Topic: Attrition: is there a solution? Does anyone care? - page 2. (Read 2696 times)

Okay...thank you for your auto-fire response (do you have a bot for the word deflation or something? )

But i'm not concerned with the broader inflation/deflation discussion so much as how is bitcoin not doomed to become unusable once too many bitcoins are lost, bit-rotted etc....and we can no longer split the sub-atomic particles of the remaining few BTC?

It might be covered in that thread of course...I did only read the first couple of posts...can you give me the coles notes version if that is the case?

People tend not to lose things of value. And if/when they do, it harms nobody but them. An economy cares not how much money it has, for prices adjust accordingly. So long as the quantity of money doesn't drastically change in one direction or another in a short timeframe, the market will be just fine.

Short answer: No.

Long answer: See the deflation thread.

Does anyone in the Bitcoin community (developers, miners, users) care about the fact that Bitcoin is completely unsustainable as a long term currency??  (Loaded question I know...just wanted to get your guns drawn):

Attrition of bitcoins in the form of crashed hard drives, forgotten passwords etc. is ongoing and continuous (at what rate no one knows for sure).  Sure, we've got some supply trickling in right now in the form of the block rewards...but ultimately, it's only going to go in one direction (towards zero)...and that is unsustainable in my eyes no?  How can we all tout bitcoin as the ultimate currency when it is destined to fail at some point in the future?  (And yes, I know about the 8 decimal points...which is a hard-coded limit which means at some point we can't slice and dice the BTC anymore...)

I am also aware that the 'rules' of the game are already 'hard-coded' i.e. no reintroduction of money evah...EVAH!  But wouldn't it make sense to ensure that we at least didn't have a reduction of the money supply?  I know, I know, it was intended to be deflationary over time...yeah well WHY?  That system has NEVER been tried on a large scale before (to my knowledge) we don't know how that system will react either (in contrast to our current flawed inflationary system)...wouldn't it have been more prudent to create a system that ensures the continuous existence of the 21,000,000 (once we got to that point that is)...

I know we can't change the rules now (can we?) but wouldn't it be a good idea to have say a 5 or 10 year limit on inactivity of any given Bitcoins (ie from the last known transaction time in the block chain.   This time duration would be verified by the network as another condition of a valid transaction.  If the last time those bitcoins were traded was more than 10 years ago then the transaction is invalid.  Since these 'dead' coins are now prevented from being spent by the network, the network can then reintroduce an equal measure of coins by way of block reward to miners?  Is this possible?

Everyone's client could also give them a timer for their oldest bitcoin(s)...all they would have to do is perform a 'proof-of-ownership' transaction (to themselves of course) to restart the 10 year clock.

I know it is downright BTC heresy to suggest anything that would cause 'new' coins to come into being (even if it is a direct swap for 'dead' ones...but i'm just asking if it is possible...to institute a change like this at all...or is every set in stone so to speak?