# Counting rule **Version 1 · 24 October 2026** **11 November 2026:** no total of lapsed money is published (it was to be published separately). The counted total is unchanged. How every number this movement publishes is computed. Two people applying this document to the same public data must reach the same answer. If they do not, this document is at fault and should be corrected. Principle 10 of the declaration: no figure is published that cannot be checked by a stranger. This is the document that makes that possible. ## The unit of account is bitcoin The authoritative figure is in **BTC**, never in a national currency. A figure in money may be shown alongside it — pounds here, whatever is local to an instance elsewhere — and when it is, it must be marked as an indicative conversion at the time of display. It is never the headline and it is never archived as a fact. The reason is not ideology. Priced in pounds, an ordinary fall in the bitcoin price appears to shrink the movement while the target stands still, and nobody whose money is locked can do anything about it. Priced in bitcoin, the movement holds exactly what it held yesterday, and what has changed is the cost of the thing it is trying to buy. The second description is the true one, and it keeps a price source out of the only number that has to be beyond argument. ## The three states of a lock Read directly from the blockchain, never from any record we keep. | State | Condition | Counted | | --- | --- | --- | | **Locked** | Coins present at the lock address, locktime in the future | **Yes** | | **Lapsed** | Coins present, locktime reached | No — and no total of it is published | | **Withdrawn** | Coins no longer at the address | No | **Lapsed money is not counted**, whether or not the owner has moved it. On the date a lock reaches, the owner can spend those coins with a single signature, which makes them indistinguishable from any other coins somebody happens to own — and counting those would return the headline figure to meaninglessness. **No total of lapsed money is published.** The counted total is the figure: only locked money, and a lock that lapses shows as a fall in it, so nothing that counts against the movement is hidden. A second figure of uncommitted money beside it would read as "plus this much more" — the inflation this rule exists to prevent. The owner of a lapsed lock still sees it as lapsed in their own client, and every lock is public on the chain, so anyone who wants the number can work it out; it is simply not a headline. A Crowdlock that wants to chase renewals can compute it for itself. ## The committed total ``` committed = Σ (confirmed balance of every lock address in state "locked" whose balance is at least the minimum) ``` - Balances are read from the blockchain at a stated moment, and the moment is published with the figure. - **Unconfirmed transactions do not count.** A lock counts from its first confirmation. - Each lock address is counted once. An address appearing twice in the register is counted once. ## The minimum **Each Crowdlock sets its own minimum**, in its published file (`minimum_counted_lock_sats`). For example, The Kop Fund's is **200,000 satoshis** (0.002 BTC). A lock below its Crowdlock's minimum does not count towards the committed total. A smaller lock is not invalid. It is still the owner's, still locked, and still published; it is only left out of the total. Expressed in satoshis rather than pounds so it does not drift with the price. Its only purpose is to stop a large number of worthless locks inflating the figures — at a level like The Kop Fund's, faking ten thousand of them would cost real money. A Crowdlock choosing its own should pick a figure with the same effect for the size of crowd it expects. **Changing it.** The minimum may be revised, in a published amendment to this document carrying a reason and an effective date, so that anyone can recompute the totals under both the old rule and the new one and see exactly what the change did. **Existing locks are grandfathered.** A raised minimum never disqualifies a lock that qualified when it was made. Otherwise a price movement could silently remove supporters from the count, which would be the opposite of the point. ## The member count Two different numbers, and they must never be conflated. **Signatories** — registrations that verify. Costs nothing to obtain, so it is a measure of agreement rather than commitment, and it must never be presented as a financial figure. **A signatory count must never be a headline figure, and the reason is not modesty.** Anybody can generate keys and sign the statement as many times as they like, for nothing, so the number can be inflated to any size by one person with a script. Worse, every such signature is *valid*, so there is no honest way to remove them afterwards: doing so would mean an operator deciding which real signatures count, which this specification does not permit anywhere else. The defence is therefore structural rather than a guard — give the number no prominence worth attacking, and lead with figures that cannot be forged because each one costs real money and a real transaction. Publish every signature in full regardless, so anyone who wants to count them can. **Committed members** — distinct members holding at least one lock in state "locked" at or above the minimum. This is the figure to quote alongside the committed total, because the two describe the same group of people. Derived with no extra data, because the key that signs the declaration is the key that owns the locks: ``` member(lock) = P2WPKH address of hash160(lock's owner public key) committed_members = count of distinct member(lock) over all counted locks ``` A lock whose derived address is not on the register is counted in the money and not in the members. It is somebody's lock either way, and the money is the figure that matters; silently discarding it would understate the total. Where only one figure is given, it must be the committed one, and it must be labelled. ## There are no vote tallies Spending is not decided by a vote, so there is nothing to tally. A supporter who wants a purchase signs their own coins into it; one who does not, does nothing. Declaration principle 6 — *spending is weighted by what each member has committed* — is satisfied by arithmetic rather than by counting, which removes a step that could be got wrong or argued over. An earlier version of this document specified vote weights measured at a declared block height. That machinery was inherited from a design in which money sat in a pool and somebody had to be told where to send it. Nobody holds anybody's money here, so there was nothing left for it to instruct. How a proposal is published, funded and settled is in the **proposal and settlement format**. What this document still governs is the only figure that matters to it: the running total of commitments, which is computed from the published pile of signatures rather than from the chain, and must never be summed across proposals. Influence cannot be rented in any case, because committed money cannot be borrowed for an afternoon. That is why no decay curve, holding-period formula or anti-gaming measure appears anywhere: the lock already does that work. The one place a genuine ballot survives is **directing the club** — one member, one vote, inside the society's own rules, because a decision that moves no money cannot be funded. That exists only once a stake does, and is not specified here. ## Figures that must not be published - **Holdings.** Bitcoin a supporter merely owns, however much of it there is. - **Intentions.** Pledges, promises or expressions of support not backed by a lock. - **A peak or record figure.** Only the present matters. A record flatters and is not load-bearing. - **Any money figure presented as authoritative** rather than as an indicative conversion at a stated moment. ## Amendments This document is versioned and may change. The declaration cannot. If the two ever appear to conflict, the declaration governs and this document is wrong.