Topic: What to do with lost bitcoins - page 7. (Read 5600 times)

I think the lost Bitcoins should be added to the blockchain again to be mined by miners. Each X years a new chain could be created with the lost BTCs.

Makes no sense to lose some amounts of Bitcoins forever because someone lost it. If this happen frequently, someday we will have few Bitcoins circulating and the most coins lost forever.

So what if someone decides to save for 51 years or put something away for the next generation, what do you just steal them.  its this sort of thinking that most people using bitcoin are trying to get away from.  MY MONEY IS MY MONEY, KEEP YOUR FILTHY HANDS OFF IT.   

This is true for banks. And in my country same policy applies; Government takes the fiat money from inactive bank accounts, but there is a significant difference. National governments have the control of fiat money circulation and have the right to take these money for common good and transfer the funds to accounts that belong to this country and not to people. But using bitcoin this is different. Let's say that we have 50 bitcoins dormant in blockchain we do not know to whom they belong. These coins after some period (time is not the point) must somehow be put into circulation. Maybe someone can transfer it to his own wallet or if sold to exchange market someone will take fiat money. As you proposed to finance scientific research or I say a NGO. But who will decide that? This is my question

I don't think you can try to cancel old Bitcoins because there is no way to know if they are lost or just saved. Some people could save Bitcoins for 50 years to give to their children or grandchildren.

I think I have a good solution for this, never lose your private key, problem solved.
If you are familiar with online world and then using bitcoin you should know to always keep the private keys in a safe place and failing to do so is no one else's fault but your's.

First, there is no way to technically distinguish between lost coins and purposefully unmoved coins.
They both are the same and it is not reasonable to make people move their coins every so often in
order to prove that they still have control. If in the event, a protocol change is proposed that users
will need to transfer their coins to "safer addresses" that is done as a security measure, not just so
that the devs/miners know "we can't take them back" from them.

This mindset contradicts one of the reasons why Satoshi created Bitcoin in the first place.
Your money is your money and in theory, no one can take it away under any circumstances.
Comparing what regulated banks are allowed to do should not be applied to Bitcoin ever.

With regard to lost coins Satoshi didn't say what you said but:

He did not entertain reabsorbing them, since that would contradict his foundational ideology.

I think it is better if lost bitcoins will be lost forever.Blockchain has no isses of failed delivering and losing bitcoins.Dead and untouched wallets must remain as is because it is someones property we dont have rights to do that

Why you government support Buddy. If they make btc as a centralized money and these political idiots create more loop holes how they created in their constituency rules.

You obviously don't get it, as always

I'm not talking about taking all bitcoins from the wallets that existed for more than 10 years. I'm talking only about those wallets that have been absolutely dormant for that period of time. I mean no transactions, no signed messages, absolutely nothing. If you think that 10 years is too small (which may well be), let's take 50 years (and hope that Bitcoin will still exist after half a century)


You are in for a big surprise. If nobody claims the funds in a bank account they are taken by the government. In different countries different terms are set, but these accounts do expire after a certain period of inactivity. I guess the same applies to bank vaults

I think it is better to don't do anything because it can affect the price of bitcoin if they are planning to reverse bitcoin from the address when they are sent the bitcoin.. And this is the advantage of bitcoin because no one can access and touch that bitcoin to sell it that can affect the value of bitcoin so if no one can touch it even we are selling all our bitcoin it has still a value because some bitcoin are lose. and no one can sell it.

That's the main bitcoin problem. maybe cause of it hasn't government's support or cause of all operations are provided through the net, but bitcoin is not protected from scammers and hackers at all.

sorry but some people are hoarding.for god reason. be it pension. be it future inheritance for their kids.
but you seem to not care so:

ok. let me get your bank account and however much you deposited 10 years ago.. thats mine now
have any relatives that invested into gold and has sat in a vault 10 years ago.. thats mine now

Wait.. lets raid your pension pot because that is in an account for 40 years... thats mine now
wait. your grandma has a gold chain she left sat in her jewellry box.. thats all mine now

wait theres a house on a street in your name thats older than 10 years.. thats mine now

as for saying funds should go to "to finance scientific research..." LOL sorry but banks are happy to throw millions of dollars at blockstream, circle, bloq, blockchain.info .. they dont need to rip apart bitcoins immutability/fungibility to fund those 'research' businesses.

i do laugh at your 'research' word you threw in.. anyone can claim they are researchers and never have to produce results/products/services for such funding.

seriously flawed plan you have and this idea is not new.. many greedy a-holes have dreamed up a free pay day due to other peoples pension/investment/inheritance hoards.

no one should touch other people funds no matter how long its held. many people have put paper wallets in a 'time capsule' or a LastWill for their offspring. and it should stay with them

if you disagree.. then give all YOUR property/funds over 10 years old and practice what you preach by you being the first to hand over YOUR property.

lets see you backtrack and try to reword it to protect your own property/pension reserves from being handed out

As to me, you are confusing different issues

No one is talking about stealing here. In fact, in many countries there are laws regulating how the lost things (for example, buried treasures) can be claimed as the property of those who found them. If I remember correctly, in Denmark, if no one lives in an apartment for a year, it can be taken by anyone, and the previous right of ownership is revoked


I guess the answer should be a definite no. But you can leave, of course

Taking something that doesn't belong to you is theft.  I suggest you take your criminal idea and character flaw and go create an altcoin that implements your "We'll steal your stuff after a while" idea.  I'm not interested in having your horrible idea in my bitcoin, and since bitcoin is a consensus system you'll never get such a change made anyhow.

Since this topic has been discussed HUNDREDS of times in the past 8 years, can we please just lock this thread now?  Perhaps anyone that posts in this thread with a sig ad after this should just automatically be perma-banned?

this is the loop hole of bitcoins and its blockchain .and i think in the future run wehn the top  programmers will find a good solution for this problem and recover all the bitcoins that have been lost  then it would be awesome .

We all know that there can be no more than 21M bitcoins. We also know that every day some bitcoins get lost forever. That means that they still exist on the blockchain, but no one can access them since the keys are lost. I don't think that this is a right thing. We should recover these coins somehow, and that issue could be addressed eventually. I suggest adding a special flag which would add a certain period of time after which the wallet with that flag set by the wallet owner should be declared as public property. The transactions that credited these bitcoins to such a wallet should be cancelled (just like correcting entries are made in a real ledger), and the coins should be moved to a new wallet, for example, to finance scientific research...

In this way, we can "resurrect" some of the lost bitcoins for the common good. To avoid asking and answering the same things all over again, I add important clarification below: