Topic: Bitcoin Deflation (Read 499 times)

You're right but it's only a matter of time before these lost or abandoned bitcoins are reactivated. But the key here is that you have to be patient with these things. Lost Bitcoins are better off sitting idle forever. Because circulating bitcoins will add more value. But I think the coins will be recycled in the network

You may not see what I see, in the same way, I do not see what you do see. On my end, I've tried to explain it, backing it with reasons, so that I could make others understand the idea, and so that I myself could also understand it better. Can you please do the same, and be more specific?

When you say: "zero upsides, plenty of downsides"; can you develop this opinion, so that I can either give credit if flawless, or I can clarify some points if needed?

OP, why are you fighting so hard for this idea that only has downsides? There is literally no upside to your idea. But there are plenty of downsides. You want a massive change in the protocol, a change that would in effect steal bitcoin from addresses after a set amount of time. There is no length of time at which this action would be considered okay to do in any monetary system. This is why nobody is agreeing with you. And your one defense of saying that people would just have to move their Bitcoin does not make this idea okay with zero upsides but plenty of downsides.

It is honestly a preposterous idea. It is simply a bad money idea. Whether you propose it for Bitcoin or any monetary system. This would be considered a horrendous flaw in any monetary system. Yet you are proposing it as though it would be some sort of an improvement to Bitcoin which already works perfectly well and has no need to introduce bad ideas where money gets stolen by the protocol.

When there is no reason to do something, and lots of reasons to not do something, it's a bad idea. That is what your idea is. Literally everyone in this thread is telling you this.

Demand for BTC is still pretty high, so prices should be able to increase exponentially in the future. The more coins lost, the better. I don't think we'll reach a point where we'll run out of Bitcoins, since there are plenty of satoshis for everyone. If you do the math, there are quadrillions of satoshis in the 21 million BTC supply cap.

If the community decides to "recover" the lost coins, then Bitcoin's value proposition would be ruined. The only way would be to increase the supply, but that would make BTC an inflationary cryptocurrency. I'd suggest you keep buying and "hodling" as this is going to be a wild ride. Just my opinion

That's right, some BTC are already lost forever, some BTC are going to be lost in some time. This will lead to deflation. However, the other thing that affects the possibility of deflation is adoption level. If the adoption level is high, and BTC is used everywhere, then continuous money loss will bring true deflation. And if adoption level is not so high, then the overall amount of coins probably won't affect the value of BTC.

I see no reason why you should be beating about the bush, because reintroducing lost Bitcoin into the network is one strictly impossible thing, as even Satoshi can not recover any coin that may have been lost. Because a very important question we should have been asking ourselves is "How can we identify lost Bitcoin?", because I'm sure many persons still have access to their Bitcoin and yet haven't spent the slightest Satoshi of it. So such a case, can you consider that as a lost coin??

The idea could be considered since mining and facilitating transactions is directly correlated with the current supply of bitcoin, so reintroducing lost crypto back to the market would spell good things for industry. Although it must be said that this only works if the supply is slowly increased, as flooding the market with lost bitcoins (if that's what you're going for) is a downright death wish. It will severely dilute bitcoin's value, and will cause multiple bank runs that could definitely end with bitcoin crashing.

Although in retrospect, with Satoshi Nakamoto gathering dust from elsewhere, who do we expect to do this for us?

The system already includes this equation.
User ownership is relative; its duration is indefinite.
It is fundamental to clarify the definition of ownership.
There is a difference between relative ownership and absolute ownership.
The Bitcoin system is the absolute owner of its monetary energy.
There is a distinction between indefinite and infinite.
The blockchain is the temporal dimension of the Bitcoin system.
User ownership of wallets is temporary by the definition of relative ownership.



While it may seem otherwise, this equation is already present in the current system. You hold your crypto as your capability or decision to keep it perpetuates. Both of these are relative, by definition of human nature, and, by definition of relativity, subject to conditions.

We can state: a Bitcoin user holds crypto for only X, where X is indefinite. Being indefinite, X could also perpetuate infinitely. While X can be potentially infinite, it still regards a temporal limitation, X itself.

The main misunderstanding that appears to drive the conversation is upon the meaning of ownership, specifically, user ownership.

Ownership is the capacity to exercise control over something. In the Bitcoin system, user ownership is relative, as it is subject to conditions, time, and system ownership.

Users cannot bring monetary energy outside of the system. This is because of Bitcoin’s fixed supply, which is enforced by the blockchain. The blockchain’s purpose is to ensure that all valid transactions happen within the Bitcoin system and that the law of conservation of energy is respected. Users cannot transact coins outside of the system. All valid transactions must happen within the blockchain.

The blockchain prevents monetary energy to escape or join the system. It prevents users to transact coins outside of it and prevents double spending, thus any introduction of monetary energy without proof of work and beyond the fixed supply. What is of the Bitcoin system remains in it. What is not of the Bitcoin system does not remain.

Users are just using the monetary energy in this system. The enforcement of the constant and original supply and the law of conservation of energy makes Bitcoin a closed system. Since the Bitcoin system enforces ultimate control, it represents the absolute owner of its coins. In this sense, the monetary energy is centralized within the system. If the system is a neutral entity, we can define the system as decentralized. In other words, the system is the central authority, but it becomes decentralized as this authority is neutral towards all system participants and system rules. More specifically, the central authority is the machine, the tribunal, and even more specifically, it is the code itself, the constitution; however, if the code is not perfectly neutral, the system is not fully decentralized because it is not perfectly balanced. Much like artificial intelligence cannot be neutral until the training database is absolute and all-comprehensive. The code must respond to the law of conservation of energy and all other laws that consent perfect equilibrium and neutrality.

An absolute owner has ultimate, unconditioned, and limitless control over something.

Users are users, and their ownership is relative. They join the Bitcoin system and have freedom over its monetary energy, provided that this freedom is perpetually within the limits of the closed system. If users try to enforce relative ownership outside the Bitcoin system, the blockchain prevents it by exercising system ownership.

Relative ownership is limited control over something. User ownership in the Bitcoin system seems among the best forms of relative ownership, as it can perpetuate infinitely and gives the most transactional freedom. Such is thanks to the blockchain being unlimited in the number of blocks, thus infinitely explorable. Yet, monetary energy is still circumscribed within the blockchain and can only circulate inside it. We can visualize this considering the difference between indefinite and infinite, which we can call relative infinity (delimited) and absolute infinity (endless).

Even if it may seem that Bitcoin users are ultimate owners of some quantity of monetary energy, they are just relative owners. They are, in fact, users. They agree to use a system and its features but are not absolute owners. It means they are owners of a quantity of bitcoin for only X, where X is indefinite.

The possibility to hold monetary energy indefinitely does not make a user the absolute owner. Such an owner has independent and unconditioned control. The user ownership is dependent and conditioned on many factors, one of these being the possibility of losing access to the wallet; most importantly, dependent on the fact that if users want to use Bitcoin, they must do it within its closed system. The Bitcoin system does not allow monetary energy to escape the system because of the law of conservation of energy, which the constant supply pursues, while the blockchain enforces.

There is only one absolute owner in the Bitcoin system: the system itself. The system is the blockchain. The blockchain is the ultimate owner of monetary energy in the system. In other words, a user can hold bitcoins indefinitely, but the ultimate destiny of his coins is inside the blockchain. This destiny is the limit of this relative infinity that is the blockchain. Such is why user ownership is relative and temporary, and system ownership is absolute.

There is a substantial difference between being able to explore time indefinitely and existing outside of time, therefore being absolute. Coins can explore the temporal dimension of the Bitcoin system indefinitely, as the blockchain length is unlimited, but do not escape it. The temporal dimension of the Bitcoin system is the blockchain.

There is a similarity between the blockchain and time. In this sense, the Bitcoin system is a closed system similar to and within the original one, the Universe, and thus subject to its laws. It is fundamental that Bitcoin respects the universal laws that define the behaviors of energy in balanced systems, especially material energy, to which money is similar.

We can refer to the blockchain as an unlimited ledger of transactions/movements of monetary energy, of which sum is constant. We can also define the blockchain as a relative infinity system, that is, a system that is infinitely extendable but provided with a boundary. There is so the possibility to store infinite transactions within the blockchain [as long as there is effort (computational power)], which makes it unlimited inwardly; the boundary is the fixed supply of monetary energy, or constant sum, which entails that none can escape nor enter the system.

In this sense, the Bitcoin system already provides your equation by definition of relative ownership. By the same definition, it is also possible to address the phrase: “renting a temporary box on the blockchain to store your wealth”. The ownership of a wallet is relative because it is still subject to conditions and time. The wallet itself is not temporary, but the ownership of the user upon this wallet is. A user is therefore renting, or more suitably saying, owning a wallet indefinitely by definition of relative ownership, that is, until conditions like losing access to it or giving it up.

All valid bitcoin transactions are stored in the blockchain. Transactions outside of the blockchain are to be considered invalid. On-chain transactions are valid because the blockchain is responsible for the constant supply of monetary energy. The blockchain verifies and preserves the law of conservation of energy. The blockchain is the absolute owner of bitcoin energy.

Legend of parallelisms:
Coins = monetary energy, matter; transactions = movements; blocks = points in time; blockchain = time; wallets = points in space; set of possible wallets = space? ( finite number - maximum extent);
active wallets = bodies (points in space containing matter); set of active wallets = population;

As general definitions, we can state:

In the material system, an observer takes relative possession of a point in space and a quantity of matter to perform movements at points in time.
In the bitcoin system, a user takes relative possession of a wallet and a quantity of bitcoin to perform transactions at blocks in the blockchain.

This design seems in harmony with the universal laws on closed systems, except for one thing: the recycling of energy to preserve system balance. The Bitcoin system appears to require a form of recycling for inaccessible/lost monetary energy. There is a disorder regarding active wallets, which should represent wallets containing energy and in use (control) by relative owners. Currently, the network considers inaccessible and lost wallets permanently active (under the ownership of previous users) even though coins can never return to the system. Such a body of monetary energy would be without a user in control and have no chance of being recycled.






The monetary energy of the Bitcoin system is subdivided into neutral fungible units. Human-based rights are irrelevant before the universal laws of perfectly balanced closed systems. This right, whereas it involves “destroying permanently”, refers to forms of energy. This right does not refer to energy itself, which is neutral and can’t be destroyed, just transformed. Coins in the Bitcoin system represent neutral monetary energy.

Ownership cessation doesn’t necessarily refer to destroying coins permanently; rather permanently losing access and control. Abandoning and destroying would take on the same meaning.

While one can still “destroy" the monetary energy under his relative ownership, which in Bitcoin would mean losing coins, the system should not sacrifice neutral energy for human rights if these can’t be defined properly, completely, and without partiality and bias. If we could establish unbiased human rights, they would likely include the right to an economy based on a neutral and balanced monetary system. This right would be more important than any right based on an unreasonable attachment to money.






Bitcoin is indeed about the inviolable right of permanent ownership, but by the system, and the constant supply of monetary energy represents this permanent ownership. The core of Bitcoin involves a closed system where the first law of thermodynamics is pursued and perfectly respected. Moreover, if such an inviolable right of permanent ownership would regard user ownership, a user should be unable to perform ownership cessation.
Permanent user ownership is impossible by the previously stated definition of relative ownership. It is essential to recognize that permanent loss of access or control to monetary energy means loss of ownership. To consider oneself still the owner of a quantity that has been permanently lost, and so, upon which the user has no control anymore, is a sign of biased perspectives.

In addition, we should not consider people leaving Bitcoin as a solution, especially if we are so passionately mentioning Bitcoin's core principles. We agree that Bitcoin is more secure as more people join the network. Furthermore, we can also agree, that we should first try to solve and clarify any possible issue in Bitcoin to the best of our abilities instead of considering ways to escape as soon as the situation becomes uncomfortable. Satoshi started the fire of the idea; our purpose as a network is to make it live and possibly refine it. We should not expect Satoshi to be a supreme being that has given us something perfect and irrefutable.






The purpose of Bitcoin is to be the global reserve currency and the most representative store of wealth. Bitcoin is a currency and commodity. It is idealized as an underlying representative of value and a primary medium for monetary transactions. As for now, other cryptocurrencies are securities.

More specifically, bitcoin should represent absolute wealth preservation, given that its monetary energy never decays in absolute value ( 1 BTC = 1/21M of total energy, always). This would make bitcoin the general store of wealth and the primary digital commodity.






Your observation is correct. It seems that the energy consumed for lost coins would return into the system per indirect means, as it would be transformed as an appreciation of the circulating bitcoins. It is unclear whether the conservation per indirect means is valid when focusing on monetary equilibrium. Intuitively, we should exclude the indirect here and focus on respecting the law directly.

Regarding permanently lost energy, please note that this refers to the monetary energy in the system. Thus we are referring to lost coins. This idea considers the similarity between money and energy. Such is the underlying similarity upon which the whole recycling idea stands. It also considers the universality of the law of conservation of energy. This law states that no energy is lost in a closed system that is perfectly balanced and self-sustainable. A permanent loss of coins in Bitcoin would make the system vulnerable to imbalance and eventually collapse. In a system with constant supply, imbalances would be any appreciation of coins due to factors outside of population change (because, in supply/demand, the supply is constant; with Bitcoin as the global reserve currency, price changes should only be due to population change).  It is also obvious that if coins can be lost permanently, supply is not constant but decreasing over time. It is not primarily necessary to know how this system will collapse: we must first recognize that the system is not satisfying the law.






There appear to be some inconsistencies in your argument. If Bitcoin is about the permanent ownership of the user, how can it also give the right to cease ownership? It is crucial to clarify that ownership is the capacity to have potency and control over something. As one loses this capacity, like when losing access irreversibly, ownership is also lost. Furthermore, we should also clarify and remind that user ownership is and always will be relative.







The opportunity to have a say about the functioning of Bitcoin and propose new ideas comes from the open-source nature, as you have said. It is good to discuss Bitcoin in a way that respects ideas and people. The consensus of the majority is there to help biased beings reach the least amount of bias possible. This is another great part of Satoshi's idea.

Collectivity is the closest thing to neutrality if the individuals are biased. Therefore, the collective consensus is the safest and rightest decision among non-neutral individuals. Such is because the larger the number of components in the collectivity, the more the subdivisions of this single entity/set, and the closer the result to the neutral mean, thus the point of balance.

It is unnecessary to attack people who express themselves. No threat, no reason to worry: let people share their ideas; the collectivity is there to reach a consensus. In this light, never shut the spark of an individual. People should express themselves, fuel their fire, and share it with others. No one has the right to suppress the fire of others with presumption and superiority. Furthermore, the beginner often sees things that a master in complexity has missed along the way and would never get unless he makes himself a beginner again; for example, the capacity to rely on pure intuition. We should embrace praising creativity and possibly assist people to higher levels of knowledge with fraternity and goodwill.

That would be a very bad idea, especially when some people depend on Bitcoin as a retirement fund. They just buy and store BTC without touching it for years. Would you imagine the network claiming back the "lost" coins from a "retirement wallet"? It would be a complete disaster! Folks at the Bitcoin SV camp proposed it, and it turned out to be a huge failure. Even Satoshi said that lost coins are a "donation" to the community.

The more coins lost, the scarcer BTC will get. You may think the supply of 21 million coins is not enough for people worldwide, but the fact is that BTC is divisible to 8 units. So there are essentially "quadrillions" of satoshis on the BTC blockchain. I'd leave Bitcoin as is instead of trying to add new features that will "break it" in the long run. Who knows how far will it go? Just my opinion

Mmh yes is true that Bitcoin mining plays a crucial role in network security and transaction processing.  However, as you mentioned, the reward system of mining ensures that miners have an incentive to continue mining as long as it is profitable to do so.  Furthermore, the Bitcoin network has reached a level of security such that it can continue to operate even if some miners were to leave the network.

 Even though miners play an important role in the Bitcoin ecosystem, their constant happiness shouldn't be the only focus.  Ultimately, Bitcoin's goal is to provide a decentralized and secure financial system, and the network should be able to function regardless of the level of mining activity.

But how would you know if the coins are lost or not. Even if you consider 131 years of inactivity it's still not 100% provable that the coins are lost.

Suppose that I have hold on to my coins for 50 years and then I put it in my will as inheritance and it keeps going on like that without anyone utilizing those coins.
How would we know that its lost.

Also, suppose that I lost my keys to my coins but I have it written somewhere in a metal plate but couldn't find it now.
Somehow magically 150 years later one of my family members find it then he should be able to access those coins.
But they would have been gone because of your 131 years inactivity.

Bitcoin is perfect in the way it is currently. Any modification will disrupt its true value.

I think it's quite alright that whatever was mined, was mined already and from here on out, it is not really going to be mined all that much and I am fine with it. Why would we want to have miners hand in all of this constantly, why would we want to keep them happy at all times. Either they are happy with the transaction fee that they are getting as a reward, or they are not and they can stop.

People think that we need them for safety but we have been above that safety level for many years, nearly a decade nowadays, we could have half of the miners stop today, and we would be fine. In fact this happens during bear runs all the time, half of the miners that activated during bull run, stops during bear run, and nothing happens.

It's definitely something that everyone who understands what bitcoin is about would be against. The gone ones are gone, that what makes bitcoin such a great thing and I do not think that it will change anytime soon neither.

People need to realize and accept this fact if they really want to have a difference in the world of bitcoin. Gone ones are basically the limitation, we used to be 21 million max, but as we all know some of that is gone now, and can't say exactly how much, we all know we have less than 21 million, and some of that won't be mined for a while, so all in all we have very little amount of bitcoin available in the long run. That's good.

If a wallet private kye is lost then there is no such sorrow. I have faced such problem several times. But I have lost a lot of money like this and now I do not make such a mistake. I have learned a lot by making such mistakes several times. I now have all wallets.  I leave the kye very carefully.

But is there any other asset class apart from things like copy rights or patents where you have to refresh ownership or verify that you are still alive and an active owner of a certain asset in order to not be expropriated? It is still quite a special situation that you are describing here. I get the idea why you say it could be important to recycle coins into the network, but why would Bitcoin be treated as a non-durable asset class? Everything else is. If I own a gold bar I won't ever have to go anywhere and prove continued ownership nor do I have to signal or verify anything ever. A piece of art also doesn't become worthless just because it has been lying around in your basement for 200 years.

Determining when a coin is truly "lost" is not a straightforward process. It's possible for a user to simply forget about their Bitcoin wallet for a period of time, or to lose access to it due to technical issues or other factors. It can be difficult to differentiate between these scenarios and cases where coins are truly lost forever.

I don't really understand how this theory is considered as deflation. If people have lost their coins, that increases the scarcity factor of Bitcoin. Reintroducing the coins into the ecosystem after X time would only put them back into circulation when they otherwise may not have been, which decreases scarcity. In either case, it isn't really a matter of inflation/deflation as the total supply is unaffected, only the circulating supply (which, is always 100% as we never know which coins are truly lost or actually held).

I believe it would also be unfair to those who have tucked their wallets away, maybe even passing them on to their next generations. Holders should be rewarded...not open their wallet one day to find that their coins are gone because they held for too long.

If this happens, the ownership of the bitcoin is not for individuals, but for the network, and therefore the currency is centralized, meaning that there is a third party that can, whenever he wants, move the currencies without the desire of the owner, and here comes a question, as long as the currencies are distributed again if they are not used, then what is preventing the return of the money that Is it proven that fraudsters used it? Or the money generated from the drug trade and arms sales?

Why are we afraid of lost bitcoins when one bitcoin (BTC) equals 100,000,000 SAT?

This is where again the nature of Bitcoin being open source comes into play. Everyone can contribute and for a contribution to reach consensus among stakeholders, the incentives would only have to be strong enough. I am all with @stompix here because "not your keys not your crypto" should never equate to "yours keys, your crypto for only until X". As if you were renting a temporary box on the blockchain to store your wealth, but this would fundamentally violate the third component of the bundle of rights broadly defining what property rights are about:


1. the right to use the good
2. the right to earn income from the good
3. the right to transfer the good to others, alter it, abandon it, or destroy it (the right to ownership cessation)


That is just against THE core principle Bitcoin is based on. Bitcoin is about the inviolable right of permanent ownership. If Bitcoin comes to a point where its economic viability is at risk, people would follow their preferences, maximizing their utility. This means if Bitcoin is "bad" or becoming "bad" because it is a system where energy is permanently lost [is] and therefore destined to collapse, people will just withdraw their money from it. It is their free will to either stay in or leave the system.

It seems your theory is based on the presupposition that there is only one cryptocurrency or only one way to store wealth in general.

I am just wondering whether your idea of "permanently lost energy" is technically correct. It might be philosophically correct, but the energy consumed to have mined now dormant coins is still contained by the network. If it leads to increased scarcity, the energy consumed to have mined now dormant coins leads to potentially higher prices, potentially higher competition for transaction costs (if there is no block reward anymore), leads to more energy required to mine transaction cost rewards for a lower number of coins remaining in circulation. Hence, the energy consumed to have mined now dormant coins has a direct influence on the energy required to mine for transaction cost rewards.

Scarcity in its broadest sense has a value, and hence, an energy preserving function. If another network incorporates your 131 years activity verification requirement and people deem that a better solution for their needs, they will remove their wealth from the Bitcoin network and shift it into the network they deem to be the right one based on their preferences , usually following utility maximization.

The beauty about Bitcoin's protocol has always been its open source nature. People are free to tweak the code and propose it to the public. We have true competition between cryptocurrencies, other currencies and conventional options to store wealth, but we have also competition among cryptocurrencies.

In terms of Bitcoin I am 100% with @stompix as there is no other cryptocurrency, or any other form for wealth preservation and protection, as Bitcoin. Bitcoin is as valuable as it is today because the rule

"3. the right to transfer the good to others, alter it, abandon it, or destroy it (the right to ownership cessation)"

has never been put seriously into question let alone ever been effectively violated. If you own they keys, and you are the sole owner of the keys and have sole authority over them, it is your crypto. The moment this rule would be altered through a hard fork, you would realize that the fork without your proposed rule won't drop in value while the fork with your idea would come out as much less valuable at best.

I want to clearly say that I like this type of discussion. I know these questions have been brought up, but sometimes discussions still take different angles from the ones before. I think these discussions are one reason why we are all here.

In the case bitcoin will always have a sufficient number of satoshis, that's even better. Recycling would refer specifically to preserving the original fixed supply and comply with the law of conservation of energy.



If an idea is good, it doesn't need to convince, but to present itself at the right moment. This idea isn't directed to create a different path; there is no interest in gains, apart from the good of the system and the network.

A system where energy is permanently lost is destined to collapse. A recycling system that is completely neutral and autonomous could significantly contribute to ensuring the self-sustainability of Bitcoin over potentially infinite time.

The authentication procedure is the recovery phrase. Inheritance would be passed down the line through the recovery phrase regardless of a system of recycling for lost coins.

The verification of activity, or "confirmation of aliveness", is any sender transaction. Wallet activity would happen regardless of the recycling system.

Extreme holders, or people who have lost access to their wallets, have 131 years to perform a simple active transaction to declare the wallets as alive. This system ensures that the law of conservation of energy is upheld and no energy/money/effort is permanently lost.
 
To explain this using a human metaphor, both breathing and transacting are forms of exchange with a system. Each breath in the human body resets the death clock, and if breathing ceases for a certain period, brain death can occur, leading to the body's recycling back into the system. Bitcoin wallets are more efficient than human bodies and can remain without transactions for longer. However, just like human bodies, wallets should also be able to die, especially when money is primarily for the benefit of the entire system, rather than the specific single owner.

The argument lacks reasonableness. The recycling processes would be executed by the code based on a collective consensus, without any centralized authority. The only centralized entity would be the neutral machine, if one were to be identified. Therefore, there would be no biased authority responsible for recycling. The protocol would aim at preserving the fixed supply and ensuring balance in accordance with the law of conservation of energy over an indefinite period. If one were to consider this centralized, then the whole protocol would be, regardless of the specific features.

Regarding the rest of your arguments, I abstain from responding, since I've already addressed them previously.

Regarding Satoshi: rejecting new ideas on the basis of a cult-like mentality is dangerous for the system over time. Furthermore, while Satoshi is certainly superior to you in matter of creativity, mind, and especially reading capability, It is advisable that you avoid suggesting that anything spoken by them is imperishable and incorruptible.

I understand your concern about the proposed bitcoin laundering, and you've raised some valid concerns.

 Indeed, recycling could raise security issues if not implemented properly.  The issue of tampered wallets and children's inheritance is an understandable concern, but there are some steps that could be taken to ensure funds are only accessible by rightful owners.  For example, an authentication procedure may be required to access funds from an inactive wallet or even provide for the creation of a special fund for such cases.

Thank you for addressing this problem. People that may consider their right to pursue the recovery of their wallet would have 131 years to do so, after all. On the other hand, if people would not accept a finite time, regardless how long, it would most likely be for unreasonable greed and attachment, rather than believing in the chance, 10, 100, or 1000 generations from then, that they will be recovered by relatives down the line.


This issue could be solved by new mining. It would reintroduce quantities of money gradually over time.


There's no threat to whales. More generally, there is no threat to anyone having access to their wallets. A simple active transaction performed once every 131 years would enable a wallet owner to hold coins indefinitely. Most users need not concern themselves with recycling as they typically perform transactions more frequently due to their activity. Even if an individual were to perform active transactions only once every 100 years, recycling would not be a concern.

Verifying ownership through a sender transaction within a long timeframe is the easiest part of the design. For a very, very small effort, which for most users would be any conscious effort at all, we obtain a system that earns back lost coins and autonomously maintains the predetermined fixed supply, responding efficiently to the law of conservation of energy.

The real complexity and effort to justify such an effort/outcome ratio come from finding the right design of cycles of mining and block rewards post original cycle, as the recycling would be asynchronous. This is the one thing that would require great feats of creativity and neutrality.

I think the idea of bitcoin recycling was not liked anyone, the idea is generally good in theory, but it raises many side problems in practice.

The main problem is that people do not accept that their wallets are tampered with even if they are missing because they consider this their right and the legacy of their children may be able to recover them one day in some way.

Also re -inserted inactive wallets to the network may lead to dumping the price due to the entry of large quantities of bitcoin into the market and this is what no one wants.

I think that the most opposed to the protocol (if applied) will be the whales who have asleep wallets that contain thousands of bitcoin waiting for the time to sell them, the whales that they have all the sleeper wallets will do everything to prevent the application of the protocol.

I strongly disapprove of long abandoned/lost Bitcoins being reintroduced to the network for whatever reason. These lost or abandoned bitcoins will make the value of Bitcoin itself strong and it will prevent significant depreciation of Bitcoin in the future.

No, it's actually no point debating this anymore as it has been already labeled a waste of time a decade ago.
It has been debated since Satoshi was still on this forum, it's about time we quit


It's no point trying to reinvent the wheel, and certainly not by taking control over other people's money in name of economic stability.
That's why Bitcoin exists in the first place, so you don't get locked out of your account once a bank decided 50k is enough for you and the rest goes Cyprus-style donations.

Plus the whole thing is a waste of time, let's assume Satoshi is still in control of his coins and passes down the keys to his family but those want to keep the coins intact. They will still sign a message and keep the coins but the coins won't be in circulation, so how does this help anything?
You would still have 1 million coins missing from daily activities and things will be the same, all you have is the confirmation they are not lost!
Economic impact, zero!


No, there will be a centralized entity that will decide how much time you have before your funds are taken away from you.
Automation doesn't mean it's not centralized,  it will be the same as banks, once you go over a limit based on the decision of the government the money above the limit is not yours anymore, it will still be a protocol that central authority decided on a whim for how long can you keep your funds (account) unused.

@stompix don't be so hard on @HandcraftedBreads! I think it is worth having that discussion and I must say that I also had these thought experiments on my mind years ago. What if this or that happens and can the supply ever become too scarce to keep up with the economic requirements of (monetary) policy and society. I think it is nice to have these discussions and see what everybody has to say. It is not that there is no point thinking about it, but as has been said before here Bitcoin will always have a sufficient number of satoshis to keep functioning properly.

@stompix even though I concur with you that taking away coins from dormant addresses and reintroducing them into the system goes against my expectations and understanding of how Bitcoin is supposed to work (and will hopefully always do), the signaling to the network whether or not a wallet is still active would not necessarily have to be done using a centralized service right? Couldn't it just be a signed message to the network and the protocol would do the work? No centralized entity needed.

@HandcraftedBreads, you should also take into consideration that the incentive for the vast majority of those who have a say about protocol changes is essentially zero regarding your proposal. Unless the economic viability of the protocol is so badly threatened that the wealth contained by the network is seriously at risk, you won't ever convince the majority of voting power to vote in favor of that protocol change. A fork is a possibility and you could decide to shift your wealth from Bitcoin to the new fork operating on your newly proposed rules. Speaking of which, this is what you could actually do. Introduce the new rule into the protocol, get a fork going and see how people react to it.

Yet you're thinking of this over a 100 years period when it's obvious the bulk happened in the first years.
So just as we lived till now like this and we're going to do so over decades from now on till your "clock" starts ticking.
Just as an example, if we assume there are 1 million lost coins only in Satoshi's case then you have half of the next century's future supply just there.


Future maintenance? Lowering satoshi?
You do realize that even if half of the coins would be actually lost, it would mean only an increase in the price of 100%, the last bull run made a 6x, there is no need for that and won't be anytime soon, for one satoshi to reach 1 cent you need first Bitcoin at 1 million and even in that case, you still have milisatoshi on LN.


I can still burn all my banknotes before I die, take that from me!


No, it's not!
I have wallets I haven't touched in years and there is no way you're going to make me go through some centralized bullshit of proving I own this or force me to change my address every year to show the world my wallet is active.
Just deal with it, nobody likes your idea, it will never be implemented as it goes against the main principles in BTC and that's it!

Just one thing, don't touch other people's Bitcoin.  The system is working fine as it is.  As many people say, don't reinvent the wheel if it is not broken.  Let the lost BTC be idle for eternity, this will add more rarity and value to the existing and circulating BTC.

I think this kind of approach introduced by @OP is exploitable and may bring a threat to the security of the Bitcoin network.  And honestly, I think the idea isn't brilliant at all.

The reintroduction of coins from dead wallets would occur gradually through new mining cycles. Please note that the reintroduction of coin quantities would be asynchronous, as each wallet would have its relative clock. The primary benefit of recycling would be reducing the need for future maintenance and forks aimed at lowering satoshis. Without recycling, these forks would become inevitable. In general, recycling would reduce the need for manual maintenance to comply with the constantly changing conditions of the system. Recycling would help avoid subjecting the system to the risk of human failure.


Gold is not a fixed supply; instead, it is potentially infinite. On the other hand, Bitcoin has a finite supply limit (21 million BTC = 1; limit in absolute quantity), but it is infinite inwardly (the smallest unit can be subdivided infinitely, meaning that there is no limit to the amount of decimal places).


When humans pass away, they cannot take their money with them. If coins are irreversibly lost, they cannot be stolen. Once someone loses their coins irreversibly, they no longer own them. Through recycling, the Bitcoin protocol ensures that the original supply is preserved, just as the law of conservation of energy dictates.

Regarding the last criticism, the Bitcoin protocol will not access a wallet and steal the money as long as it is still owned. The wallet's contents will be recycled into the system once it is no longer owned. The way to determine if a wallet is unowned is through the expiration of a set period of zero active transactions.

The replies provide much clarification to the problems you've addressed. If you're interested, I invite you to have a read.

You can solve the legitimate inheritance problem by verifying wallet activity through a simple transaction. The clock will restart safely after every transaction. Wallets that haven't made any transactions in the predetermined time (I proposed 131 years, referencing the mining cycle) will be identified as "dead" by code, and it will reintroduce the energy/money into the network as a form of recycling.

Furthermore, the number of coins necessary for the economy to function properly must be scalable over time. Bitcoin's scalability problem does not only involve scalability over space.

It is very possible that, in the future, the current satoshi will be too large for the proper functioning of the bitcoin economy. The causes could be a too valuable bitcoin, or a too large user base. This may not concern us soon, but future generations will, as they will have to implement more decimal places and perform forks.

There are enough sats for now. In the very-long term, there will be a necessity for manual system maintenance. Specifically, since lost coins will inevitably increase over time, the network must increase the decimal places for a bitcoin each time the necessity presents itself. Recurrent manual maintenance, regardless of how long the period between one and the other, can be a flaw in the system. Each manual maintenance will require to subject the network to risk of failure. Completely neutral and automatic maintenance, such as one provided with the code itself, is necessary to guarantee that bitcoin can persist forever.

The system should be able to perform self-maintenance. Recycling is a form of self-maintenance.

A wallet can "verify" its activity with a single transaction. One can preserve his coins just by verifying once every 131 years through a simple transaction with the given wallet. This will state to the protocol that the wallet is still "alive". If the wallet doesn't make transactions after a period of 131 years, the wallet will be stated as dead by the protocol, and the coins recycled into the network.

There is no threat to holding coins, nor to keep diversified portfolios, or threats to legitimate inheritance.

Reintroduced by the protocol, the code, the system itself.

Yes, it would be possible to implement, but the moment it does happen you can count Bitcoin as dead, and this time for sure.

Furthermore, it's quite funny that OP thinks we should re-add coins that have not moved for 131 years and that would be a solution but what will happen 108 years from now, when there is still one year before the great reset? It's highly possible that the amount of coins lost for sure, dust left rotting in deleted wallets and so on would already be half of the coins in circulation so what help would that be if we already have gad decades of less than 21 million moving coins behind us?


So, you have the right of stealing the banknotes I keep in my safe after around 200 years when polymers start degrading but despite that seems like you have no right to "recycle" the gold I bury in my garden since gold doesn't degrade. Funny how sometimes nature can be a bitch and stops mimicking human activities exactly when you need it more.

It's stealing! You have no right to take over my coins, simple as that!
Just as you can't enter my house and grab a painting because the museums are running low, you can't touch my coins!

So the first wallet balances to get recycled will be the genesis block and Satoshis'/early miners. At that point in time the block reward will have already reduced to zero, how do you propose to reset the block reward? You'll have a completely irregular supply of coins for the reward, you'll get a million or two BTC, and then after that you're not going to get big lumps and you might be able to track the possibility of any wallet reaching old age at a specific time, you can't be sure the owner won't move them and now you don't have new coins to hand out in block rewards. What kind of model is that for miners? By this point it is hoped that the transaction fees will be high enough to cover the cost of the miners, but you're going to release a bunch of "recycled" btc back out to them, do you know how that will effect the mining/transaction/user economy of the future? I don't.
There are a myriad of factors you need to address to make this idea realistic or beneficial.

It means new Bitcoin can be created that loads more bitcoins to total supply that is initially set at 21M.

Do you think about who will be new owners of reintroduced bitcoins as replacements for inactive owners?

What do inactive owners think if such reintroduction of bitcoins is made?
They likely are dead people, lost their private keys or they just inactively with their bitcoins but still have private key access.

Your proposal is not logic in thinking and it's controversy if it is activated on the network.

I don't know, is this even possible? But supposed it is, there might be advantages if old and inactive coins are reintroduced to the network, but I think the disadvantages far outweigh them. There are definitely technical matters that will be introduced that will surely compromise some fundamental rules of Bitcoin. I am not technically knowledgeable to get into it in details but I wonder who will be powerful enough to be able to bring back lost coins? Will it not damage Bitcoin's decentralized design?

Even if you waited 200 years and remove Bitcoin that is inactive and put it back in the market you can not guarantee that someone has not just inherited it and kept it in that address. We do not need to reintroduce Bitcoins back into the economy because there is enough Bitcoin for the whole world to use. Lost coins do not mean any thing but they do push the demand for Bitcoin up a little but not any thing that is noticeable.

Whatever, but if I understand you correctly, that still doesn't the situation for the great grandson right? He finds the chest with 100 million USD worth of gold after 110 years and it is not his anymore? Whether someone + their successors arbitrarily decide to keep it for more than 109 years or whether is lost doesn't matter? I mean what if I just don't want to sell but keep it as part of my diversified portfolio? What happens then after 109 years?

Bitcoin can also be noted in mBTC and satoshi. I am confident that whatever gets lost over the decades to come, there will always be enough satoshis so serve Bitcoin's purposes.

It is not that I don't get the problem you are describing, but it is a very delicate topic as it goes straight to the core fundamentals of Bitcoin which as of now essentially are the value proposition.

Reintroduced by whom???bitcoin is not controlled by anyone . It is a decentralised currency and is not controlled by any firm or any single person that can reintroduce the lost bitcoin. Every individual has its own wallet key where he stores that bitcoin, if by chance a person with lost bitcoins found his wallet key and that bitcoins have been reintroduced. Then what gonna happen . We should also think about it

why oh why are these silly ideas even part of the bitcoin discussion
oh wait

phase one
make it hostile and inhabitable to live in the bitcoin network. get people to lock up/abandon coins on the bitcoin network and displace people into other networks long term

phase two
claim the coins left behind

wait this sounds familiar
nazi germany: hmm these polish have abandoned their antiquities, i guess they can be taken now
or
banks tell people to lock up gold for centuries and play with bank notes.. later take the gold no one reclaimed because their descendants are to busy playing with bank notes..

reality. even decades later many countries are trying to get their assets back from nazi thefts, but its harder to get property back after its stolen and moved on..

understand yet

taking coins has nothing to do with energy. its called taking coins for a reason. it involves taking coins without the signatory's consent

The use of the word "steal" remains improper. The coins subjected to this process of recycling would be the ones of "dead" wallets, i.e those wallets that have been inactive (no transaction) for a period equal to the full mining cycle (131 years). This same thing happens in nature. The universe doesn't steal energy from dead bodies, it recycles that energy channeling it back into the system. Bitcoin has a curious habit of mimicking nature when it comes to energy, except for recycling. Energy is never permanently lost in nature, it just transforms from one form to another. It seems that bitcoin neglects the recycle of lost money/energy back into the system.

bitcoin is not a system that should take coins away from a utxo without a signature.
either now or in a century

there is no need to steal coins to keep mining active.
instead there would be more transactions per block by then where lots of users paying lots of small fee's = a nice total for pools

if you think the network should for 131 years stay at just 2000 tx a block average paying large fee's and also steal coins to compensate pools.. then that is a very very very bad proposal/future plan

There would be no need to mine new coins, as the total limit would remain constant as originally intended. Instead, mining would focus on the lost coins, which after 131 years of inactivity by the hosting wallet, would be either burned or placed in an intermediate area similar to a mempool, but for coins. These lost coins would be waiting to be reintroduced to the network through remining. This process would be called "recycling". Mining is indeed a cycle. Whenever there would be lost coins recycling, it would result in a circulating supply of 21 million minus the burnt or mempool supply.

Bitcoin code was not written in a way that it could mint new coins, so even if your idea is good, it is absolutely not implementable, the current bitcoin code cant be uttered or changed from what and how Satoshi have designed it to operate, any one that tried to utter the code will trigger a hardfork which would lead to the creation of a new coin, which would be utterly different from bitcoin.

Do your research, you would discover that there are lots of bitcoin Hardforked coins in the market, this hardforked coins were created to correct some supposed flaws bitcoin had, but still, non of this coins has been able to outshine bitcoin even as perfect as they claim to be.

I can also imagine countries, foundations, etc keeping bitcoin reserves (in cold wallets), not moved in decades just like they did with gold.

It was 131 from the beginning, I just confused the number with 2009. 131 years stands for the full approximate length of bitcoin's mining life.

and just as fast as you introduce a rule to move value without signature.. you suddenly want to move the years.. whats next only 30, then only 10?

um no thanks

I've proposed additional solutions in the replies. Should I edit the original post to make it easier to discuss? By the way, I confused the number. It is 131.

109 years? Even if I consider the time period from 2009 until the first 109 years you would have seen so much of deflation in the price that it'll be sky rocketing until a point where using bitcoin would have already become difficult due high transaction fees. On the other hand if you reduce the span of 109 years you stand at a risk of snatching someone's valuables merely based on the fact that they did not do any activity. I don't think both these solutions are optimal.

I think there is already something like this. It is called the Copyright Act, and its relative Copyright Term Extension Act. It gives us the possibility to channel work into the public domain.

An implementation like this would prevent previous work to be directly wasted through loss of coins. Rather, the reward of that work would be reintroduced into the network through additional work, new mining for missing coins. This additional work would "pay the price" for having lost them in the first place, while maintaining a fixed amount of circulating coins.

What if you clean up the basement of your dead great grandpa and you find a big fat chest full to the brim with gold and you sell it for say 100 million and you are obliged to register that sale with financial authorities and then, yes then, they tell you that the gold was acquired by your great grandpa 110 years ago and there is a law stating that when something is lying around dormant for >109 years, it automatically belongs to the public and must be returned to public treasury, what then? Honest question, what would you think?

The main focus was to reintroduce lost coins, thereby keeping a constant quantity of money (energy) in circulation.

The protocol, which would be the neutral entity performing the process, wouldn't steal people's money. An address owner could "reset" the clock whenever they make a transaction through it. Much like when you breathe: 131 years would be the time for a wallet to die without breathing, that is, transacting, and the energy (money) into it to be reintroduced into the network.

The wallet owner could then provide proof that the coins in the wallet address are still active, potentially able to circulate again (actively managed by an owner). If this doesn't happen, the protocol will resolve the situation.

Exactly. I mean even today you see articles about there being like 4 million or 5 million lost bitcoin because people just assume any bitcoin that hasn't moved since like 2013 has been lost, but every couple of months I see an article about how a few hundred bitcoin of some address that's been inactive since 2010 or 2011 was just moved. Plenty of the "lost" bitcoin is not actually lost but is still owned by people.

There is no amount of time (like 109 years as the OP suggests) that can pass that would make it okay to for the protocol itself to steal people's Bitcoin.

This would make Bitcoin no longer sovereign money because in its very design it would steal your money if you held it for too long. This idea would fundamentally break Bitcoin for no good reason at all. There is no difference in Bitcoin's utility whether there are 21 million bitcoin available or 19 million or 17 million.

ummm what?? Just randomly deciding to take other people's Bitcoin from their own addresses and redisburse it?!? Even if a wallet is inactive for generations maybe its the long term savings of a family and they haven't touched it and just keep passing it down. It would be insane to unilaterally decide its okay to just take Bitcoin from addresses.

I can't believe the first objection you thought people would have with this would be something to do with deflation, and not to do with the fact that you're saying you think people's bitcoin should be forfeit if you simply hold on to it for too long!

And in a completely insane world where we wanted Bitcoin to be awful and made this happen, how would it even be redistributed? Who would decide the distribution, how would it be decided?

God, occasionally people come up with just horrendous ideas to change Bitcoin for no good reason, this definitely is on that list. No offense lol

Let's say we don't identify lost coins, but inactive wallets. So the coins in a wallet that has not performed a transaction in 131 years (full bitcoin mining life), will be reintroduced to the network by another cycle of mining. In this way, we wouldn't steal money from people, because they would be able to prevent the reintroduction, by performing a simple transaction, thereby "verifying their activity".

This is madness. The first problem is how can you identify lost coin if there’s a recent event that an old address move their token recently? Doing this will make Bitcoin centralized since you will remove the freedom for people to hold in long term period because their coin might be categorized as lost if they didn’t touch it for long period of time.

Wasn't it Satoshi himself who said that every BTC lost is a gift to other BTC holders?

I wonder what would be the consequence on Bitcoin's price if such an operation comes into effect.
One might also wonder about the technical feasibility of such an idea, it would be necessary to be able to withdraw BTC from certain wallets without the actual consent of the owners of said wallets. I think this would open the door to negative possibilities for bitcoin, it would imply that we don't really own our BTC, even when we have our private keys.

Personally I find it very positive to have a large amount of bitcoin lost/burned, it allows to guarantee a certain minimum price in theory, if we are interested in the FIAT value of BTC at least.
The deflationary interest of Bitcoin would be a bit lost with such a process.

so you want to introduce stealing someone elses retirement/inheritance plans simply because they have not decided to spend their retirement funds in X years

um no thanks

once you introduce a way to take value away from someones utxo without their signature. your breaking many rules of bitcoin that cant then be unbroken

Reintroduced by whom? Individuals control the private keys to their BTC, so if any lost BTC is going to be reintroduced, it has to be if the owner finds the private keys to their funds. It is not even possible to be sure of how much BTC's are lost, because it does not mean funds are lost if it has not moved from an address for many years.
Lost BTC's do not increase the number of BTC's in circulation, it reduces it, only 21 million BTC's are going to be mined, if you add the ones that are lost, then a few million less would be in circulation, but not more than the capped 21 million, and this doesn't affect the BTC network any bit, it should even make BTC more scarce and more valuable.
BTC was created only 14 years ago, and only the owner of a private key can move their BTC no matter how long it has remained inactive in an address.

Wouldn't it be better if lost coins were reintroduced into the network after a fixed span of inactivity?

I suppose the first thing one would say no for, would be by virtue of bitcoin's well-known deflationary property. This said, I believe it is much more important, especially in the longest term, that bitcoin keeps its property of conservation of energy, that is, having a fixed quantity of money ever available. By losing coins, instead, and by having them unrecoverable, we have not a fixed quantity of money available, rather a decreasing one, which is why we call bitcoin deflationary.

What would happen if we would make so that coins with 131 years of inactivity would be reintroduced into the network?

I see this having some positive effects:
- decreased impact of hereditary monopoly
- incentive to let the currency flow
- canceled the future necessity to increase the number of decimals for 1 BTC (very-long term perspective: too many coins have been lost, thus the necessity to further subdivide a coin)


FAQ (Further information in replies)

How do we identify lost coins?

Wallets would declare activity status by performing an active (sender) transaction, of any size, within a 131-year span.

How do we prevent reintroduced coins to cause financial distress and depreciation of coins?

This issue can be solved by new cycles of mining reintroducing money gradually over time, starting at the end of a mining age (131 years).

Who is going to reintroduce lost coins?

The protocol.

Does this mean stealing coins from users?

If the protocol reintroduces lost coins from inaccessible wallets, it is not considered stealing because the previous owner has lost control and ownership rights over those coins. The reintroduction is aimed at ensuring the functionality and integrity of the system rather than depriving the previous owner of their rightful property.