Topic: What about those bitcoins that are LOST? - page 3. (Read 3886 times)

Quote from: ausbit on July 15, 2015, 07:41:10 AM

So, unless people intentionally sent coins to 1DontSentHereCoz1tsGone4Ever they cannot prove that they are telling the truth or don't have any backups.

Could someone please explain how this address works?
I imagine that it's just a btc address that is guaranteed some how that the private keys have been distroyed, but are the coins still sitting in that wallet/address and could anyone ever hack it to steal the coins?

i think it's a joke man, that address does not exist lol, but i guess someone could customize it with some tools

i don't know if this is what he meant or even this was in his mind when he posted the top comment but there is an address that only eats bitcoins and in fact destroys them:
https://blockchain.info/address/1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE

this address is without private keys so if you send to that address the coins will be lost forever!

i didn't know that this was possible, you always learn something new each day, i've read online that you can do it with electrum seedless wallets or electrum pos system

or they just have hidden the private key in some way?

There is a private key, it's just the same as with any other address... nobody is ever going to be able to guess it. The fact that the address is so specific and not random numbers and letters means that no one actually generated that address from a private key.

Jhacker

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Quote from: GODLIKE on July 15, 2015, 02:27:29 AM

So, unless people intentionally sent coins to 1DontSentHereCoz1tsGone4Ever they cannot prove that they are telling the truth or don't have any backups.

Could someone please explain how this address works?
I imagine that it's just a btc address that is guaranteed some how that the private keys have been distroyed, but are the coins still sitting in that wallet/address and could anyone ever hack it to steal the coins?

i think it's a joke man, that address does not exist lol, but i guess someone could customize it with some tools

Yeah thought that, i did try check it on blockchain but it says not recognised.
I still think i do remember reading about an addresd where you can send coins to and they will be lost or destroyed forever, maybe it was something to do with testing transactions.
I will edit post if i can find anything about this, or if someone else can help.

All you do is send it to a random public key hash. As long as the bitcoin network accepts it as a valid address, the transaction will go through and no one will ever be able to guess the private key.

Jhacker

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Quote from: Hazir on July 15, 2015, 02:14:33 AM

Lost coins are actually good for the bitcoin in general. Satoshi once said that lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone.
So this is not a problem, there is no need for 'recreate' initiatives, because it would not be wise imo.

Around one year ago, I made a quick count and found that 21 million BTC, if they would be distributed to cover ALL the Earth wealth (241 trillions), they would be not granular enough to be used as currency.
To say it another way: a single Satoshi would be valued something like 50 or 100 $, and couldn't be used for shopping in a comfortable way.

Now, of course this is an utopian scenario, but it still is a POSSIBLE scenario, and one that we all hope will be one day reached.
Sure there's alternatives out there: Litecoin could come into play as THE alternative for everyday transactions, it also has a much higher cap, it would be the silver of cryptocurrencies, and Bitcoin could be the gold.
But still: each Bitcoin or Satoshi lost, in a scenario where all Bitcoins are used, would represent a failure when granularity is not enough.

Dang. If that were to come to pass, we would all be multi-millionaires.

Herbert2020

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Quote from: Amph on July 15, 2015, 10:01:41 AM

Quote from: Herbert2020 on July 15, 2015, 09:35:41 AM

i don't know if this is what he meant or even this was in his mind when he posted the top comment but there is an address that only eats bitcoins and in fact destroys them:
https://blockchain.info/address/1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE

this address is without private keys so if you send to that address the coins will be lost forever!

i didn't know that this was possible, you always learn something new each day, i've read online that you can do it with electrum seedless wallets or electrum pos system

or they just have hidden the private key in some way?

Quote from: ausbit on July 15, 2015, 10:14:29 AM

Exactly the address i was thinking about, thank you Herbert2020

Now when you say this address has no private keys what do you mean.
Was this address created without private keys? (If even possible)
Or were the private keys just destroyed to this address, if so who did and or approved this?

creating an address with that many custom characters (BitcoinEaterAddressDontSend) is impossible.
check out vanity address for more info. it is proximately like this :
creating with 3 custom characters take less than a minute and 4 takes half an hour and more becomes exponentially harder until impossible.

so that address 1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE is impossible to have private keys.
but creating such address is very well possible:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/how-to-make-custom-address-without-private-key-973998
but it is useless since you can never spend the coins!!

Aggressor66

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http://www.coinbuzz.com/2015/03/31/23-bitcoins-mined-13-may-lost/
"Bitcoins can be lost due to irrecoverable passwords, forgotten wallets from when Bitcoin was worth little, from hardware failure or because of the death of the bitcoin owner. It’s extremely improbable and effectively impossible to recover lost coins. At press times the total value of lost bitcoins is roughly $1.23 billion USD. Shocked

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Quote from: yeponlyone on July 15, 2015, 01:21:41 PM

For sure, a fully minted bitcoin will not consist of 21 mil but has anyone done some serious calculation and estimation on how many bitcoins is accessible out there of those mined? I regularly get rid of wallets with just a few satoshi's to keep the Multibit neat. Then we have Gox - and Mr. Nakamoto's premine which probably never will be used.

gox ? stolen coins are not lost ,theyre just no longer property of their original owner
i dont see any reason to believe the gox fortune has been burned forever and will never be cashed /traded /spent

yeponlyone

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For sure, a fully minted bitcoin will not consist of 21 mil but has anyone done some serious calculation and estimation on how many bitcoins is accessible out there of those mined? I regularly get rid of wallets with just a few satoshi's to keep the Multibit neat. Then we have Gox - and Mr. Nakamoto's premine which probably never will be used.

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Someone is probably watching his BTC wallet right infront of him and he does not know the password.

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Quote from: GODLIKE on July 15, 2015, 02:22:24 AM

Quote from: Amph on July 15, 2015, 02:09:10 AM

Quote from: GODLIKE on July 15, 2015, 02:05:11 AM

Quote from: mindrust on July 15, 2015, 01:59:54 AM

Lost Bitcoins is a good thing actually. They make your unlost bitcoins more valuable. (As long as the lost ones aren't yours of course)

I don't think so: nobody knows anybody has lost his coins, there's no way to know it, apart the case I exposed in the previous post, or by admission of the user himself, which can be fraudulent.
AT THE MOMENT the value of your coins is UNAFFECTED by lost coins.
In the future, when we'll hit the wall, THEN this may affect it, as less and less coins will be in circulation.

i presume that the impact would be very low on the market, do not expect an huge rise in demand only because 30% of coins are lost, people simply will buy less one whole btc and more satoshi or bits

Not like that.
In a possible future that we all are hoping, Bitcoins will be a used everywhere by everyone.
There will actually be scarcity of them.
People won't BUY bitcoins: they will USE them and EARN them with their work (until AI and robotics will take all of that...).

Yeah but it will take time for the scarcity as the majority of the population is not aware about the bitcoins but in future when bitcoin gets into the mainstream people would not be able to buy them but those who will be holding great number of bitcoins can earn a good profit by selling it.

ausbit

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Quote from: Herbert2020 on July 15, 2015, 09:35:41 AM

Quote from: RodeoX on July 15, 2015, 10:02:03 AM

So, unless people intentionally sent coins to 1DontSentHereCoz1tsGone4Ever they cannot prove that they are telling the truth or don't have any backups.

Could someone please explain how this address works?
I imagine that it's just a btc address that is guaranteed some how that the private keys have been distroyed, but are the coins still sitting in that wallet/address and could anyone ever hack it to steal the coins?

i think it's a joke man, that address does not exist lol, but i guess someone could customize it with some tools

i don't know if this is what he meant or even this was in his mind when he posted the top comment but there is an address that only eats bitcoins and in fact destroys them:
https://blockchain.info/address/1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE

this address is without private keys so if you send to that address the coins will be lost forever!

Exactly the address i was thinking about, thank you Herbert2020

Now when you say this address has no private keys what do you mean.
Was this address created without private keys? (If even possible)
Or were the private keys just destroyed to this address, if so who did and or approved this?

xmasdobo

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Remember that 21 million is a completely arbitrary number. Bitcoin would work as designed even if there were only 1 bitcoin. Right now we can divide BTC out to 8 decimal places. If we moved to 9 we move an order of magnitude. This is easy to do and solves any shortage of bitcoin supply.
As mentioned above by several posters, any attempt to "re-mine" those coins should be outright rejected. Who will determine what a "lost" coin is? How would you know if my coins are lost or in cold storage? After you re-mine coins then someone shows up and says "I found my coins!", who's coins are now the real coins? Are you going to replace the found coins, and with what coins are you replacing them? And under what authority can you render some coins unusable?
If the 21M cap is ever lifted I would divest at least 50% of my BTC and I would assume the project is now dead. A strict, unchangeable cap is one of the most powerful features of BTC. Without it you basically own benie babies or tulips.

And this is why prices that now are considered ridiculous like 1 million per BTC are completely possible and reasonable to happen in the future. The system CAN handle it.

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Remember that 21 million is a completely arbitrary number. Bitcoin would work as designed even if there were only 1 bitcoin. Right now we can divide BTC out to 8 decimal places. If we moved to 9 we move an order of magnitude. This is easy to do and solves any shortage of bitcoin supply.
As mentioned above by several posters, any attempt to "re-mine" those coins should be outright rejected. Who will determine what a "lost" coin is? How would you know if my coins are lost or in cold storage? After you re-mine coins then someone shows up and says "I found my coins!", who's coins are now the real coins? Are you going to replace the found coins, and with what coins are you replacing them? And under what authority can you render some coins unusable?
If the 21M cap is ever lifted I would divest at least 50% of my BTC and I would assume the project is now dead. A strict, unchangeable cap is one of the most powerful features of BTC. Without it you basically own benie babies or tulips.

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Quote from: Herbert2020 on July 15, 2015, 09:35:41 AM

Quote from: ausbit on July 15, 2015, 09:30:48 AM

So, unless people intentionally sent coins to 1DontSentHereCoz1tsGone4Ever they cannot prove that they are telling the truth or don't have any backups.

Could someone please explain how this address works?
I imagine that it's just a btc address that is guaranteed some how that the private keys have been distroyed, but are the coins still sitting in that wallet/address and could anyone ever hack it to steal the coins?

i think it's a joke man, that address does not exist lol, but i guess someone could customize it with some tools

i don't know if this is what he meant or even this was in his mind when he posted the top comment but there is an address that only eats bitcoins and in fact destroys them:
https://blockchain.info/address/1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE

this address is without private keys so if you send to that address the coins will be lost forever!

i didn't know that this was possible, you always learn something new each day, i've read online that you can do it with electrum seedless wallets or electrum pos system

or they just have hidden the private key in some way?

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Quote from: JLynn171 on July 15, 2015, 09:11:08 AM

And I mean really, really lost.
A lot of people can't remember their passwords after 4 minutes since they set it up.
But apart this, there's several ways bitcoins can get lost, like in example if you have a wallet on a USB key and this breaks and you have no cold backup.

This will inevitably bring, in the future, to less than those 21 million cap.
And they WILL keep going down.

Is there a plan to reintegrate them?

I myself am responsible for atleast 5-10BTC out floating in wallets that are basically unrecoverable, some was just deleting the wallet or throwing out the old computer with BTC wallet that still had some on it (at the time a couple BTC was basically worthless and i didnt see any reason to keep it) another way i lost lil over 2BTC was when i bought some from ATM and had them sent to my phone wallet (which was not backed up) then the phone got left on side of highway while changing a tire since i used my phone for flashlight (those were actually worth keeping) but ya if just me 1 user of BTC has contributed that amount im sure the combined amounts of "lost" BTC will be high and are unrecoverable...

Perfect example of why lost btc should never be replaced, although JLynn171 has unfortunally lost his phone with 2btc on it nobody can prove that someone else didn't pick up the phone and swipe the btc to there own cold wallet.
Sure the coins could be marked but they could move.

and how pissed off would the guy who bought coins 2 years ago and is waiting for 3-4 years before cashing out his investment and just letting them sit there if they were "declared lost" then put back into circulation through act of mining... they would be stealing... once a coin is mined it is sent out to anonymousville to live forever and to be passed around or sit in a wallet or just thrown away...

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Quote from: JLynn171 on July 15, 2015, 09:11:08 AM

So, unless people intentionally sent coins to 1DontSentHereCoz1tsGone4Ever they cannot prove that they are telling the truth or don't have any backups.

Could someone please explain how this address works?
I imagine that it's just a btc address that is guaranteed some how that the private keys have been distroyed, but are the coins still sitting in that wallet/address and could anyone ever hack it to steal the coins?

i think it's a joke man, that address does not exist lol, but i guess someone could customize it with some tools

i don't know if this is what he meant or even this was in his mind when he posted the top comment but there is an address that only eats bitcoins and in fact destroys them:
https://blockchain.info/address/1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE

this address is without private keys so if you send to that address the coins will be lost forever!

ausbit

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And I mean really, really lost.
A lot of people can't remember their passwords after 4 minutes since they set it up.
But apart this, there's several ways bitcoins can get lost, like in example if you have a wallet on a USB key and this breaks and you have no cold backup.

This will inevitably bring, in the future, to less than those 21 million cap.
And they WILL keep going down.

Is there a plan to reintegrate them?

I myself am responsible for atleast 5-10BTC out floating in wallets that are basically unrecoverable, some was just deleting the wallet or throwing out the old computer with BTC wallet that still had some on it (at the time a couple BTC was basically worthless and i didnt see any reason to keep it) another way i lost lil over 2BTC was when i bought some from ATM and had them sent to my phone wallet (which was not backed up) then the phone got left on side of highway while changing a tire since i used my phone for flashlight (those were actually worth keeping) but ya if just me 1 user of BTC has contributed that amount im sure the combined amounts of "lost" BTC will be high and are unrecoverable...

Perfect example of why lost btc should never be replaced, although JLynn171 has unfortunally lost his phone with 2btc on it nobody can prove that someone else didn't pick up the phone and swipe the btc to there own cold wallet.
Sure the coins could be marked but they could move.

JLynn171

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Quote from: GODLIKE on July 15, 2015, 02:07:26 AM

And I mean really, really lost.
A lot of people can't remember their passwords after 4 minutes since they set it up.
But apart this, there's several ways bitcoins can get lost, like in example if you have a wallet on a USB key and this breaks and you have no cold backup.

This will inevitably bring, in the future, to less than those 21 million cap.
And they WILL keep going down.

Is there a plan to reintegrate them?

I myself am responsible for atleast 5-10BTC out floating in wallets that are basically unrecoverable, some was just deleting the wallet or throwing out the old computer with BTC wallet that still had some on it (at the time a couple BTC was basically worthless and i didnt see any reason to keep it) another way i lost lil over 2BTC was when i bought some from ATM and had them sent to my phone wallet (which was not backed up) then the phone got left on side of highway while changing a tire since i used my phone for flashlight (those were actually worth keeping) but ya if just me 1 user of BTC has contributed that amount im sure the combined amounts of "lost" BTC will be high and are unrecoverable...

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Quote from: pooya87 on July 15, 2015, 01:43:32 AM