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Topic: Deflation, Doomsday and the return of Lost Coins (Read 3069 times)

Meni Rosenfeld

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Quote from: Fuzzy on May 07, 2012, 06:53:42 AM

Quote from: rini17 on May 07, 2012, 06:27:54 AM

Quote from: Fuzzy on May 07, 2012, 03:09:06 AM

Quote from: unclescrooge on May 06, 2012, 10:54:16 AM

In the long term, lost coins will be mined (because wallet security will be easy enough to break for future hardware).

The consensus is that this won't happen within our lifetime.

What consensus? Citation needed...

That's just what I took away from this thread. Feel free to worry about it if you wish, but I'm no longer concerned.

You're confusing brute-forcing a private key, which is impossible, with breaking ECDSA and being able to find private keys (or to create signatures) without brute-forcing, which may be possible and not all that unlikely.

But contrary to Raphy's comment, this is a software problem, not a hardware problem.

Fuzzy

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Quote from: rini17 on May 07, 2012, 06:27:54 AM

Quote from: Fuzzy on May 07, 2012, 03:09:06 AM

Is there a way to find out how many coins haven't moved since bitcoin reached parity with the USD? I'm assuming that's about the time that people started to take their BTCs seriously.

Can you imagine how many wallets/BTCs people have lost in the first few years, thinking this was just an interesting fad before formatting their drives?

We are talking about time frame of only ~ 2 years till bitcoin gained significant value. I really don't believe that large part of computer-savvy users managed to lose their wallet.dat in such short time, do you?

I'm not saying they lost them by accident, I just don't think they took the project seriously enough to keep an interest in it and backed up their wallets. And a gain, that doesn't go for ALL the miners in the first few years, just some. I've lost quite a few SolidCoins simply because I never took that cryptocurrency seriously.

Quote from: rini17 on May 07, 2012, 06:27:54 AM

Quote from: Fuzzy on May 07, 2012, 03:09:06 AM

Quote from: unclescrooge on May 06, 2012, 10:54:16 AM

In the long term, lost coins will be mined (because wallet security will be easy enough to break for future hardware).

The consensus is that this won't happen within our lifetime.

What consensus? Citation needed...

That's just what I took away from this thread. Feel free to worry about it if you wish, but I'm no longer concerned.

unclescrooge

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Losing their wallet.dat? No. But no caring about it and forgetting it was even there? yes.

rini17

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GO http://bitcointa.lk !!! My new nick: jurov

Quote from: Fuzzy on May 07, 2012, 03:09:06 AM

Quote from: unclescrooge on May 06, 2012, 10:54:16 AM

In the long term, lost coins will be mined (because wallet security will be easy enough to break for future hardware).

The consensus is that this won't happen within our lifetime.

What consensus? Citation needed...

Fuzzy

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Quote from: unclescrooge on May 06, 2012, 10:54:16 AM

In the long term, lost coins will be mined (because wallet security will be easy enough to break for future hardware).

The consensus is that this won't happen within our lifetime.

unclescrooge

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In the long term, lost coins will be mined (because wallet security will be easy enough to break for future hardware). All you will have to do to keep your bitcoins savings wil be to move it too upgraded wallet.

Technomage

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Affordable Physical Bitcoins - Denarium.com

Bitcoin is based on the idea of a fixed money supply which relies on divisibility a lot. Fundamentally it really doesn't matter if we have 21 bitcoins, 21k bitcoins, 210k bitcoins or 21 million bitcoins in existence, their divisibility matters. I for one will be very happy for each and every lost coin, it will increase the value of my Bitcoin savings.

Meni Rosenfeld

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Quote from: Sergio_Demian_Lerner on May 06, 2012, 08:51:51 AM

It was not my idea, anyway. It was Hamacher, & Katzenbeisse, as I said.

It's not theirs either. Here is a June 2011 reference to it, and I doubt it's the first.

Quote from: rini17 on May 06, 2012, 04:59:27 AM

Interesting,nobody takes into account tech progress and advances in computing. It may be feasible to recover lost bitcoins by cracking the blockchain by quantum computers in, say, 50 years. Of course, official btc will be moved to more secure hash algo,but as long as there will be path to move coins to new quantum blockchain, someone will inevitably use quantum computer to crack lost coins from old blockchain...and thus the problem will be solved itself!

We take it into account, occasionally... Even without QC stuff, ECDSA could very well be broken. I wonder what is the proper procedure to handle this - let the first person to build a working ECDSA breaker take all the lost coins? Or, when cracks in ECDSA are found, set a widely publicized expiration date that would force long-term savers to move to a secure address, while keeping truly lost coins lost?

Sergio_Demian_Lerner

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Thanks Meni Rosenfeld for your support.

I didn´t get angry, I was just a bit ironic. I don´t mind Gabi´s comments, he may be right, and the idea of returning coins is bad. It was not my idea, anyway. It was Hamacher, & Katzenbeisse, as I said.

Though I (as most of the people of the world) would like to be treated politely. Gabi is probably a (clever) teenager. Teenagers tend to talk like that.

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world
...

Regards!

Gabi

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If you want to walk on water, get out of the boat

Quote from: Meni Rosenfeld on May 05, 2012, 04:31:13 PM

Quote from: Gabi on May 05, 2012, 03:29:48 PM

Quote

Some of the responses here were quite harsh

If the suggestion is shit, i say that it's shit, why should i lie?

Basically he is suggesting to steal people savings Roll Eyes

Unless someone explicitly agrees to follow Crockers' rules, how you say something is as important as what you say.

Can I assume you never said anything wrong in your life, or that you had no problem being humiliated when you did?

Welcome on the internet, where people will say what they think Wink

If i say an idiocy i expect people to tell me it's an idiocy.

rini17

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GO http://bitcointa.lk !!! My new nick: jurov

Kettenmonster

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bool eval(bool b){return b ? b==true : b==false;}

Quote from: Meni Rosenfeld on May 05, 2012, 04:31:13 PM

Unless someone explicitly agrees to follow Crockers' rules,

Crockers' rules are fine for Wikipedia where it is about facts and truth. Whilst nobody can sanely claim to own such things.
Think of or talk about or even dare to touch my property, but then don´t cry if you can´t stand the response.

Meni Rosenfeld

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Quote from: Gabi on May 05, 2012, 03:29:48 PM

Quote

Some of the responses here were quite harsh

If the suggestion is shit, i say that it's shit, why should i lie?

Basically he is suggesting to steal people savings Roll Eyes

Gabi

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If you want to walk on water, get out of the boat

Quote

Some of the responses here were quite harsh

If the suggestion is shit, i say that it's shit, why should i lie?

Basically he is suggesting to steal people savings Roll Eyes

Meni Rosenfeld

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Activity: 2058

Merit: 1054

Quote from: Sergio_Demian_Lerner on May 04, 2012, 03:47:06 PM

Never again I shall propose such a bad idea. I swear.

Some of the responses here were quite harsh, and I think your post, as opposed to many similar posts, deserves credit for identifying and addressing some of the issues.

But the point remains. There isn't much of an upside, there is absolutely no problem with coins that are lost. Recycling certainly does hurt many, many ways of using Bitcoin (think for example about Casascius physical bitcoins, or wedding rings with a private key).

More importantly, even if the modification was advantageous at face value (and could be used in an alt), the economics of Bitcoin must never be changed, as that would destroy the Schelling point "the economics of Bitcoin will never be changed" which is the source of the confidence in Bitcoin investments. While more benign than relaxing the 21M cap, destroying bitcoins and creating new ones to replace them is certainly an economic change, and is thus ruled out.

And this is also a good opportunity to point out that the technical means to achieve the economic principles are fair game, and must change as needed if Bitcoin is to succeed.

Gabi

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If you want to walk on water, get out of the boat

Quote from: Sergio_Demian_Lerner on May 04, 2012, 10:58:29 AM

What do you think?

Regards, Sergio.

NO

Stop trying to mess with Bitcoin and our savings, no one would accept that bullshit.

Go make SergioCoin if you want idiot rules, i like Bitcoin because no matter what, i won't lose my Bitcoin. Your suggestion is idiocy, doesn't make sense and is totally useless.

In case it is not clear: NO

Kettenmonster

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bool eval(bool b){return b ? b==true : b==false;}

Quote from: Gavin Andresen on May 04, 2012, 01:17:28 PM

Bottom line: ain't gonna happen, ...

Thank you, Gavin!
I assume that is your last word, although not the last time you have to pronounce it.

FreeMoney

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Strength in numbers

Quote from: SgtSpike on May 05, 2012, 12:52:41 AM

Quote from: Revalin on May 04, 2012, 09:27:20 PM

The market will set a price, but if I want to hold some savings long-term, I want to know if someone can suddenly resurrect a large number of very old coins and devalue my holdings. It's not a problem now with most coins in active circulation, but what happens if we end up with a large majority of stale coins? It's not good for confidence.

But the market price already takes that into account. When I am investing, I know that there are 2-3M coins that are still sitting dormant in their generation blocks. I know that someone could take those out, and drop the price. And maybe that's part of why BTC's are only worth $5 instead of $10 right now.

So yes, it decreases confidence, but confidence would be even lower if people knew they could lose all their money if they didn't touch it for long enough.

Yup.

There are two possibilties, both bad, but the impossible one is less bad. lol

Time machine: Convince Satoshi to pick an arbitrary expiration.

Change it now: Just terrible. Wrecks confidence in two ways. Savings are less secure and require work to maintain AND you don't know how much less secure because whatever voodoo the changers did might be used while you are on extended vacation to reduce the time even more.

SgtSpike

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Quote from: Revalin on May 04, 2012, 09:27:20 PM

Revalin

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