the case in all markets, not just Testnet.  It's one of the few "normal" things in the Testnet markets.