I think dealing with lost bitcoins is really important. Unlike regular money, there will only ever be a limited supply of bitcoins and over time, the available number of bitcoins will keep going down as more and more bitcoins are lost.
With 21 million bitcoins divisible upto 8 digits, it means we will have a maximum of 2,100,000,000,000,000 currency units which is 2 quadrillion. It sounds like a lot but if a person loses 10,000 bitcoins (say his hard drive crashes), that's a net loss of 1,000,000,000,000 or 1 trillion units out of the market forever! In a period of 10 years or so, this is going to add up leaving us with very few bitcoins - ever.
We need some way of replenishing lost bitcoins. Perhaps we can release newer bitcoins using the same technique we have now every 5 years or so for a few months...or some other solution?
Topic: Make Bitcoins "dissolve" after some time if not used? - page 2. (Read 3048 times)
Yes but if not making them rot would be simply moving all of them from one your account to another, in a client it could be as simple as one click of a button once per year. And there could be a warning implemented. Clients could even implement "refreshing" your account automatically.
The only real problem I see here would be transaction fee. But is it really? If you hold money safe, don't pay anything, and the others keep the network working for you all the time (which does cost them money)...
The only real problem I see here would be transaction fee. But is it really? If you hold money safe, don't pay anything, and the others keep the network working for you all the time (which does cost them money)...
No.
There is functionally no difference between lost coins and coins in savings.
And it would be terrible for someone to lose coins simply because they rotted away. Bitcoin is good as it is.
There is functionally no difference between lost coins and coins in savings.
And it would be terrible for someone to lose coins simply because they rotted away. Bitcoin is good as it is.
The transaction chain is growing and growing.
Would it make sense if in the future bitcoin miners would only assume transactios as valid if the bitcoins used in the transaction were used at least once in the last year for example? So you would have to move your Bitcoins at least once per year to another account, or you would "lose" them. So the chain would have to be only one year long.
I think this would be pretty good way to deal with lost bitcoins - we would know how many are really lost. Perhaps there could be even a method to reintroduce them back into the system? I don't know, some "public" account where people with too old bitcoins to use them could send them, and the Bitcoins from the account would be reused as a prize for generating blocks.
Does it make ANY sense?
edit: I posted this in the wrong board, sorry. This thread should be in Development & Technical Discussion
Would it make sense if in the future bitcoin miners would only assume transactios as valid if the bitcoins used in the transaction were used at least once in the last year for example? So you would have to move your Bitcoins at least once per year to another account, or you would "lose" them. So the chain would have to be only one year long.
I think this would be pretty good way to deal with lost bitcoins - we would know how many are really lost. Perhaps there could be even a method to reintroduce them back into the system? I don't know, some "public" account where people with too old bitcoins to use them could send them, and the Bitcoins from the account would be reused as a prize for generating blocks.
Does it make ANY sense?
edit: I posted this in the wrong board, sorry. This thread should be in Development & Technical Discussion
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