Making coins dissolve serves no good purpose. If coins are lost or go to waste, that hurts nobody but the holder of those specific coins. Holders of all other coins benefit from the reduction in coin supply as their coin value increases. The economy doesn't care, as prices merely re-adjust to the new quantity of money. I suppose it would hurt debtors because the value of the currency the owe has increased, but that's a great reason to not be a debtor =)
And, if Bitcoins truly respect property rights, then I have the right to sink my coins to the bottom of the ocean forever. Usage ought not be a pre-requisite of ownership.
Topic: Make Bitcoins "dissolve" after some time if not used? (Read 3048 times)
As long as 8 digits isn't a hard limit, there's no problem at all. It's just that I haven't seen the code and I don't know how deeply embedded the 8 digit limit is in the system.
Yeah. The 8 digit limit is only in the official client, not in the protocol. You could write your own client to transfer a tenth or a hundredth or a zillionth of a satoshi if you wanted to. The designers probably chose 8 digits because they assumed that the client would be getting updated between now and bitcoin getting big enough to need more precision. Probably a safe assumption. At present, allowing more than 8 decimal places would really just be a waste of effort and memory.
Actually, the limit is part of the protocol, in effect. It's an artifact of choosing a 64 bit integer to store the transaction values. It can be overcome, however.
you might be right... if the account numbers are stored from the beginning until then... lost data could mean no reference to unused transfers.
aye. I was referring to a digital bank... i'm sure after 2 years or so without account activity, the bank would try to get ahold of the owner... fail... take the account down, archive it, and liquidate the stored bitcoins :p
the biggest loss is going to come through death... people's wallets will vanish most often when the person dies and some idiot doesnt manage their computer....
or some one leaves bitcoins in a 'bank', and if they just float there, waiting for a dead owner to never retrieve them? :p though thats less serious, as most banks would have an activity clause.
or some one leaves bitcoins in a 'bank', and if they just float there, waiting for a dead owner to never retrieve them? :p though thats less serious, as most banks would have an activity clause.
No amount of computer management or 'activity clause' will do much good if the dead person is the only one that knew the password to an encrypted file container.
the biggest loss is going to come through death... people's wallets will vanish most often when the person dies and some idiot doesnt manage their computer....
or some one leaves bitcoins in a 'bank', and if they just float there, waiting for a dead owner to never retrieve them? :p though thats less serious, as most banks would have an activity clause.
or some one leaves bitcoins in a 'bank', and if they just float there, waiting for a dead owner to never retrieve them? :p though thats less serious, as most banks would have an activity clause.
why didn't the designers pick some truly huge limit like 16 instead? That would have tided us over for some hundreds of thousands of years I'm guessing.
I'm reminded of a time when everyone though that IPv4 was more than enough...
I'm reminded of a time when everyone though that IPv4 was more than enough...
I just got reminded of that too! Specifically when you wrote that 16 digits should 'tide us over' for thousands of years It would be much better to figure out a way to identify and recover lost coins for their owners.
Impossible without breaking the security for everyone else. Make frequent backups to many different places and you're fine.
It would be much better to figure out a way to identify and recover lost coins for their owners.
As long as 8 digits isn't a hard limit, there's no problem at all. It's just that I haven't seen the code and I don't know how deeply embedded the 8 digit limit is in the system.
Yeah. The 8 digit limit is only in the official client, not in the protocol. You could write your own client to transfer a tenth or a hundredth or a zillionth of a satoshi if you wanted to. The designers probably chose 8 digits because they assumed that the client would be getting updated between now and bitcoin getting big enough to need more precision. Probably a safe assumption. At present, allowing more than 8 decimal places would really just be a waste of effort and memory.
Why do you doubt theymos when he says precision can keep being increased?
As long as 8 digits isn't a hard limit, there's no problem at all. It's just that I haven't seen the code and I don't know how deeply embedded the 8 digit limit is in the system. I hope it can be changed. After all, why didn't the designers pick some truly huge limit like 16 instead? That would have tided us over for some hundreds of thousands of years I'm guessing.
I'm reminded of a time when everyone though that IPv4 was more than enough...
the bitcoin software doesn't allow you to transact in less than 0.00000001 units.
...yet.
Why do you doubt theymos when he says precision can keep being increased?
Why not?
Is your computer incapable of storing a 48 digit number?
Even my old rusty PC from 5 years ago can do that.
The 'global economy' isn't infinite, so bitcoin's divisibility doesn't need to be either.
Is your computer incapable of storing a 48 digit number?
Even my old rusty PC from 5 years ago can do that.
The 'global economy' isn't infinite, so bitcoin's divisibility doesn't need to be either.
The system isn't devised that way. Your computer may be able to do the division but the bitcoin software doesn't allow you to transact in less than 0.00000001 units. You can find this in the specifications of the bitcoin standard: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ#How_divisible_are_Bitcoins?
And while you're right that the global economy isn't infinite, it's replenishable and so lost currency can be created again. Bitcoins weren't designed with that functionality in mind.
@doood
You can't divide a bitcoin into more than 100 milliion units. Just imagine the whole world sharing just 100 million cents. There won't be enough for everyone to possess even 1 unit!
Contrary to what is being said, you can't run the world economy on just one bitcoin since bitcoins are not infinitely divisible. If they were, then there would be no problem.
But they're not.
You can't divide a bitcoin into more than 100 milliion units. Just imagine the whole world sharing just 100 million cents. There won't be enough for everyone to possess even 1 unit!
Contrary to what is being said, you can't run the world economy on just one bitcoin since bitcoins are not infinitely divisible. If they were, then there would be no problem.
But they're not.
Why not?
Is your computer incapable of storing a 48 digit number?
Even my old rusty PC from 5 years ago can do that.
The 'global economy' isn't infinite, so bitcoin's divisibility doesn't need to be either.
@doood
You can't divide a bitcoin into more than 100 milliion units. Just imagine the whole world sharing just 100 million cents. There won't be enough for everyone to possess even 1 unit!
Contrary to what is being said, you can't run the world economy on just one bitcoin since bitcoins are not infinitely divisible. If they were, then there would be no problem.
But they're not.
You can't divide a bitcoin into more than 100 milliion units. Just imagine the whole world sharing just 100 million cents. There won't be enough for everyone to possess even 1 unit!
Contrary to what is being said, you can't run the world economy on just one bitcoin since bitcoins are not infinitely divisible. If they were, then there would be no problem.
But they're not.
In a period of 10 years or so, this is going to add up leaving us with very few bitcoins - ever.
Forum member 'asdf' said it best I think... if we lose a massive 50% of the coins EVERY year, will we ever have 0?
Even if 140 years later there's only one Satoshi in circulation (0.00000001 BTC), then we'll just divide that up among everyone no problem and continue to transact with each other in some smaller units.
0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000001 for two pizzas anyone?
How about if we use statistical analysis to estimate the number of bitcoins lost on average each year? That might help alleviate the problem somewhat...
We can then regenerate the lost bitcoins periodically to the community at large.
Another option would be to continue generating a small number of bitcoins forever thereby building in a small amount of inflation - which might even be compensated for the lost coins. I don't know the rates at which bitcoins are genuinely lost and so this amount will have to be determined as we go along.
We can then regenerate the lost bitcoins periodically to the community at large.
Another option would be to continue generating a small number of bitcoins forever thereby building in a small amount of inflation - which might even be compensated for the lost coins. I don't know the rates at which bitcoins are genuinely lost and so this amount will have to be determined as we go along.
You're right. We can't really tell if the coins are lost or not.
Even if we do require users to transact their bitcoins once a year, there will be people who don't or people who have genuinely lost them. What do we do then? In fact, requiring users to transact once a year can prove disastrous if they forget to do it - not only will we erroneously assume that the coins have been lost, if a person holds a substantial number of bitcoins, those coins are lost to us forever.
The biggest difference between lost bitcoins and losing coins in a piggybank is that new physical coins are getting minted all the time. We need a mechanism to reflect this reality.
theymos says that precision will keep increasing. I've shown in my original post that losing even 10,000 bitcoins represents a 0.05% drop in the entire world economy. Over a period of say 10 years, we will have lost a very significant amount of transacting units and the precision of just 8 digits will no longer be able to keep up.
Even if we do require users to transact their bitcoins once a year, there will be people who don't or people who have genuinely lost them. What do we do then? In fact, requiring users to transact once a year can prove disastrous if they forget to do it - not only will we erroneously assume that the coins have been lost, if a person holds a substantial number of bitcoins, those coins are lost to us forever.
The biggest difference between lost bitcoins and losing coins in a piggybank is that new physical coins are getting minted all the time. We need a mechanism to reflect this reality.
theymos says that precision will keep increasing. I've shown in my original post that losing even 10,000 bitcoins represents a 0.05% drop in the entire world economy. Over a period of say 10 years, we will have lost a very significant amount of transacting units and the precision of just 8 digits will no longer be able to keep up.
Miners only have to store unspent transactions, so it's not any more work to store a transaction from two years ago than one from now -- you don't need all the intervening spent transactions.
It would reduce the number of transactions that need to be saved somewhat, but it's not worth making balances unstable.
Lost coins represent absolutely no problem. Precision will keep being increased so we can run on fewer and fewer coins.
It would reduce the number of transactions that need to be saved somewhat, but it's not worth making balances unstable.
Lost coins represent absolutely no problem. Precision will keep being increased so we can run on fewer and fewer coins.
Like Garrett said, there is functionally no difference between lost coins and coins in savings. So I proposed to force people to use them at least once per year (for example, could be longer period of time) to prove they are not lost and to not have to keep insanely long chain of transactions. It could be automated process, so you would have to start bitcoin client once / year.
Just adding more is not a solution, because you can't really tell if they are lost.
Just adding more is not a solution, because you can't really tell if they are lost.
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