Topic: Lost bitcoins - a bigger flaw than originally thought? - page 2. (Read 5857 times)

If you actually read and understood what I've written on this thread then you would know that I DON'T consider lost coins an issue.  In fact I even demonstrated this by calculating for you the number of coins remaining after 170 years of loss at 2%-- there's plenty left at this stage.  What you've quoted above I wrote in response to something else, not lost coins!

In response to what you've written: It would be very difficult to add more decimal places to the coins in the bitcoin network itself cause this requires a hard fork.  However to allow trading in sub-satoshi unit is trivial to do in other ways.  For example, a bitcoin bank could just staring minting electronic tokens or even real physical tokens (coins/notes) which they claim are backed by bitcoin-- eg: they print 1000 X milli-satoshi tokens every real bitcoin they have.  For course, they could even print 2000 x milli-satoshi tokens for every bitcoin they have and hope that not every one tries the redeem them at once (ie: they recreate fractional banking). 

(I'm expecting you people here to start trashing me at this point-- but the argument still stands and it is impossible to stop a such development if bitcoin heads in that direction. 
By-the-way: I not saying that you should do this or that it will happen, just that it can happen-- but I'm not hopeful that you'll understand the difference.  I've witnessed enough on these forum-boards to realise that it doesn't matter what you say, when people here read something that they don't like or can't comprehend, as a knee-jerk reaction they assume that you support it and must therefore by the part of some-great conspiracy to destroy bitcoin.)

There would be an Indiana Jones of Bitcoin

the problem with that is... if someone then discovers 1 bitcoin somewhere, they'd become the richest person in the world.

yep cannot into 1/x = y

No way to know that.  It is certainly a possibility, but it is just as possible that ECDSA, SHA-256, and RIPEMD-160 will remain completely secure for far more than 100 years.

Of course no one is thinking the obvious......

After 100 years the private keys for the old wallets will be broken anyway, just due to enhancements in crypto technology.
So ultimately the coins will re-enter the system.

+1

Simple and real !  no need to care about lost coin !

Next Topic ...

So you'd say tough luck to them but to people irresponsible enough to lose their coins, zomg we need to reclaim them!  GTFO GMAA and don't touch my emergency savings account.  If only 1 bitcoin is left, you know what will happen, everybody will agree to add more decimal places, so nobody loses any value, but amounts small enough to be used can be used.  THAT's how loss of coins gets solved.  Ain't nobody gonna ever agree to add into the protocol a way for them to lose their own coins without their consent.  Fuck.. that... shit.

For real. I think I'm going to use GMAA (go make an altcoin) as the new GTFO.

You already paid the "storage" fee when you either mined them or the sender of them paid the transaction fee, those coins are recorded in the blockchain and as we are dealing with digital numbers there really isnt and "storage" costs, your record of 2500 bitcoins is somewhere nearer the begining of the blockchain, it has already been bought and paid for, if your feeling guilty for having so many then maybe run some mining rigs with your proceeds that do not take preference of higher fee paying transactions, or invest in an ethical bitcoin start-up. The fact is because you were an early adopter you benifited so you have helped me and us later adopters to be able to use bitcoin now, it is adopters now that have to download and sycronise the growing blockchain containing your transaction but this not an issue, its a part of the process.

So what I'm trying to say is that if the whole blockchain from every computer were to be halted and put in cold storage on a HDD or flash drive somewhere there really wouldnt be any fee for your wealth, the real world cost in electricity and data costs are due to the continuing use and transactions in Bitcoin, so the people using these processes are paying for it, its not immoral.

It's a digital currency. The "limit" is a concept. You can nudge the decimal point along indefinitely.

If we only have 1 BTC left. That BTC represents the current ~ 21 mill 'limit', and can be divided infinitely.

"Lost bitcoins - an even more complete non-issue than concluded in the previous 21 million threads on this topic?"

We will reach the point where a small nation could potentially have an annual GDP of 10-100 BTC.

21 million will be plenty. Half of that will be plenty.

That's really all you need.

The 21,000,000 limit only serves the distribution model that gives higher rewards for earlier adopters. It's completely arbitrary in the face of infinite divisibility.

And again, any "involuntary loss" of coins will never be accepted by the network.

Nelson Mandela was released from prison after 18 years.

How long would be enough? There is no answer, really.

And there is no need. Bitcoins are divisible.

There is a far simpler reason why confiscating coins not used "soon enough" will never happen.  Users would have to agree to the theft.  That isn't going to happen.  Getting any breaking change to the protocol is tough.  Even non controversial changes take a lot of time, effort, testing, and lobbying.  Getting something like a "you use or your lose" policy implemented is essentially impossible.

This idea comes up like clockwork at least once a month but the end result is it doesn't matter how "good" this idea is it will never happen.

From a ethical standpoint changing the rules AFTER people have invested in bitcoin is simply dishonest.  It is a bait and switch.

If you feel so strongly that this is the deathblow to bitcoin the fork the project implement remining rules into the protocol and launch "eternalcoin" or whatever you want to call it.  If Bitcoin is truly flawed then in time the market will dump bitcoin in favor of eternalcoin.  Personally I have no problems with a coin which does this from the begining (or implements demurage like freicoin) but to change the rules after the fact is just plain theft.  Period.

It's tough to really lose your bitcoins. Even if your hard drive dies (and there is no backup), you have a pretty decent chance of recovering your wallet file, assuming that there are enough bitcoins to go through the trouble. If you somehow forget your password, it might be worth it to put years of brute force cracking into it if you think that might solve it. If a person dies, his family might try to recover the bitcoins from his hard drive if they know that they are there.

It's not that you haven't explained it right.  It's that there's a lot of thinking on this aspect of money, in general, that you aren't aware of.

Please take a look at this book:
http://mises.org/money.asp

You could also use one or more altcoins to make change.

http://mises.org/money.asp