Topic: Removing old coin uncertainty - page 3. (Read 5022 times)

I realized I was wrong about this. If Bitcoin was the default world currency, holding large quantities of bitcoin would be similar to holding a fixed percentage of global wealth. It would basically be the simplest way to hold a "world wealth index fund." It's fundamentally different from holding cash in that respect, and therefore much more attractive than holding cash.

Coins sent to the genesis block are not lost. Only the 50BTC block reward from the first coinbase transaction cannot be spent.

I am usually quite polite but...

Fuck off with your stealing from the early adopters and miners.  

Seriously the whole point of bitcoin is that it is a neutral currency.

It doesn't care if it is sent from USA to Somalia; it doesn't care about bankrupt banks and governments wanting a bail out at the expense of pensioners; and it sure as he'll doesn't give a flying fuck about your opinions on the early adopters' coins.

If you want a currency that changes the rules frequently to suit those in power, or with the majority of power, there are a few hundred fiat currencies you can join.


/rant

OP - I am going to apologise in advance but feel it is would be useful for you to really consider the true advantages of bitcoin, then decide if you can support it. Many of the perceived disadvantages and inflexibilities are in fact it's greatest strengths.
 

Problem:  Coins are out of circulation.
Solution:  Remove those coins from circulation, along with anyone unfortunate enough not to move a wallet around.

Excellent proposal.

People who understand Bitcoin well enough to be uncertain about the lost coin situation aren't the type of people who are on the fence about adoption. Go ask 1000 people who haven't started using Bitcoin yet, and I bet no one will tell you that their sticking point is the lost coin issue. Either they won't know anything about Bitcoin, or they'll say "it's not backed by anything", "isn't that a pyramid scheme?", etc.

Restatement of the problem: Assume in the future lots of people hold a lot of their wealth in Bitcoin. Some previously inactive huge store of bitcoin comes onto the market, and the price of BTC falls 5%, hence the value of everyone's bitcoin holdings fall by 5%.

A couple reasons why this isn't a huge problem:

-Once bitcoin is mature, people will no longer need to hold large amounts of it for speculation purposes, the same way that wealthy people today don't generally hold huge amounts of cash. Anyone who has invested their wealth in stocks would be relatively protected. Bond contracts can be written so that payouts are inflation adjusted.

-If people are really concerned about this, companies will offer 'inflation insurance', removing your uncertainty about your own bitcoins value if new bitcoins come into the market. The price of this inflation insurance will reveal what the market thinks about this risk.

-As long as bitcoin is in its growth mode (i.e. until it takes over as the default world currency), any reduction in BTC value caused by coins that were assumed to be lost coming into the market will likely be negligible compared to forces stemming from speculation about Bitcoin's eventual level of success.

To the OP: as you surmised, this is a topic that comes up again and again. You can also see the reaction to it: a very few in favour, most opposed, with the opposition ranging from people who calmly state that it is not necessary, to people who shriek that you have an ulterior motive (or worse, quietly and slyly insinuate that you have an ulterior motive in the guise of 'just asking questions') or that you just want to steal bitcoins.

I'm one of the few who agree with you. Rather than repeat myself ad nauseam, I'll just link here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/the-great-lost-btc-problem-295011.

Short version: the only valid concern naysayers should have is that if such a change were adopted, some peeps might not get the memo, to which I have four responses:
1) Shouting about such a change from the rooftops, well in advance, big red letters on every piece of client software, and so on.
2) Recycling time should be sufficiently long that everyone has a chance to learn about it. But not long enough to forget all about it. Thinking 5-10 years is about right.
3) Wallet software can and probably should be made to generate new wallets and shovel the funds automatically.
4) If after all the above, somebody still manages to lose their coins through neglect... GOOD. That hypothetical person would be an imbecile.



ETA: and after reading the thread a bit more carefully, I see you're only proposing a one-time readjustment, not a continual reissue of the old coins. Well, so be it. I still agree with you, even though I now think you're not going far enough!

Rehash of a stupid idea... something like this will never go into effect.

Because for example Satoshi holds more than ~10% of all Bitcoins. Or he has lost the keys already.

This is a large uncertainty factor, but on the other hand I think it would be far worse if someone could loose coins just because they did not read forums or log into the main client for a few years. There are coins out there that work just like Bitcoin with this "feature" added - if you think it is vital, please use these other currencies instead, they will over time overtake Bitcoin because they are superior because of that.

No need to know how many coins have been lost.. What's the point ?  Why you think it's important to know about how many coins are lost/remaining ?

I don't think this is a good idea, and yea, frankly speaking, it means stealing people's money..

It is " The Uncertainty Principle".

Well yes and no. I don't agree with the OP's proposal but leaving your coins forever and ever is also not an option. At some point in time EC cryptography is going to be broken and then people will have to migrate their coins over to some thing else or loose them entirely.

this really defeats the whole purpose of a store of value, you should be able to leave you coins anyway you want them for as long as you want. Anything less and you knock the foundation out of the whole thing.

NO

In case it is not clear: NO

That idiot idea has been "proposed" other times and everytime the answer is NO, it is a total idiocy.

Go and make CubicCoin and apply that "idea" there if you want.

If this is a bigger issue in 50 years, we could still do it then.
Atm it would most likely do more harm than good.

I'm not entirely sure, but I do feel that there would be some fear of someone hitting pot of 10k BTC in future.

Just think about how much that would mess up things in 100 years time or so...

I don't know if the situation is even fixable with bitcoin... Likely unless there is periodic resets it will always exist...

Either way, things don't look good from this perspective for bitcoin in very long run.

This has been proposed before and frankly it is stealing.

I think you'll find pretty much *no-one* is interested in this suggestion (it has been made *many* times before btw).

There are alt coins that behave exactly like this - I suggest you use one of those rather than try and convince everyone that something is wrong with BTC the way it was implemented.