Topic: Possible solution for recovering lost Bitcoin to the "blackhole". - page 2. (Read 4408 times)

I resurrected an old thread to further discuss this issue so not to further hijack this thread:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.687909

21 trillion plus cents (,00).

or

(1 / 0.00000001) * 21,000,000 = 2,100,000,000,000,000 atomic units.


21 million BTC (bitcoins)

21 billion mBTC (milibitcoins)

21 trillion uBTC (microbitcoins)

That's 2.1 quadrillion satoshis.

Micro (u or μ for the purists) is 1E-6.  1E-9 is Nano (n).  The current granularity is 10nBTC because we only represent down to 1E-8.

Besides, there is a long term solution for the lost coins anyway.  Eventually, hashing hardware will continue to increase until SHA256 alone is no longer secure.  Long before this, another algo will be swapped into Bitcoin in it's place (or in addition to SHA256, the code in question is modular as well as there are already two 'modules' to use, both just happen to be SH256 at the moment).  Eventually, everyone who still has funds are going to move those funds to addresses using the more secure algos, and the lost coins will be exposed for being the only addresses left on the blockchain using oly SHA256.  That's when the 'salvage' process begins, and the treasure hunters of the electronic currency age will be doing everything that they can to be the first to force a SHA256 'collision' against those (now known) lost addresses.

Actually, we don't know that.  All that we can really know for certain is that there are addresses in the blockchain that have not transfered funds away in a very long time.  We can't know if they are lost unless the owner of the address says so, and can prove that he is, in fact, the owner of that address.  However, the way the system is designed, if the person making the claim can prove that the address is his, then he has the secret key to that address, and thus the funds are not lost.

Also, we don't really need those lost coins, it doesn't really matter how many are lost, because the 21 million BTC limit is arbitrary anyway.

Typo.  m is the SI prefix for mili.  Micro would be 10^-9 which would be smaller than a satoshi.

Man it has been a long time since I used SI prefixes.  Utter fail on my part.

mBTC would be 10^-3 (or 100,000 satoshis)
uBTC would be 10^-6 (or 100 satoshis)
nBTC would be 10^-9 ( which is not possible as it would be 1/10th of a satoshi).

Thanks kjj

And the blockchain will be 100GB by then, assuming the same level of transactions as we have today...!

I thought you had defined mBTC as milli Bitcoins before ... 

Doing something like a split or revaluing the currency is impossible without creating a fork and once you do that there will be Bitcoin new and Bitcoin legacy and the confusion that goes with that (coins will still exists in both networks).  Bad idea.

Much simpler to just use another unit like Satoshi or mBTC (micromilli Bitcoins) or uBTC (micro Bitcoins)

One way to look at it is there are 21,000 2,100 trillion base units (satoshis) or 2.1 quadrillion satoshis.  It takes 100,000,000 of them to make 1 Bitcoin.   That is how the client and blockchain handle it internally.  If you have an address with a value of 1 BTC the internal code represents that as 100,000,000.

Interesting thought, but I don't see the benefit in doing this.

Those 'missing' coins will not be missed, and whatever minuscule effect they may have is to make the remaining coins fractionally more valuable. The 21m limit is not a magic number; it is arbitrary. Whether the actual number is 21,000,000 or 20,900,000 or 20,000,000 makes no difference.

If we ever expand beyond the current 64 bit integer representation of 1e-8 BTC, then mining could go on for quite a while, if I recall correctly.  I'll poke through the source code in a bit, but if I recall, the subsidy is right shifted off the end until it goes to zero.  Switching to 128 bit integers would let it keep shifting off longer than the current setup.  Of course, we are talking about tiny amounts, even with massive deflation.

a satoshi already exists.

1 satoshi = 0.00000001

Still your point is right.  If through either massive adoptions (hundreds of millions of users) or reduction in usable coin supply the value of a single coin was very high (millions of dollars) clients would simply price things in fractional BTC.

Satoshis is one option.  mBTC (milli Bitcoins) or uBTC (micro Bitcoins) is another possibility.

If one BTC had same buying power as $100K USD a $5 burger might be 0.0005 BTC.  For convenience the menu might show that as 0.5 mBTC. or 500 uBTC.  The formatting and naming convention will likely develop organically depending on relative values.

Banks, large institutions, corporate reports, and possibly large purchases like houses could still use BTC.  

Basically what I was going to pen after reading the OP.


I believe that 'Satoshi' is reserved for the 8th decimal place. There's a thread discussing name proposals for the other decimal places, but I didn't take time to hunt it.

If I'm not mistaken, there's going to be a problem if we start using .xxxx? Humans are accustomed to whole numbers, not fractions or decimals, when it comes to their medium of exchange--money. At the moment, there's 8M BTC in circulation. If next month a million new people joined the Bitcoin train, not only would the exchange rate be high, but everyone will be seeing .xxxxx no matter what name you call it (nano, being one that just came to mind).

There is one way I can see it working out for all concerns, and it's not meant as a proposal--just a brain fart, if you will. Currently there are 8M+ BTC. Let's say a million new people join. The rate becomes 1 BTC = $100 USD. Even though a $2 USD purchase equates to only .02 BTC, people are less prone to purchase 1 BTC for $100 USD. But if it 1 BTC = $10 USD, all is well again. That can be done by a split. There will then be 80,000,000 MAIN units in play, units that will be called Bitcoin (bitcoins). And when we reach the 10M original bitcoins mined, and there's another doubling or so new users, split again to having 1,000,000,000 units now referred to Bitcoin(s).

This way it's always called Bitcoin or bitcoins or BTC for the main units. Perhaps this can all be done at the mining level during the awarding of BTC blocks.

As I've said earlier, it's just an idea, and I real don't know how to do this or, for that matter, what I'm talking about, let alone trying to relay. But. hopefully, the gist of it comes across, even if the whole thing is shot down.

~Bruno~

There's virtually no need to recover the lost coins. If 1 BTC become too valuable to be a standard unit, then we'll just use 0.01 BTC as the standard (and give it a name too, like 1 satoshi).

I suppose that's one way to look at it. Hopefully by then miners will be relying more on fees than the block reward for their profits.



Wow, it gets too late and I can't even do basic math.

With about 6.77M blocks to go, that's over 128 years from now... past 2140 A.D.

So, we could say it hits its half life in 2033(ish) (last block above 0.50.... ish)

The curve may be asymptotic, but as long as the precision of bitcoin stays at 8 decimal places, we'll eventually see the "last" bitcoin mined.

You can check it out by using blockexplorer's stats page. It can tell you what the block reward will be for any block. At one point in the future, the reward goes from 0.00000001 btc one one block, straight to zero on the next.

*fiddles with blockexplorer*

Block 6929998 will produce a reward of 0.00000001 btc, block 6929999 will produce none. Only about 6.2M blocks to go (at an average of ten minutes a block, that's over 117 years from now. I suppose there's a chance bitcoin won't even still be around by then....)

what's with the 2033 estimate then?

I would leave them lost, we have 8 decimal places so there are two quadrillion one hundred trillion units not twenty one million

many things are wrong with this. one of the biggest is that the 'last' bitcoin will never be mined. it's asymptotic.