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Topic: Dead Coins - page 2. (Read 1295 times)

newbie
Activity: 14
Merit: 0
July 02, 2013, 12:46:34 PM
#14
bitcoin may be a lesson in why the Constitution trumps Anarchy.

The Constitution was implemented to limit "the gang".

Anarchy allows gangs without limits.
newbie
Activity: 14
Merit: 0
July 02, 2013, 12:12:25 PM
#13
That is just ridiculous. If people are losing 0.001 BC on each wallet, are you going to spend 100 times more to crack it?

Most amounts lost would be pretty much insignificant, but once you add millions of people losing tiny amounts, it will affect how many BC are in circulation.
newbie
Activity: 14
Merit: 0
July 02, 2013, 12:11:23 PM
#12
If everyone loses their bitcoins I'll sell some to them.  At a high fee of course.

Hehe, sounds suave and debonaire, but you won't have buyers, you'll just have "employees" trying to earn your bitcoins at that point ... and we are back to square 1.  I think that is where the "bitcoins are dead" poster is going.  The miners are using technology to become hoarders, and in the end, they will rule just as the bankers do now.

I think that is the real value of some kind of expiry on bitcoins - TO PREVENT HOARDERS that attempt to centralize the market.
newbie
Activity: 27
Merit: 0
July 02, 2013, 12:09:26 PM
#11
Yes, the wallet could probably be brute forced if it is determined that no other existing hacking method or vulnerability works to recover the bitcoins.  It depends on how long the password for the wallet is. The time it takes to brute force the password is exponential and increases as the password length is increased. A 10 character password could take around 1000 years to decrypt. If the password is really complex, it could take more than a million years to recover the bitcoins. If this is the case, unless the password is stored in plaintext it would be impossible to recover the bitcoins.
cp1
hero member
Activity: 616
Merit: 500
Stop using branwallets
July 02, 2013, 12:03:39 PM
#10
If everyone loses their bitcoins I'll sell some to them.  At a high fee of course.
newbie
Activity: 14
Merit: 0
July 02, 2013, 11:59:12 AM
#9
Wallets can be cracked of course, it's just that it takes computing time.
I think the average PC can crack a wallet in a few years or at least
current supercomputers can.  Just takes enough trial+error
(brute force) computations.
newbie
Activity: 14
Merit: 0
July 02, 2013, 11:44:07 AM
#8
He is right. 21 million is not enough for a global economy.

Also, besides people dying, there would be always allot of users, that

a) Forget their wallets passwords forever
b) Do not care about bitcoin anymore, and just never use them.

Who never lost a dollar? So the same is true for Bitcoins, people will lose their bitcoins, or just don´t care if they reformat their PC with 0.001 BC on them.

As far as I see, millions of BC would fail to this faith. Its inevitable. So there will be less and less BC in circulation as time goes on.

Also, someone mentioning cracking wallets. Really? Would that not make the whole Bitcoin itself nulled? If you can crack open and widely someones wallet, there is no point in using that unsafe in the first place.

Also, how many wallets are just going to be lost, like lost in drives for ever...

Nobody will request to crack this either. This is a huge error in the bitcoin system, since 21 million is the cap, which seems will be hit allot faster than people thought, there will be no more bitcoins left, what then? Will the remaining ones be enough to sustain the Internet economy like in the next 50 years?
newbie
Activity: 14
Merit: 0
July 02, 2013, 11:33:10 AM
#7
Or maybe there will be businesses that spring into action to crack wallets (that have not seen any transactions in a period of time) with yet unknown technology.

I don't know, I haven't seen this issue ever addressed, and something inside me thinks that there should have been some expiry mechanism attached to bitcoins, so that if they aren't used for 100 years, they get recycled somehow, to prevent infinite draining of bitcoins from the system.
newbie
Activity: 14
Merit: 0
July 02, 2013, 11:27:35 AM
#6
Well,   the population of Mexico went from 12 million to 112 million in 112 years,
and there is over 7 billion people in the world, and only 21 million possible BTC.
And many billions of people will die with bitcoins in their wallet, assuming
bitcoin goes mainstream.  I am sure it will happen to 1000s per day.  There are
several factors at work in this, but if bitcoin does go "mainstream" with 100s of
millions or billions of users, you will see millions of bitcoins or decibitcoins or
whatever removed from circulation from death ... every year, or 2, or 5, or whatever.
legendary
Activity: 3472
Merit: 4801
July 02, 2013, 11:15:55 AM
#5
Or maybe it is a feature ...

Correct.

If they don't get back into circulation, we will be using pico-pico-pico-pico-pico-pico BTC soon.

Please explain what you mean by "soon".  There are still over 9 million bitcoins that haven't even been mined yet.  New bitcoins (or fractions of bitcoins) will continue to come into existence through the mining process for another 120 years or so.
newbie
Activity: 14
Merit: 0
July 02, 2013, 11:12:35 AM
#4
If they don't get back into circulation, we will be using pico-pico-pico-pico-pico-pico BTC soon.
Is that the plan?  If so, I guess BTC increases in value over time.  But the units will be shrinking
into infinity.  There may even be 1 BTC for the entire earth, or less ...  relatively soon.

I am thinking there is no other way, but this seems like a "bug" in the system.
Or maybe it is a feature ...  I don't know.   Any thoughts?
cp1
hero member
Activity: 616
Merit: 500
Stop using branwallets
July 02, 2013, 11:08:39 AM
#3
If no one knows the private key or can get access to your online account then they'll just sit there forever.
sr. member
Activity: 266
Merit: 250
July 02, 2013, 11:04:32 AM
#2
What happens to the bitcoins if I have 100,000 BTC, and I die?

Are they out of "circulation" forever?
Or does something else happen to them?


It depends where you store them. You can store your coins on an online exchange, in a wallet or as a code on a piece of paper. So if you die then whoever you told your passwords to for the online wallet wil get your coins. Oh hold on you didn't tell anyone the passwords? Well then they will stay there possibly forever. If your family knows about them but not the passwords I would imagine they could go through a very long process to regain access involving showing death certificate etc. But that's only if you gave real name and they can trace the ISP/PC you used to log in to the wallet to deposit the coins.

You can see where this is going - make a back up of your passwords and let your next of kin know where the passwords are.
newbie
Activity: 14
Merit: 0
July 02, 2013, 10:47:22 AM
#1
What happens to the bitcoins if I have 100,000 BTC, and I die?

Are they out of "circulation" forever?
Or does something else happen to them?
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