Topic: What to do with lost bitcoins - page 6. (Read 5600 times)

This will be prone to all kinds of misuse and abuse. Just like it happens in real life with wills that are successfully contested in courts


I tend to disagree

And I think that making changes to protocol which are accepted by the consensus of miners will leave no chance to abuse this system or exploit it in any way. As I see it, the power of miners to take away bitcoins is not potentially different from their power of adding them. I mean its exposure to possible exploits, before all. In effect, claiming that it can be exploited comes down to claiming that all other parts of Bitcoin (like adding new bitcoins to circulation) can be exploited in essentially the same degree. That's why setting it on a protocol level would be the only possibility to make it work as intended


I don't see how it is anti-anything

If you really want to make this happen, since it seems you are interested in this idea,
then it will need to be implemented under the current protocol by using a multi-sig address
and with other parties with keys, who you will trust to only move your coins after it has been
confirmed you are dead and then they will donate them or whatever based upon your wishes.

But currently that is the only way. Otherwise there will need to be direct protocol changes that
allow address contents to be "taken back" after certain requirements are met. Personally I would
not agree with such changes to be placed directly into the protocol because such a thing would allow
possible exploits to take others coins. The issue with this proposition is, you are asking the miners to
be able to not only verify transactions and build blocks, but also the power to take away bitcoins or
in theory move other user's bitcoins. This should never be allowed, is anti-Bitcoin, is against the social
contract, is against the design of the game theory system, and just plain asking for trouble.

So I'm pretty confident this path will never occur. But you could still create a secondary layer on top
of the Bitcoin network or use a thirdparty website to facilitate your idea, without directly changing the
Bitcoin protocol.



True, but if that is your concern, then creating a multi-sig address and setting up your Estate and Will
properly should alleviate any issues that your coins will be "lost". In theory, you could donate them away
through your Will that your estate executor is obligated to perform.


A direct protocol change to add in the ability as you are suggesting is possibility way more controversial
than the blocksize limit debate. I personally believe both sides of that debate would agree not to do this.

I never said there are any technical issues with that


That shouldn't be a big issue, either

And you don't need to grab someone's wallet without its private key. You just mark these transactions as invalid, and these bitcoins can be considered as not mined. That would require some updates to Bitcoin protocol, but I don't think there should be any technical problems to implement this

is that possible to take control of someone's wallet without its private key? who do you mean can send those forgotten coins?

well, it is big problem that people forget their private keys. but I think, it is not that easy to control all forgotten private keys unless it is controlled by many people or a good system. imo.

Never. Is the correct answer here. Why do you care about other people's money/possesion/bitcoin? It doesn't matter what they do with their BTC.
It is not that we are losing something when others lose their coins - quite the contrary our coins are worth slightly more.
There is zero problem for bitcoin network too - bitcoin is divisible to eighth decimal places or so - there is no need to recycle lost coins.

What about adding some parameter which would basically say that the coins from this wallet shouldn't be moved under any circumstances with default being set to donating them after some period. That might work very much like organ donation, and the way voluntary consent is obtained (opt-in vs opt-out). In this case, both options can be used, i.e. in the case of an opt-out the coins of anyone who has not explicitly refused to donate them will be moved after the expiration of the timeout, or that timeout period could be set by default to infinity effectively meaning that the coins should never be moved. That would be the opt-in option, i.e. only the coins of those who have given explicit consent will be donated...

Also, instead of donating coins, they might be marked as just not yet mined


Shrouds have no pockets

We cant do anything about lost bitcoins. The only thing
we can do for that is check ur history. Where did your
bitcoin was sent. Maybe it was theft or what. But, the
Best thing to do is invest your bitcoin that can gives
double the income.

Only if the owner of the 'dormant account' has publicly admitted that the keys for said account was lost/corrupted, in other words, they no longer have access to the account and all funds in it can no longer be recovered by them.

Though the problem with that is verifying that the "owner" is the real one.

That's a better idea, but before taking it under control from the first authority it need to be informed to them. Else it might create issues between the first and second authorities. Also as mentioned these were applicable in very few selected countries.

I think it's the same as in Italy and it's totally reasonable if you ask me, since it's a waste for an apartment to rot unused when it can be recycled and put to a good use by someone else.

Right , investing in a reliable and trusted sites is more than enough than stocking it in our wallet. Those big amount of btc will help lots of trusted investment sites to improve more. Though still in stocking it in our wallet it can get bigger without doing nothing . Still helpful, We just need to monitor it not to reach that big so it will not lost.

The issue is that there is no way to know if coins are lost or not. I have coins that I have not touched in years, but they are certainly not lost. If they were confiscated, I would consider that theft.


That is theft, whether it is sanctioned by a government or not.

There is no way to differentiate lost coins from coins in a wallet doing nothing, so the best thing to do is nothing, because any measure which could be used as a way to subtract bitcoin from a wallet will open the door to chargebacks and that runs contrary to the ideals of bitcoin.

if this could happen?. Bitcoin users are in full control of their transactions including bitcoin funds that they had, and how about people who kept their funds for 10 years or more and hope the price of bitcoin to the moon?

I think that 10 years is a pretty good overall time period where the address would have to be confirmed at some point. 50 years would be way too long.

As for how something like this would effect the value of Bitcoin, I have no idea, but as long as the system was reliable and there was no room for error I don't think that there would be an issue with it. Freeing them up to the same reward rate as the current amount would probably be a good thing.

True, Just Better We invested Only, Better to invest than not used. we can invest in ico or a lot of things you could do with the money

most people in investing in bitcoin are in it for the future. People buy it, send it to a wallet, save the privkey and never look back(at least for a few years). i even remember of post around here of a guy who bought 2~4 bitcoins using his savings and hided the keys  in a pendrive in his backyard(burried).

So, how would you know which wallet has "lost" bitcoins and which is just holding for the years?

This will never be done because we will never know if the coins are lost or just saved. I may want to save mine for my grandchildren. If we start changing the system to take away people's coins, people will no longer trust Bitcoin and it will fail.

There is no way to. Just because they have not moved does not mean they are lost

Deleting (returning bitcoin into blocks) bitcoins after a longer period of time of unusing the wallet they're on. That period should be around 15 years.. 10 years seems like, maybe, a reasonable amount of time for someone to store or unleast thy'd probably remember after 10 years if they've not lost the key or login info and 50years is a little too much imo.