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Topic: Is there a long-term strategy to deal with "lost" bitcoins? - page 2. (Read 1077 times)

sr. member
Activity: 434
Merit: 250
Remember though, if your worried about a diminishing money supply, you can always go out to more than 8 decimal places with bitcoin, which in theory, could create unlimited amounts of coins.

Not unlimited amounts of coins, unlimited amounts of satoshis.
legendary
Activity: 2786
Merit: 1011
Get Paid Crypto To Walk or Drive
Remember though, if your worried about a diminishing money supply, you can always go out to more than 8 decimal places with bitcoin, which in theory, could create unlimited amounts of coins.
legendary
Activity: 3136
Merit: 1024
Leading Crypto Sports Betting & Casino Platform
Sounds like its actually a good idea to open up some sort of business helping people with lost passwords ect. You could charge a fortune but is it even possible. How long can it take to try and crack the wallet.


If it's a good password and the original password setter can't provide input about possible characters, it's pretty much impossible to crack with today's technology. If parts of the password are known, a custom word list could be created and a brute force crack could be attempted.

When quantum computing is more widely available, all bets are off.
Better to make a repair password from email and another way can help if we lose the password. and give a two verification authentification to make a more secure on the wallet. But one of the problems is not only losing password but it's also losing an email or other data for making this account and us can't repair the password.
sr. member
Activity: 434
Merit: 250
Sounds like its actually a good idea to open up some sort of business helping people with lost passwords ect. You could charge a fortune but is it even possible. How long can it take to try and crack the wallet.


If it's a good password and the original password setter can't provide input about possible characters, it's pretty much impossible to crack with today's technology. If parts of the password are known, a custom word list could be created and a brute force crack could be attempted.

When quantum computing is more widely available, all bets are off.

yeah, once quantum computing comes out its a whole different ball game, but when I made my post I was assuming that the people with the lost passwords would have some idea of what it could be. Otherwise there would e no point.
legendary
Activity: 1120
Merit: 1000
People will forget/lose their wallet passwords. For some multisig wallets, some funds will never be released due to disagreements. Over time, the number of BTC in circulation will decrease because of these things. I don't want to use the word "risk" because this is more like an inevitability, but has a mitigation strategy been planned for this?
can't we just save our wallet passwords in a file e.g microsoft word so we won't forget it, or if it's risky of hacking, we can write it down in a piece of paper then save it in a safe place?
save your password on your computer might be risky due to some conditions like hacking,distruction, formating, or any bad situation, i think the best way is just memorize single of it, but if you can't do this you could write it down but never to write it directly, atleast hint password or some clue about it to make you remember the original password, that's all just in my opinion
hero member
Activity: 868
Merit: 1000
Dont think so
legendary
Activity: 4214
Merit: 4458
this question has been asked nearly every 6 months for the last few years.
here is a summery of answers:
1. less coins in circulation=more scarce=more demand/less supply=higher prices.. yay
2. coding in some way to redeposit funds back into circulation destroys fungibility and essentially ruins bitcoins 'trust' as a secure store of value that cant be manipulated
3. even if no one cared about fungibility, there would be civil war in regards to who deserves these released funds
4. how do you know funds are actually lost, and not just hoarded by someone waiting to reach retirement age. who will choose which funds should be released. if you dont have the private key to move them. you cant prove XYZ funds are yours to even suggest moving XYZ
5. we should not even raise the cap to, lets say 22m if we think 1m are 'lost' because what if those 'lost' 1m resurface when the owner retire and decide its now time to spend.. now we are at 22m circulation and scarcity is ruined

now my thoughts
we should not code in any time-release features to destroy fungibility. or cause civil war over who gets "free" coins
instead happily open up a service to crack passwords with the aid of the owner advising possible password combinations that may have been used.. but if they cannot be cracked. refer to point 1 and enjoy a slightly higher demand/lower supply in future.
hero member
Activity: 1302
Merit: 503
Leading Crypto Sports Betting & Casino Platform
People will forget/lose their wallet passwords. For some multisig wallets, some funds will never be released due to disagreements. Over time, the number of BTC in circulation will decrease because of these things. I don't want to use the word "risk" because this is more like an inevitability, but has a mitigation strategy been planned for this?
can't we just save our wallet passwords in a file e.g microsoft word so we won't forget it, or if it's risky of hacking, we can write it down in a piece of paper then save it in a safe place?
hero member
Activity: 850
Merit: 1000
Sounds like its actually a good idea to open up some sort of business helping people with lost passwords ect. You could charge a fortune but is it even possible. How long can it take to try and crack the wallet.


If it's a good password and the original password setter can't provide input about possible characters, it's pretty much impossible to crack with today's technology. If parts of the password are known, a custom word list could be created and a brute force crack could be attempted.

When quantum computing is more widely available, all bets are off.
sr. member
Activity: 434
Merit: 250
Sounds like its actually a good idea to open up some sort of business helping people with lost passwords ect. You could charge a fortune but is it even possible. How long can it take to try and crack the wallet.
hero member
Activity: 850
Merit: 1000
I agree that lost/misplaced (or whatever one wants to call them) BTC will make BTC more scarce, which should make the remaining BTC more valuable.
legendary
Activity: 2282
Merit: 1023
People will forget/lose their wallet passwords. For some multisig wallets, some funds will never be released due to disagreements. Over time, the number of BTC in circulation will decrease because of these things. I don't want to use the word "risk" because this is more like an inevitability, but has a mitigation strategy been planned for this?

It is actually very difficult to define "lost coins". For example, some people are very active in the community but hodling quite a bit of coins for long time in the same address- are the coins considered "lost"? Some people are very lucky to generate very special vanity addresses, and therefore we can't say those are addresses with no private keys...

I think this has been discussed by Satoshi himself and there is no action needed for these presumed lost coins...
legendary
Activity: 2506
Merit: 1030
Twitter @realmicroguy
People will forget/lose their wallet passwords. For some multisig wallets, some funds will never be released due to disagreements. Over time, the number of BTC in circulation will decrease because of these things. I don't want to use the word "risk" because this is more like an inevitability, but has a mitigation strategy been planned for this?

This is a good thing for the wider community because it increases scarcity. No plan needed.
hero member
Activity: 850
Merit: 1000
People will forget/lose their wallet passwords. For some multisig wallets, some funds will never be released due to disagreements. Over time, the number of BTC in circulation will decrease because of these things. I don't want to use the word "risk" because this is more like an inevitability, but has a mitigation strategy been planned for this?
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