RunTheNumbers

audit the total bitcoin supply at future block height using your full node

This is a very simple script that runs in the command line. It’s intended to be easy enough to use that anyone with a Bitcoin node can participate without having extensive technical knowledge, but you do need a full node such as Bitcoin Core to participate. Currently this script also relies on Python to parse the data it recieves from your node.

If you are a Windows user, the process requires extra steps which are not well defined, because this script is designed for Linux and Mac operating systems. A Python version will be released later.

Why?

The goal is to coordinate the largest synchronized decentralized audit of Bitcoin’s monetary supply in history. Participants agree on a target block height, and the script will fetch the block count from your node every few seconds, counting down the remaining blocks

When the target block is reached, the script calls gettxoutsetinfo, which provides statistics about Bitcoin’s unspent transaction output set. If all goes well, users can take screenshots to post online to mark the occassion, and more importantly, verify that all nodes are in agreement about the total amount of bitcoin in existence.

Linux/MacOS users

  1. Download runthenumbers.sh or save the raw text to a new file.

  2. Copy the script to the machine that is running your node.

  3. Locate your bitcoin.conf file.

    a. If your data directory doesn’t have a bitcoin.conf file, create a new text file and save it as bitcoin.conf.

    b. If your bitcoin.conf file doesn’t have the rpcuser and rpcpassword variables, go ahead and add them, save the file, and restart your node. They should look like this:

    rpcuser=any_username

    rpcpassword=any_password

  4. Edit the script you downloaded so that the USERNAME and PASSWORD variables match your rpcuser and rpcpassword variables in your bitcoin.conf file.

  5. Also edit the TARGET_BLOCK variable to a future block date. Ideally you will select the same block to audit as other people, so that you can all compare results at the same time.

  6. Open your command line or Terminal application. Navigate to the directory where you saved the script by using cd to change directory, followed by the file path to the script folder.

    cd /path/to/folder

  7. Run the script:

    sh runthenumbers.sh

    or

    bash runthenumbers.sh

If the script runs successfully, you should see something like this:

643410/643600: 190 blocks remaining

The script will listen to your node for new blocks and count down accordingly. Once the target block height is reached, the script will call gettxoutsetinfo which will return results like this:

{
  "height": 643600,
  "bestblock": "0000000000000000000f44e44ac72da83c661ab0fc647ad0d3ba285439f591e0",
  "transactions": 40707898,
  "txouts": 66413003,
  "bogosize": 4988534879,
  "hash_serialized_2": "ea57531c0cdf6a0e6d363164443a35ce245cf1b4e9082070480e3801d1c6a1ef",
  "disk_size": 4443424620,
  "total_amount": 18459823.37870112
}

See that total_amount line? You just verified exactly how many bitcoin exist right now! (Why isn’t it a nice round number?)

Take a screenshot of the output and post your results to social media using the #RunTheNumbers hashtag to compare the output of your node with that of your friends’ nodes.

Example: https://twitter.com/BashCo_/status/1294183464611254272

Inspiration: https://twitter.com/bennd77/status/1291972028933734401

🐉