I can see your reasoning, but it could also destroy trust in the currency.
Aka "They have forced everyone to move their coins once, who is gonna say it won't happen again or that worse rules will be enforced in the future?"
Are the benefits worth it? I'm not so sure about that.
Topic: Removing old coin uncertainty - page 4. (Read 5022 times)
Every market thrives on information. I would argue that large uncertainty about the amount of lost coins is hurting bitcoin adoption, especially its use as a store of value.
Is that really what your concern is? Or is this the back-door you are looking at into allowing demurrage to get a foot in the door? (You wouldn't be the first).
What about the guy who buys 10,000 bitcoins, goes off to live in a monastery in Tibet for a year, then comes back to find out that you destroyed all of his coins?
Hard forks should in general make bitcoins less valuable because people will see that the community is overeager to change the rules on a whim.
Hard forks should in general make bitcoins less valuable because people will see that the community is overeager to change the rules on a whim.
I understand and agree to a degree on what you are saying, but IMO i don't think its a feasible/practical idea...
Its like this when a gold mine first opened up you had people mining like crazy all sorts of trouble and chaos people must have lost gold, moved on with it ect until one day only small amounts of gold were left, but still you had people going into the mine despite all the commotion and missing gold looking for anything they could salvage, I believe people will always come and join in no matter whats happened its never too late to join a party. The owners of the gold mine did not get together say OK all the people who mined from this mine we need proof that you own the gold and you are going to spend or trade it if you don't we will collect all the unclaimed / unspent gold and throw it back into the mine for other people to find. As you can see this is a pretty unrealistic foolish idea, there will always be uncertainty this is fact, but oh no lets reassess everything that happened and put it into some sort of recycled life cycle.
I think there are more pressing matters that need to be solved first.
Its like this when a gold mine first opened up you had people mining like crazy all sorts of trouble and chaos people must have lost gold, moved on with it ect until one day only small amounts of gold were left, but still you had people going into the mine despite all the commotion and missing gold looking for anything they could salvage, I believe people will always come and join in no matter whats happened its never too late to join a party. The owners of the gold mine did not get together say OK all the people who mined from this mine we need proof that you own the gold and you are going to spend or trade it if you don't we will collect all the unclaimed / unspent gold and throw it back into the mine for other people to find. As you can see this is a pretty unrealistic foolish idea, there will always be uncertainty this is fact, but oh no lets reassess everything that happened and put it into some sort of recycled life cycle.
I think there are more pressing matters that need to be solved first.
In a sense this would force peoples hand to prove they were in control of their coins. It would be an inconvenience, for myself included, but consider the 'newcomers' will 99.9% of the population. If we make a reasonable concession to remove a large source of uncertainty about the bitcoin supply, it could actually benefit us early adopters more in the long run.
People could still have long term savings, but if those savings were older than month/day/year of the communities choosing, they would have to demonstrate they had control of that address.
I agree with you the more coins are lost, the higher bitcoin's value will be. But currently there is no mechanism for knowing if coins have truly been lost or not unless they have been sent to the genesis block. And I am not proposing a recurring process, but rather a one-time event that the community would agree to. Of course it could happen again if in the future, if at any point the community reached consensus that it would be a good idea.
People could still have long term savings, but if those savings were older than month/day/year of the communities choosing, they would have to demonstrate they had control of that address.
I agree with you the more coins are lost, the higher bitcoin's value will be. But currently there is no mechanism for knowing if coins have truly been lost or not unless they have been sent to the genesis block. And I am not proposing a recurring process, but rather a one-time event that the community would agree to. Of course it could happen again if in the future, if at any point the community reached consensus that it would be a good idea.
Not sure if i understand exactly what your saying but what if people want to leave there coins in a wallet for 10 years + without touching them, as a long term saving ? if you want to disturb or force peoples hands just because new comers are concerned about the subject this makes no sense to me, also the more coins that are "lost" increases Bitcoins value as there are less in circulation.
I think it could be helpful to remove some of the uncertainty around old coins, to see if they are truly lost or not. This is an issue that is will never go away, and in fact will only grow more troubling as bitcoin grows in value. My proposal is to pick a comfortably far off future date (maybe 1 year) and say that any coins on addresses that have been stagnant since some long-ago date (how about Jan. 1st, 2011?) would be removed from the money supply.
If you had coins on an old address, all you would need to do to protect your wealth would be to transfer them to a new address, or just send a single satoshi, before the future cut-off date. This would be a one-time event that would require a hard fork and therefore a consensus of the community.
Every market thrives on information. I would argue that large uncertainty about the amount of lost coins is hurting bitcoin adoption, especially its use as a store of value. I think this proposal would help bitcoin adoption by providing a count of the number of controllable coins, and it would do so in a manner that would not unfairly penalize anyone.
If you had coins on an old address, all you would need to do to protect your wealth would be to transfer them to a new address, or just send a single satoshi, before the future cut-off date. This would be a one-time event that would require a hard fork and therefore a consensus of the community.
Every market thrives on information. I would argue that large uncertainty about the amount of lost coins is hurting bitcoin adoption, especially its use as a store of value. I think this proposal would help bitcoin adoption by providing a count of the number of controllable coins, and it would do so in a manner that would not unfairly penalize anyone.
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