<p>This is actually similar to the <a href="https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/181/can-bitcoins-be-counterfeited">"Can a bitcoin be counterfeited?"</a> question.</p>

<p>The answer is no, because as you seemed to hint at, there is no such thing as a bitcoin. There is simply a transaction list, that has consensus around it, where no wallets are ever allowed to go negative.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-09-02T18:56:35.360Z
2011-09-02T18:56:35.360Z
2017-04-13T12:47:36.707Z
lemonginger
<p>I've been playing with <a href="https://github.com/gavinandresen/bitcointools" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Gavin's "bitcointools"</a> (<a href="https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2828/how-many-bitcoin-addresses-are-have-been-carrying-a-balance">again</a>) to track what happened to the famous "pizza" Bitcoins.</p>

<p>It turns out that rather than being rare collector's items, the <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137.msg1195#msg1195" rel="nofollow noreferrer">10,000 BTC</a> exchanged for <a href="http://heliacal.net/~solar/bitcoin/pizza/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">two pizzas</a> have spread out to over a million different Bitcoin addresses since buying the pizzas, not counting the dilute fragments that ended up in transaction fees.</p>

<p>As of block 166149, on Feb 10th 2012, 1,037,382 addresses have held the pizza coins since they were spent.  174,584 of those still hold pizza coins (the others may or may not be empty addresses, since it's possible to have two different transactions output to the same address without the coins becoming mixed together.  In other words it's possible to have "pizza coins" and "non pizza coins" in the same address and still be able to tell which are which.  Of the approximately 600k addresses which are currently holding funds, around 29% of them contain pizza coins.</p>

<p>The shortest chain of transactions from the pizza purchase to currently held pizza coins has length 9, and the longest has length 6,723.</p>

<p>There is no currently unredeemed output which contains 100% pure pizza coins.  All the pizza coins have been diluted somewhat with other coins.  The purest remaining are <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/t/A7RS7vqSx1" rel="nofollow noreferrer">these 100 BTC</a> which are 90.7276% pure pizza coin, and just 11 transactions separated from the pizza transaction.  (The most recent 9 transactions each only have 1 input, so it's easy to follow it back that far.  In the next transaction back the pizza coins came from both the last but one input, worth 4223 BTC, and 5th from last input, worth 5777.  Together those 2 inputs make up the full 100% pure 10k BTC pizza coins.  The other inputs in this big transaction, worth 1022 BTC in total are the only non pizza coins introduced.  10000 * 100 / 11022 = 90.7276%, the purity). </p>

<p>I also checked my wallet to see if I was holding any pizza coins.  8 of my addresses are holding pizza coins, but very diluted.  My 'strongest' has a purity of 1.1760%, and is a <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/t/6cfKNoE1UR#o0" rel="nofollow noreferrer">tiny withdrawal</a> I made from MtGox in October 2011.</p>

<p>Finally, here's some data showing the month-by-month spread of the pizza coins:</p>

<pre><code>pizza payment of 10000.00000000 BTC to 17SkEw2md5avVNyYgj6RiXuQKNwkXaxFyQ
is in block 57043

-block  --date--  --total--   ---used--%total-   -active---%total---%used-
 58815  May 2010          4         2 (50.00%)         4  100.00%  200.00%
 63561  Jun 2010          4         2 (50.00%)         0    0.00%    0.00%
 71436  Jul 2010         26         8 (30.77%)        24   92.31%  300.00%
 77452  Aug 2010         34        10 (29.41%)        13   38.24%  130.00%
 82997  Sep 2010        138        37 (26.81%)       106   76.81%  286.49%
 88892  Oct 2010      2,016       265 (13.14%)     1,898   94.15%  716.23%
 94801  Nov 2010      6,295       577 ( 9.17%)     4,428   70.34%  767.42%
100409  Dec 2010      7,510       835 (11.12%)     1,464   19.49%  175.33%

-block  --date--  --total--   ---used--%total-   -active---%total---%used-
105570  Jan 2011     13,271     1,540 (11.60%)     6,150   46.34%  399.35%
111136  Feb 2011     19,055     2,632 (13.81%)     6,423   33.71%  244.03%
116038  Mar 2011     42,027     5,605 (13.34%)    24,341   57.92%  434.27%
121126  Apr 2011     69,544     9,085 (13.06%)    29,727   42.75%  327.21%
127865  May 2011    123,997    26,032 (20.99%)    57,911   46.70%  222.46%
134121  Jun 2011    249,138    54,047 (21.69%)   132,348   53.12%  244.88%
139035  Jul 2011    382,845    93,928 (24.53%)   146,156   38.18%  155.60%
143408  Aug 2011    494,140   108,340 (21.92%)   126,134   25.53%  116.42%
147565  Sep 2011    589,942   119,491 (20.25%)   111,178   18.85%   93.04%
151314  Oct 2011    680,787   131,370 (19.30%)   105,320   15.47%   80.17%
155451  Nov 2011    780,292   142,302 (18.24%)   114,013   14.61%   80.12%
160036  Dec 2011    885,172   156,321 (17.66%)   120,631   13.63%   77.17%

-block  --date--  --total--   ---used--%total-   -active---%total---%used-
164780  Jan 2012    998,087   170,082 (17.04%)   136,985   13.72%   80.54%

166149  Feb 2012  1,037,382   174,584 (16.83%)    54,346    5.24%   31.13%
</code></pre>

<p>Edit: I just found these <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/t/69fDjp12gB#o0" rel="nofollow noreferrer">100% pure allinvain coins</a> - undiluted after 24 hops from when 25k BTC was <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=16457.msg214423#msg214423" rel="nofollow noreferrer">stolen from his computer</a>.</p>

<p>Edit 2: I don't mean to imply that the allinvain coins haven't been thoroughly looted.  They have touched 755,796 different addresses since being stolen and are currently sitting in 109,235 different addresses, including 8 from my own personal wallet.  The exact same 8 as have pizza coins in them, it turns out.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-02-10T07:50:15.943Z
2012-02-10T17:59:05.473Z
2017-04-13T12:47:32.940Z
Chris Moore
<p>The simplest way to understand why the answer is "no" is to understand a very basic concept about Bitcoin transactions:</p>

<p>Each transaction (except generating transactions) has one or more "inputs" that pull in Bitcoins. And each transaction has one or more "outputs" that offer those Bitcoins.</p>

<p>In the transaction itself, all the Bitcoins pulled in form a pile. There is no way to track a particular input to a particular output, nor is that meaningful.</p>

<p>Imagine a transaction pulls in 25 Bitcoins from one place and 25 Bitcoins from another place and then sends out 10 Bitcoins to each of five different places. What does it mean to ask which input the coins in a particular output came from?</p>

<p>Bitcoins are more like account balances than pennies. If you put 10 pennies in a pile and give 1 out, you can ask which penny they got. But if you deposit two $10 checks and then withdraw $5, which check did that $5 come from? It's not even a meaningful question.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-09-03T15:38:08.650Z
2011-09-03T15:38:08.650Z
David Schwartz
<p>You might want to have a look at the concepts of "taint" and "colored coins". You can start here:</p>

<p>Taint: <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=92416.0" rel="nofollow">https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=92416.0</a></p>

<p>Colored Coins: <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=106373.0" rel="nofollow">https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=106373.0</a></p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-10-24T09:13:53.623Z
2012-10-24T09:13:53.623Z
mazi
<p>Nowadays, the answer is &quot;yes&quot; thanks to <a href="/questions/tagged/ordinals" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;ordinals&#39;" aria-label="show questions tagged &#39;ordinals&#39;" rel="tag" aria-labelledby="tag-ordinals-tooltip-container">ordinals</a>, which basically enumerates each Sat via a FIFO heuristic. Thanks to that you can indeed find all the 1e12 Pizza Sats e.g. via <a href="https://ordiscan.com/satribute/pizza" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://ordiscan.com/satribute/pizza</a> or <a href="https://magiceden.io/ordinals/marketplace/rare-sats?attributes=%257B%2522Satributes%2522%253A%255B%257B%2522value%2522%253A%2522Pizza%2522%252C%2522label%2522%253A%2522Pizza%2522%257D%255D%257D" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://magiceden.io/ordinals/marketplace/rare-sats?attributes=%257B%2522Satributes%2522%253A%255B%257B%2522value%2522%253A%2522Pizza%2522%252C%2522label%2522%253A%2522Pizza%2522%257D%255D%257D</a></p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-02-26T19:14:13.077Z
2024-02-26T19:14:13.077Z
Tobias Kienzler
<p>If you know the TX number, you can go to blockchain.info, search the TX number, click "View Tree Chart" and a tree chart will show up and you can click on the yellow/orange circles. That is how I found out a bitcoin I sent to an exchange ended up plying ping-pong with SatoshiDice.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-11-04T18:17:04.707Z
2012-11-04T18:17:04.707Z
Joseph Havens
<p>A "bitcoin" is an individual output of a transaction. It is a "coin", because it is not possible to spend only a part of it and somehow leave the rest resting in your wallet, hanging off the transaction it came from.</p>

<p>A transaction can be viewes as this: take these "bitcoins", melt them, mint new ones according to the specifications provided by me and distribute them as I am instructing. Each transaction destroys the bitcoins that are its inputs and produces bitcoins that are its outputs. The "transaction fees" are like "unused raw material" which returns back to the "ground" and can only be extracted back as a coin by mining.</p>

<p>This is similar to real physical coins - the cashier can't take a half of your 50 cent coin when your bill says you only owe 25 cents, he only can take the whole 50 cent coin and give you a 25 coin back to get rid of the excess payment of yours. Similarly if you have only 50 BTC coin on your account, and you want to pay 5 BTC, you (or, more specifically, your BTC client) must "melt" the 50 BTC coin to create a 5 BTC and a 45 BTC coin before it can give the 5 BTC to the destination address you specified. And this is also why you have to specify a destination for the 45 BTC coin as well (otherwise the 45 BTC will turn into "raw unmined bitcoin material" which is not directly usable and must be mined).</p>

<p>So the answer is "yes". A bitcoin starts its existence at an output of a transaction and continues its existence until it enters an input of a transaction. When the bitcoin entered another transaction, it no longer exists; the outputs of that another transaction are completely different bitcoins.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-08-08T21:29:04.760Z
2012-08-08T21:29:04.760Z
Jozef
<p>Here is a possible schema describing transactions from two addresses <code>A</code> and <code>B</code> that contain initially 50 BTC each:</p>
<pre><code>     (A) 50 btc --tx1-----------------------&gt; 25 btc (C)
                   \
                    `-&gt; 25 btc (D) --.
                                      \
                                       tx3--&gt; 50 btc (*)
                                      /
                    .-&gt; 25 btc (E) --'
                   /
     (B) 50 btc --tx2-----------------------&gt; 25 btc (F)
</code></pre>
<p>There are three transactions here, and they mention only values: those transactions are stored in the block chain like:</p>
<ul>
<li><code>tx1</code>: <code>(input on A: 50BTC; output on D: 25BTC, output on C: 25BTC)</code></li>
<li><code>tx2</code>: <code>(input on B: 50BTC; output on E: 25BTC, output on F: 25BTC)</code></li>
<li><code>tx3</code>: <code>(input on D: 25BTC,  input on E: 25BTC; output on *: 50BTC)</code></li>
</ul>
<p>Only global amounts are involved, not individual <em>satoshis</em>. Could you tell where each of the <em>satoshis</em> in <code>*</code> came from? <code>A</code> or <code>B</code>? Just impossible.</p>
<p><strong>Conclusion:</strong> There is no such thing as individual <em>satoshis</em>, they don't have identities in the Bitcoin framework.</p>
<p>(And it's the same, or even worse, for <em>bitcoins</em>. An individual <em>bitcoin</em> is not well defined. It might be a grouping of smaller amounts in the same place (wallet), or at the same address, or in the same transaction, but <strong>at a given point in time</strong>.)</p>
<p>It is however possible to track money flows between addresses, which may “dilute” into other flows, as illustrated <a href="https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/2900/132">in this answer</a>.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-09-02T17:10:24.263Z
2015-11-25T12:40:49.187Z
2020-06-16T11:10:03.350Z
Stéphane Gimenez
<p>For example, if I wanted to "collect" important bitcoins is there any way to track a coin rather than a series of transactions? If I wanted one of the bitcoins from the infamous "<a href="http://bitcointalk.org/?topic=137.0">Bitcoin pizza</a>" purchase, for example, is there any way to do so?</p>

<p>Perhaps the question I <em>should</em> be asking is more like "Do bitcoins themselves even exist or just the records of transactions?"</p>

<transactions><protocol>
Is there any way to track an individual bitcoin (or satoshi)?
David Perry
# Is there any way to track an individual bitcoin (or satoshi)?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2011-09-02)

For example, if I wanted to "collect" important bitcoins is there any way to track a coin rather than a series of transactions? If I wanted one of the bitcoins from the infamous "[Bitcoin pizza](http://bitcointalk.org/?topic=137.0)" purchase, for example, is there any way to do so?

Perhaps the question I *should* be asking is more like "Do bitcoins themselves even exist or just the records of transactions?"

**Tags:** transactions, protocol


---

## 8 answers

### Answer by username_8 on 2011-09-02. Score: 44 | Accepted answer

Here is a possible schema describing transactions from two addresses `A` and `B` that contain initially 50 BTC each:

```
     (A) 50 btc --tx1-----------------------> 25 btc (C)
                   \
                    `-> 25 btc (D) --.
                                      \
                                       tx3--> 50 btc (*)
                                      /
                    .-> 25 btc (E) --'
                   /
     (B) 50 btc --tx2-----------------------> 25 btc (F)

```

There are three transactions here, and they mention only values: those transactions are stored in the block chain like:

* `tx1`: `(input on A: 50BTC; output on D: 25BTC, output on C: 25BTC)`
* `tx2`: `(input on B: 50BTC; output on E: 25BTC, output on F: 25BTC)`
* `tx3`: `(input on D: 25BTC,  input on E: 25BTC; output on *: 50BTC)`

Only global amounts are involved, not individual *satoshis*. Could you tell where each of the *satoshis* in `*` came from? `A` or `B`? Just impossible.

**Conclusion:** There is no such thing as individual *satoshis*, they don't have identities in the Bitcoin framework.

(And it's the same, or even worse, for *bitcoins*. An individual *bitcoin* is not well defined. It might be a grouping of smaller amounts in the same place (wallet), or at the same address, or in the same transaction, but **at a given point in time**.)

It is however possible to track money flows between addresses, which may “dilute” into other flows, as illustrated [in this answer](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/2900/132).


---

### Answer by username_2 on 2012-02-10. Score: 37

I've been playing with [Gavin's "bitcointools"](https://github.com/gavinandresen/bitcointools) ([again](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2828/how-many-bitcoin-addresses-are-have-been-carrying-a-balance)) to track what happened to the famous "pizza" Bitcoins.

It turns out that rather than being rare collector's items, the [10,000 BTC](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137.msg1195#msg1195) exchanged for [two pizzas](http://heliacal.net/~solar/bitcoin/pizza/) have spread out to over a million different Bitcoin addresses since buying the pizzas, not counting the dilute fragments that ended up in transaction fees.

As of block 166149, on Feb 10th 2012, 1,037,382 addresses have held the pizza coins since they were spent. 174,584 of those still hold pizza coins (the others may or may not be empty addresses, since it's possible to have two different transactions output to the same address without the coins becoming mixed together. In other words it's possible to have "pizza coins" and "non pizza coins" in the same address and still be able to tell which are which. Of the approximately 600k addresses which are currently holding funds, around 29% of them contain pizza coins.

The shortest chain of transactions from the pizza purchase to currently held pizza coins has length 9, and the longest has length 6,723.

There is no currently unredeemed output which contains 100% pure pizza coins. All the pizza coins have been diluted somewhat with other coins. The purest remaining are [these 100 BTC](http://blockexplorer.com/t/A7RS7vqSx1) which are 90.7276% pure pizza coin, and just 11 transactions separated from the pizza transaction. (The most recent 9 transactions each only have 1 input, so it's easy to follow it back that far. In the next transaction back the pizza coins came from both the last but one input, worth 4223 BTC, and 5th from last input, worth 5777. Together those 2 inputs make up the full 100% pure 10k BTC pizza coins. The other inputs in this big transaction, worth 1022 BTC in total are the only non pizza coins introduced. 10000 \* 100 / 11022 = 90.7276%, the purity).

I also checked my wallet to see if I was holding any pizza coins. 8 of my addresses are holding pizza coins, but very diluted. My 'strongest' has a purity of 1.1760%, and is a [tiny withdrawal](http://blockexplorer.com/t/6cfKNoE1UR#o0) I made from MtGox in October 2011.

Finally, here's some data showing the month-by-month spread of the pizza coins:

```
pizza payment of 10000.00000000 BTC to 17SkEw2md5avVNyYgj6RiXuQKNwkXaxFyQ
is in block 57043

-block  --date--  --total--   ---used--%total-   -active---%total---%used-
 58815  May 2010          4         2 (50.00%)         4  100.00%  200.00%
 63561  Jun 2010          4         2 (50.00%)         0    0.00%    0.00%
 71436  Jul 2010         26         8 (30.77%)        24   92.31%  300.00%
 77452  Aug 2010         34        10 (29.41%)        13   38.24%  130.00%
 82997  Sep 2010        138        37 (26.81%)       106   76.81%  286.49%
 88892  Oct 2010      2,016       265 (13.14%)     1,898   94.15%  716.23%
 94801  Nov 2010      6,295       577 ( 9.17%)     4,428   70.34%  767.42%
100409  Dec 2010      7,510       835 (11.12%)     1,464   19.49%  175.33%

-block  --date--  --total--   ---used--%total-   -active---%total---%used-
105570  Jan 2011     13,271     1,540 (11.60%)     6,150   46.34%  399.35%
111136  Feb 2011     19,055     2,632 (13.81%)     6,423   33.71%  244.03%
116038  Mar 2011     42,027     5,605 (13.34%)    24,341   57.92%  434.27%
121126  Apr 2011     69,544     9,085 (13.06%)    29,727   42.75%  327.21%
127865  May 2011    123,997    26,032 (20.99%)    57,911   46.70%  222.46%
134121  Jun 2011    249,138    54,047 (21.69%)   132,348   53.12%  244.88%
139035  Jul 2011    382,845    93,928 (24.53%)   146,156   38.18%  155.60%
143408  Aug 2011    494,140   108,340 (21.92%)   126,134   25.53%  116.42%
147565  Sep 2011    589,942   119,491 (20.25%)   111,178   18.85%   93.04%
151314  Oct 2011    680,787   131,370 (19.30%)   105,320   15.47%   80.17%
155451  Nov 2011    780,292   142,302 (18.24%)   114,013   14.61%   80.12%
160036  Dec 2011    885,172   156,321 (17.66%)   120,631   13.63%   77.17%

-block  --date--  --total--   ---used--%total-   -active---%total---%used-
164780  Jan 2012    998,087   170,082 (17.04%)   136,985   13.72%   80.54%

166149  Feb 2012  1,037,382   174,584 (16.83%)    54,346    5.24%   31.13%

```

Edit: I just found these [100% pure allinvain coins](http://blockexplorer.com/t/69fDjp12gB#o0) - undiluted after 24 hops from when 25k BTC was [stolen from his computer](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=16457.msg214423#msg214423).

Edit 2: I don't mean to imply that the allinvain coins haven't been thoroughly looted. They have touched 755,796 different addresses since being stolen and are currently sitting in 109,235 different addresses, including 8 from my own personal wallet. The exact same 8 as have pizza coins in them, it turns out.


---

### Answer by username_1 on 2011-09-02. Score: 11

This is actually similar to the ["Can a bitcoin be counterfeited?"](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/181/can-bitcoins-be-counterfeited) question.

The answer is no, because as you seemed to hint at, there is no such thing as a bitcoin. There is simply a transaction list, that has consensus around it, where no wallets are ever allowed to go negative.


---

### Answer by username_3 on 2011-09-03. Score: 9

The simplest way to understand why the answer is "no" is to understand a very basic concept about Bitcoin transactions:

Each transaction (except generating transactions) has one or more "inputs" that pull in Bitcoins. And each transaction has one or more "outputs" that offer those Bitcoins.

In the transaction itself, all the Bitcoins pulled in form a pile. There is no way to track a particular input to a particular output, nor is that meaningful.

Imagine a transaction pulls in 25 Bitcoins from one place and 25 Bitcoins from another place and then sends out 10 Bitcoins to each of five different places. What does it mean to ask which input the coins in a particular output came from?

Bitcoins are more like account balances than pennies. If you put 10 pennies in a pile and give 1 out, you can ask which penny they got. But if you deposit two $10 checks and then withdraw $5, which check did that $5 come from? It's not even a meaningful question.


---

### Answer by username_4 on 2012-10-24. Score: 1

You might want to have a look at the concepts of "taint" and "colored coins". You can start here:

Taint: <https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=92416.0>

Colored Coins: <https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=106373.0>


---

### Answer by username_5 on 2024-02-26. Score: 1

Nowadays, the answer is "yes" thanks to [ordinals](/questions/tagged/ordinals "show questions tagged 'ordinals'"), which basically enumerates each Sat via a FIFO heuristic. Thanks to that you can indeed find all the 1e12 Pizza Sats e.g. via <https://ordiscan.com/satribute/pizza> or <https://magiceden.io/ordinals/marketplace/rare-sats?attributes=%257B%2522Satributes%2522%253A%255B%257B%2522value%2522%253A%2522Pizza%2522%252C%2522label%2522%253A%2522Pizza%2522%257D%255D%257D>


---

### Answer by username_6 on 2012-11-04. Score: 1

If you know the TX number, you can go to blockchain.info, search the TX number, click "View Tree Chart" and a tree chart will show up and you can click on the yellow/orange circles. That is how I found out a bitcoin I sent to an exchange ended up plying ping-pong with SatoshiDice.


---

### Answer by username_7 on 2012-08-08. Score: -2

A "bitcoin" is an individual output of a transaction. It is a "coin", because it is not possible to spend only a part of it and somehow leave the rest resting in your wallet, hanging off the transaction it came from.

A transaction can be viewes as this: take these "bitcoins", melt them, mint new ones according to the specifications provided by me and distribute them as I am instructing. Each transaction destroys the bitcoins that are its inputs and produces bitcoins that are its outputs. The "transaction fees" are like "unused raw material" which returns back to the "ground" and can only be extracted back as a coin by mining.

This is similar to real physical coins - the cashier can't take a half of your 50 cent coin when your bill says you only owe 25 cents, he only can take the whole 50 cent coin and give you a 25 coin back to get rid of the excess payment of yours. Similarly if you have only 50 BTC coin on your account, and you want to pay 5 BTC, you (or, more specifically, your BTC client) must "melt" the 50 BTC coin to create a 5 BTC and a 45 BTC coin before it can give the 5 BTC to the destination address you specified. And this is also why you have to specify a destination for the 45 BTC coin as well (otherwise the 45 BTC will turn into "raw unmined bitcoin material" which is not directly usable and must be mined).

So the answer is "yes". A bitcoin starts its existence at an output of a transaction and continues its existence until it enters an input of a transaction. When the bitcoin entered another transaction, it no longer exists; the outputs of that another transaction are completely different bitcoins.


---

