Topic: Proposed solution to "lost coins" - page 3. (Read 4214 times)

the way to recover lost coins is called...

vanitygen.

it only takes a few thousand years, or 10minutes if you happen to be lucky with extremely large values of 2.

CommuCoin, you buy any amount of this cryptocurrency and then it is distributed evenly between the network according to everyones need.

Bitcoins are infinitely divisible. Just update protocol to store value in a 128 bit integer instead of the current 64 bit integer. That would satisfy the decimal place need for a loooong time. When you bring back lost coins, you dilute the aggregate value of everyone's bitcoins, similar to what happens when the Fed prints USD.

Simple thought experiment:

4 people each hold 1 BTC. One is a miner. This is all that is thought to be remaining (no none has seen any other BTC move for many years).
BTC price is $10/BTC.
Let's say you "recycle" 1 BTC. This value goes to the miner.
Now, there is 5 BTC total, which, until the price changes, means a market cap of $50 (was $40).
Because the supply has increased without an increase in demand, the price will drop. When the market corrects itself, the price would ideally drop to $8/BTC, to get back to the $40 market cap.
Effectively, the three non-miners lost 20% of their stored value, while the value the miner holds went up 60%.
If you distribute the lost coins equally among the participants, everyone's value (share of the market cap) remains equal, but then this is no different from moving the decimal place (aka a useless action).

We could lose all but 1 satoshi, and with 128 bit integers still have something like 20 more decimal places to use.

Wrong me, like most people I'm sure when they first started bitcoins when they were less than $15, bitcoins was a joke, mere speculation. Everyone has lost coins.. Now valued at hundreds of dollars that no one gave two shits about because it was only $15 and you had a lesson learned.

Tehfiend, you seem to have overlooked that bitcoins are infinitely divisible...

If the day comes when 1 Satoshi is a couple of pennies (/cents) the protocol can be modified to increase the number of decimal places, and suddenly, picobits (naming committee-dependent) are formed, each worth $100!!!

Basically, stealing people's money, no matter how long it has been sitting in their account untouched/unmoved is theft, as others have pointed out. This must be distinguished from coins being lost.

Coins that are lost, simply contribute to the deflationary nature of bitcoin, which happens to be one of the most popular aspects of using the coin for both currency (increasing purchasing power over time) and for savings (high potential to make money if converting back to other, inflationary, fiat currencies).

As has been mentioned, this has been discussed so many times it's unreal, please use google search/forum seach to find other dicussions and read them first next time...

Here is one (yes it's a sarcastic google searcher for you hyperlink skeptics)
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=bitcoins+lost+coins

I posted my reasoning earlier in this thread:
I believe BTC will continue to be lost over the years and could increase the speed at which the supply of coins is no longer adequate. Remember I'm talking LOOOOONG term.

I disagree, that statement would still be true. If you hold the private keys, your bitcoins would still be safe as long as you touched them every X # of years. Think about a miner who hasn't been paying attention to the recent changes to the protocol and uses an old client past May 15th. Would he feel lied too when a block he mines does not actually generate BTC like "he's been told"? Most would not agree and say it's the miners responsibility to stay informed of these changes which the devs have given ample notice of. Obviously X wouldn't be 1 year causing you to lose the coins in your example. Say X is 20, 50, or 100 years? If an address has not been touched in 100 years I think it would be safe to say they are no longer "possessed" by anybody and therefore would not be "stolen".

The consensus is not needed from "the people" but only from a majority of the miners. I can imagine miners having a lot of incentive to form a consensus in 100 years to unlock lost coins which will generate more profit for them without breaking the 21 million limitation. Any changes like this would be done with great caution and after a lot of study and discussion (which is why I'm here!).

I think we must have a different definition of what a bank is. If I put some cash into a safe in my closet, that does not make my closet a bank. Banks can provide valuable services that will always be needed despite the problems many are causing today. A bank does not have to be the type of centralized government controlled bank that creates fiat money out of thin air. If your 100 year old grandma has your inheritance stored in BTC, would you trust her to keep her wallet backed up properly? She might find a bank useful to secure her BTC which could be insured. What if you wanted to borrow or lend BTC? Again, what about buyer protection? Vendors might want instant confirmation like credit cards currently offer. Merchants will also want to outsource security. Banks will be forced to evolve along side BTC providing these useful services while shedding the problems that centralized government controlled banks are currently experiencing.

/$0.02

There are usually two reasons people advocate recovering lost coins:

First, it makes the currency supply more predictable. Otherwise, the number of "lost coins" is unknown. The price of the currency might reflect the thinking that a million coins are lost and then one day they come into circulation, causing a price drop. The risk of this happening has to be hedged by every risk-sensitive user of the currency, imposing costs and inefficiency.

Second, it maintains the mining reward. When the block reward drops to zero, there is no incentive to mine a block right after someone else has mined one. All the good transaction fees will be taken. The ability for miners to claim a small amount from a pool of lost coins would maintain a more stable and predictable mining reward helping to ensure there is sufficient mining to secure the currency without sharp changes in hash rate that could cause excessive variation in the time between blocks.

Why would you think that recovering lost coins is necessary?  A number of posts have explained why this is a bad idea.  I was wondering why anyone thinks it's necessary.

On top of that. Changing a fundamental part of the design of the bitcoin is something that will not going to have the consensus of the people. No matter what the bitcoin developers want to do. If they re design bitcoin to implement your idea then expect bitcoin to plummet.
Your idea is basically like trying to change the amount of bitcoins that will ever be created. Imagine if the bitcoin developers decide to change that number to 42 million, suddenly the rules of the game are changed. Like another person said. It's a bait and switch scenario.
Changes like adding decimal places are non disruptive, your proposed change is a significant change in the architecture and in the way bitcoin works and its stored.
Banks in the bitcoin world are basically online wallets.

I think they've done a good job explaining that what you are proposing is outright theft. Since the beginning we have told people, as long as you hold the private keys your bitcoins are safe. Your proposal would make that a lie. When I dropped out of the bitcoin community in 2010, I still had some bitcoins left in my wallet. I expected that when/if I returned, my coins would be there. When I came back, they were there, if they were gone I would assume they had been stolen.

Telling people something is their property and then taking it away later, is theft.

I don't think that it's a good idea, just an idea. Lots of people think it's a bad idea but won't explain why exactly.

Thanks for pointing me to the altcoin that has implemented this so I can take a closer look.

If you think this is a good idea (it isn't) why not just use Freicoin?

I wouldn't say all but thank you .

1) Why not? If bitcoin lasts for centuries then major changes will have to be made at some point because supply will run out and hardware/cryptography will advance beyond SHA256.
2) Why not? Apparently an altcoin has implemented it.
3) Yes yes I was prepared for that reaction. The great thing about bitcoins is it will give users MANY different options. You will never HAVE to use a bank. Banks are not 100% evil and flawed providing ZERO value or they would have never come into existence. Many novice users will not want the responsibility of securing their BTC just like I don't want to keep my cash under my mattress. People will want buyer protection that cash and BTC does not offer but banks and credit cards do. The nature of BTC will keep banks in check because it will be much easier to operate without them and I imagine a new breed of bank emerging down the road that is nothing like what we see today. The revolution has barely begun...
4) Yes yes I know that's many peoples opinion but I am curious about the basis that opinion is formed on exactly.

We understand and I think we all respect your opinion.
That being said, I can tell you a couple of things:
1) It won't happen
2) it's not a viable idea.
3) The bank concept is what every bitcoin lover HATES! so you're trying to centralize a coin that has decentralization as its main attraction!!! :/ NO NO in my book and pretty much everyone's book here
4) it's a terrible idea, but that's just my opinion...

Regards.

I'm not talking about cryptocurrencies, somebody else mentioned that. I did a search and could not find a discussion on this particular solution. Care to show me the exact search I should have used?

I haven't looked into how the altcoin that has implemented this terrible idea has done so but IMO the average person will eventually opt to store their BTC in "banks" so they do not have to worry about securing their BTC themselves. These banks will make sure none of their holdings are stale as you only have to transfer them once every decade to avoid problems. People storing their BTC privately will be savvy enough to know they also need to transfer their BTC once per decade to keep them from going stale. Yes there is no excuse but that will not stop it from happening.

I'm not worried per say but I do think there could be a supply problem way down the road. For example right now there are around 1.18 trillion USD in circulation world wide. That is 118 trillion pennies. There is a maximum of 2,100 trillion satoshies. That's less than 1800% of current pennies. USD circulation has increased by around 170% in the last decade. That means it is possible in 100+ years we will not have enough satoshies to go around. I do agree recycling coins is not a solution but will help a little. I just like to think and talk about bitcoins, please forgive me for thinking that was the purpose of these forums.

"Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man."

Lost coins are not a problem, so there are no need for "solution".

Unless you are worried that eventually the smallest value (1 Satoshi which is 0.00000001 BTC) will be to large for the economy, then old coins are effectively already recycled.  If 5% of coins are taken out of circulation, then it increases the value of the rest.

Even in that situation, there probably would be some update to the spec to allow even smaller values.  Ofc, that might cause similar discussions as the max block size ones.

How do you differentiate between a stale address and someone saving the coins for a long time?
Sorry, but it's a terrible idea. If someone was stupid enough to lose his/her coins he/she didn't deserve them in the first place.
there's absolutely no excuse to lose coins having google drive, skydrive, box, dropbox, mega, private cloud, external disks, $4 flash drives, paper wallet, etc, etc, etc, etc....

You're posting in the wrong part of the forum. There's an area devoted to alternate cryptocurrencies, and also a search function that you can use to check whether or not somebody has already talked about your idea.