Topic: A proposed solution to adjust for lost Bitcoins: wallet 'heartbeats' - page 4. (Read 12206 times)

+1 for just not letting the block reward run out.
Besides the problem of lost coins it also solves a big risk of most miners quitting when the reward dies out (nobody really knows that transaction fees will be enough) and the network is going to be vulnerable to attacks.
What are we really loosing? The block reward will not introduce that much inflation, because the absolute value of bitcoin produced will be less and less when compared to the total amount of bitcoins out there, and a tiny inflation is much better than limited amount of coins ever causing deflation (because of wider and wider bitcoin adoption, which is inevitable), because that only stimulates hoarding!



No, BeeCee1 is right. The miners do decide. Even if everyone else would screw them and start a new currency, who would mine? Miners are the only ones that will ultimately make the choice.


Well just a visible majority of *miners* is needed. If things would require 100% of everyone to agree, nothing would ever get done and nothing would ever get changed )). When the majority changes, the rest will have to upgrade or stay behind with a worthless chain, even if they would change a rule that you call "fixed". (I mean it is only fixed because the majority likes it right now. There are no contracts or any guarantees of any kind.)

Lost bitcoins don't need any solutions.

This is certainly not true. Miners do not have absolute authority over bitcoin's rules. In fact, they exist only for one reason, and that is the only thing they can decide: they ordering of transactions. They decide over bitcoin's history in the global ledger, but can only accept otherwise valid transactions into it. They have the power to postpone transactions, possibly indefinitely, but cannot change the rules that make a transaction or a block valid.

There are some rules that are fixed. Obviously, they could be changed if 100% of users and miners alike agreed to, and every single one would upgrade. But that doesn't surprise anyone, I hope. Among the things that cannot be changed is the maximum allowed miner subsidy (which is current 50 BTC per block, and halves every 210000 blocks), or the structure of transactions.

It'd be nice if bitcoin supply was fixed at 21 million rather than deflated over time.

The major down-side to this is how it would affect things like Casascius coins. People would need to redeem their coins at least every 7 years, which takes away from their usefulness as a savings vehicle.

Maybe an option could be given to lengthen the period of time that a particular set of bitcoins doesn't require a heartbeat, to for example, 30 years, by paying an extra high transaction fee. That would be a sufficient amount of time for Casascius coins to be useful. Paying to have your coins re-minted once very 25 years I don't think is overly costly and probably necessary any way as the hologram and the material that the private key is printed on could start degrading after a couple of decades.

Any way, there's next to no chance of a change this big being made, if only due to the programming complexity of doing it right, never mind community disagreement, but FWIW, I think it'd be good for bitcoin.

Joining the party late here, but has anyone compiled meaningful statistics on how old the oldest coins are? If, at some point in the future, it turns out that a very small fraction of coins have either been lost or have never been used for X years, then it may be in the interest of the majority of users to adopt this new strategy.

IMO it's worth talking about this now, but we won't know whether it will be beneficial for the majority of the network until at least X years have actually passed, so it's not worth considering such ideas until we have the raw data.

Arguing whether it feels like a good idea or not without actually crunching the numbers is a flawed way of looking at things. Let's see some research folks.

You seem to think that you are using a currency system with a contract that states the rules are fixed and will never change.

You should re-read the rules of bitcoin because you have missed a big one.  The rules are set by a majority of the miners (with the consent of the majority of people sending/receiving transactions).  If the majority of users vote to change the rules (by using software that implements new rules) then the rules are changed.  You know (or should know) this and implicitly agreed to it (by using bitcoins), it is part of the system and has been from day one.  Your bearer certificate example is simply not relevant.

Seriously? All you've been doing is complaining about people shitting on this idea. Some ideas deserve to be shit upon. If you can't handle that, it's not my fault.


Look at the responses in the thread. Very few people want this "feature". Thus, it is not an improvement from the perspective of the current user base. The only rational thing to do, if you (not you, ascent) continue to insist that this is valid fix for an actual problem, is to implement it yourself and show people that it works.


Yeah, I'm done. I can only say so many times in so many ways that I really don't think you will find support for this idea, and if you really want it done, do it yourself. Too bad I can't hide this thread from my "unread replies" page.

There are people who like to improve the game rather than just run away and play their own game.


Then I respectfully invite you to not participate in this thread anymore.  Seriously, it's not doing any good.  And for the record, while I agree with ascent's assessment of the problem, I also believe that it is not likely to be an issue for a long, long time and am personally in no hurry to see any solution applied at the moment.

I'm not complaining.  But this is exactly the kind of demeaning comment I was talking about.  Do you always have to end every post with an insult to someone?

Distribution of bitcoins is not homogeneous. That is your first invalid assumption. Some people will have a lot of coins and will in all likelyhood be willing to spend some of it to create additional security infrastructure for Bitcoin. I can't imagine any security infrastructure good only for those with lots of bitcoins, or any benefit to them for keeping it to themselves. Especially since greater security could lead to greater adoption and a higher price.

Yes, that is my argument. What is your aversion to creating a fork with your changes?

Actually, as has been stated, for the value to increase, it will require wider adoption. Wider adoption means the value is spread among more users. And the key point here is: when you have 1 million users who possess a digital file that contains 100x where x is valued at y, or 100 million users who possess a digital file that contains 1x where x is valued at 100y, you still have the same total value per user, and thus, rationally, each user applies the same measures to safeguard it, regardless of the value of a single unit.

Honestly, is that your argument? That the increased value of Bitcoins will result in an overall increased effort to safeguard it?

What? No. Everybody who bought, mined, or sold for Bitcoins did so because they liked the way it works. You want to change the way it works. If you're so sure that your guess (and that's all it is) is correct, then why not start a competing block chain with the rules you describe? Actions speak louder than words.

I'm not going to play guessing games regarding the future of Bitcoin. It is however a fact that as the value of something increases, the effort that goes into protecting that thing increases.

I think a better dialog would ensue if you would describe what you think is the most likely scenario for Bitcoins in the future. This would include your best guess of their future valuation, and the reasons for your estimated future valuation. As a defender of Bitcoins, you can then justify its current design as much as you want.

This is already implicit within Bitcoins. Bitcoins are essentially worthless unless spent, and yet we have those who argue against the very function necessary to derive any value from them anyway. All this talk about their anonymity, and yet everyone lives in fear of connecting their nearly anonymous hoard to the network.

Furthermore, if you're so paranoid about connecting to the network, then divide your hoard into multiple wallets where each one is of little interest to those nefarious organizations you fear are watching you, and stagger their connections over time. And automate this division if you wish - I'm sure software would be developed to assist you in this process such that the burden placed upon you would be minimal.

Why are you so adamant that this be incorporated into Bitcoin, rather than a block chain of your own design?

It's pretty obvious that few people (if any) other than you and bji want this "feature".

Are you saying it is a security issue because you run the risk of losing your coins by connecting to the network?

Ummm, if you lost your coins, you already paid the cost. However, if you didn't lose the coins, then lift your finger every seven years. True, you can argue that there is a cost to lifting your finger, but you'll gain it back in spades by using a currency that people can continue to have confidence in for all time.

Demurrage is a cost associated with owning or holding currency over a given period of time. Bitcoins already have demurrage.

Please, everyone, you are invited to propose sound arguments against this idea sans the excessive fanboy attitude.

No, it wouldn't. Shoehorning the "fix" into Bitcoin would be lobbying for it's inclusion into Bitcoin. If you really think it's such a good idea, then create an alternate version of the client with the change. If people think it's a good idea, they will use that instead. That might not be such a great idea due to the possibility of forking the block chain, so maybe you want to create an alternate block chain instead with this and possibly other rule changes, and see how it fares in competition with Bitcoin. The code is open source, quit complaining and start coding.

Actually most people are doing more than saying that this is not a good idea.  They're also needlessly insulting, demeaning, and trivializing the concept and its main proponent.  I'm just calling it like I see it.

Um, wouldn't creating a fork of the client and/or blockchain and see if the people use it exactly BE shoehorning this fix into Bitcoin?

Or do you think that Bitcoin is just the prototype client that everyone has been using?