Bitcoin Forum

Going through the archives and finding an interesting post regarding how to replace lost bitcoins.

I would agree that, just like in the banking system, every 5,10 or 20 years, bank accounts that have been forgotten are taken over as they are considered that the client passed away and did not mention it in his will to be given somewhere else.

Thus if we are to see Bitcoin or any digital currency overtaking the financial system, it is definite that bitcoins that are unused or unaccessible for a given amount of years should enter into the pool of distributing to the miners as a bonus incentive of the standard rate they are currently given.

Reading through plenty of negative comments of sitters not willing to login to their account for many years even though they might have access to it or want to live in a remote area without accessing it for many years.
I have to say the following, gold is precious throughout time because even if lost, it can be found as any treasure is found. Unfortunately the same cannot apply for bitcoin as lost hard-disks or accounts are essentially lost.
Someone can argue, "but we can implement more digits therefore the deflationary condition will just be adjusted".

Here is where bitcoins value will be lost, because just like businesses dont appreciate inflation, the same applies for deflation. Everyone prefers stability, therefore if bitcoin is to become a main medium of exchange it needs to consider its stability of promised coins. Otherwise competitor currencies will adopt this strategy and bitcoin is looking at a gloomy future as businesses will not be willing to adopt it since it will be hard to find anyone with actual bitcoins if people are willing to abandon them in forgotten accounts.

 We're being punked right?  Login to what account now?

I was hoping you can translate the logging into account as synchronizing your wallet. But as I am not a programmer I am not sure if such a protocol can be implemented.

Regenerating the lost coins create flaw in the functioning as well the capital count leading to a major manipulation problem. This at times affects the reputation of the wallet service providers in which specific number of coins were held and now if once again regenerated.

You have no idea which coins are lost. You will end up stealing coins from a father who saved 100 BTC for his son's education/wedding etc. Lost coins are lost. That's the end of it.

There are many problems with this idea that have been discussed before.

Firstly, at what time do you consider someone's coins to be "lost"?

How do determine coins to be lost? Is it that an output has not been spent from after a certain amount of time? If so, does the spending transaction have to be confirmed? If it does have to be confirmed, how do you prevent miners from blacklisting that output so that after the time limit is up they can claim the Bitcoin in that output? If it does not have to be confirmed, how do you ensure that everyone knows that that Bitcoin was "active" if the transaction never confirms?

How do you differentiate between "lost" and "long term storage" coins?

There are no such things as Bitcoin accounts, and synchronizing your wallet means nothing. Other nodes have no way to know that the wallet software in control of a certain address is in sync with the network, nor do they care. Furthermore, it is entirely possible and likely that people have fully synced wallets but have forgotten the password to their wallet and thus the coins are lost, but the wallet is still synced. This also applies to online wallets; the service (and thus the wallet) is fully synced but the owner of the Bitcoin has forgotten their password.

i have coins that havnt been touched since 2012.

if the OP thinks its ok to destroy my coins(for instance of a 5 year limit) and allow a pool to generate a coinbase that includes an amount of my coins because of lets say a 5 year threshold.

then lets first ask anyone that thinks its a good idea.. to first delete their own private keys and see how they feel when they suddenly cant have their coins.

lost coins are a small portion of the ecosystem, not enough to cause instability...they simply add a little bit more deflation.

Overall my statement is whether it would be possible to make protocol respond and confirm wallets that get synced, if not then the whole concept might be more complicated then I thought, again I am no programmer, I am an economist who is just hoping that the digital currency would be more practical in use in open markets than just being stored for value.

In the end when businesses realize that no one is interested in making transactions with a bitcoin since everyone is looking to just store it, they will be turning to alternative digital currencies making the whole project here a ghost prototype.
And in the end it is better to store something tangible than intangible.

So if this replacement is impossible then the idea left is to expand creation of new coins to a level that is related to the frozen amounts in order to keep stability in transactions and incentives for miners and businesses to keep going.

In the end by 2140 if things dont change, most likely no transactions will be done cause everyone wants to store bitcoin since no new bitcoins are created then it seems to me like a "blackhole" is going to be created since miners will be gone since no incentives left, although I must say it will happen quite faster when people realize the trend in transactions is decreasing.
If transactions stay stagnant then all we are doing is creating some employment opportunities for miners until the better system emerges.

Again I am not here to argue that programmers here are not good enough, I am just referencing the history of money markets in order not to repeat it.

the moment you start touching other people's coins is when bitcoin is dead. even if you are touching coins like those inside of 1BitcoinEater.... address.

and you shouldn't be worrying about something that is not an issue now.
there are 1,620,000,000,000,000 units of bitcoin currently available for you and
there will be nearly 2,100,000,000,000,000 units of bitcoin available in total in the future.
don't worry about what "may be" lost.

And you approve this kind of behaviour? For me it is clearly not right to take that money, but banks are institutions which never were known for having high moral standards.

Bitcoin won't overtake fiat based financial system, it will exist as an alternative.
Who will decide that? It will be 5, 10, 20 or 50 years until your BTC will be recycled?
How you will enforce that and who will take the BTC exactly, miners, why?

So you would rather take freedom from the users and enforce this set of rules to stabilize bitcoin?
Then how it will be different from centrally controlled currency?

Bitcoin depreciates in value, it isn't really supposed to be a net-zero currency. And as other users have mentioned, they have their own wallets that have Bitcoin in it that they have not touched for a long time. Other users might be saving their Bitcoin in a desire to pass something on to their children, and they might have a period where that money is not allowed to be spent. What happens then?

By 2140 the block rewards become so small that it doesn't even make sense to recycle the coins since chances are it might take the entirely of Bitcoin's life to go through just one wallet of recycled coins then. As the coins become more scarce, they become more valuable, values goes up, etc.

*EDIT: Appreciates in value, not depreciates.

if you think that bitcoin will be used only as a store..
then destroying coins to then just add them to a new blockreward 1:1 wont change anything. the pool that collects the new coins will just store them..

redistributing wealth by destroying thousands of peoples coins that were bing held for their retirement. just to hand to a pool to hoard is not good nor useful nor solving a issue. infact it creates more reasons for people to not use bitcoin.

..
the solution to the paying mininging pools debate in upto 120 years is simple.

it does not mean gigabyte blocks by midnight scare stories.
it means slow natural growth over years.

EG 2mb 2017
3mb 2018
4mb 2019
5mb 2020
6mb 2021

and so on.

we already know 8mb blocks are safe now. so getting to 8mb in a few years and 16mb after that and 32mb in a dacade or so and so on is safe, rational and allows alot.

think about it. lets say $0.04 per transaction was the acceptable amount
1mb= $88 (2200tx/block)
2mb=$176 (4400tx/block)
4mb= $352
16mb = $1408
64mb = $5632
256mb = $22528

so imagine in MANY DECADES when 256mb block worth of data is treated like we treat an old floppy disk today (we already kind of do: 256mb microsd 2017 vs floppy disk 1997)
can earn a pool over $22k a block by allowing 563200tx on average each paying only $0.04

again this is not 256mb by midnight. this is over time.. in a relaxed natural progression that dynamically changes over time as node capabilities grow based on tech, efficiencies and internet infrastructure changes

Wow, really? I have a wallet of coins I mined at Graets pool, Ozcoin in 2011 that has never been opened or moved. They have been in cold storage for six years. You gonna help me out and erase my abandoned btc for me? What an asshole!

Again, I believe people are missing out on the big picture here.

I am not mentioning only to destroy the old, I am just suggesting create enough new ones so that the transaction flow stays solvent.
Basic economics of the quantity theory of money: Money supply x Velocity of transactions = Price level x Amount of goods/services transacted
If more and more people store bitcoins and avoid purchases then the result will be less and less transactions and less incentives for miners making the currency vulnerable from new miners for an attack whom have a better plan on dealing with the situation.
Hardforks seem to be unavoidable so I just hope for you to choose the best side of the situation based on your knowledge.
I do predict in the next halving of rewards will have a significant change in who stays to mine to overtake the network.

As for central control, yes central control is inevitable but I don't see it as a bad thing cause it will be centrally controlled by the world and not some specific nation. If it isn't then I don't see how practical it is to store something intangible opposed to metals or other tangible items because right now bitcoin is simply functioning as a shock absorber so gold prices dont fly too high.

As for hater comments, I feel pity cause even if frozen amounts are not moved they will likely lose most value anyway by staying on the wrong side of a hardfork.

There are already cryptocurrencies with permanent monetary inflation. Use one of those and leave us pitiful Bitcoiners alone. Thanks!

i believe satoshi said something like, lost coins are considered a donations to the other users holding bitcoin, and i agree with him, it only make bitcoin more rare and more valuable

i also concur that if many(like the majority let's say 0%) of these coins were lost, it could start a trouble, because then you really need to increase the supply, as there would not be enough bitcoin for everyone

Why do you believe that lower M means lower V? If PQ is constant, then V rises with lower M.

"Centrally controlled by the world" is an oxymoron.

Anyway, one reason I don't like your idea one is that there is no way to determine what the right amount of inflation is. Zero is just as good as anything else, and so the simplicity of zero makes it the best choice.

Incorrect.
Olders coins are stored on the mainchain before any fork, and will be valid as long as the protocol is not changed to make them invalid. If a fork creates a multiple coin split, the owner has a stake in both coins, as they share the same mainchain before the fork occurs.

To overtake financial system there is no need of this. Why to increase supply by bringing lost bitcoin into the supply chain. This doesn't make any sense, bitcoin price depends upon simple demand and supply ratio. So finite and limited supply is the key factor for growth of bitcoin and its price.

Don't know what makes you think like this.  ;)

Not really.  Conservative investors will keep both coins and only ditch the minority coin when its very clear and not worth that much.

I too think that it is a dumb idea and the OP may not have any Bitcoin stored for his future. I have stored Bitcoins and some altcoins stored for the future which am not gonna use or transact it. So whether it is lost bitcoins..?

Oh dear :'( :'( :'(

He is not saying that "idle" coins needs to be regenerated, but rather asking how this could be overcome if there are too little coins left to

distribute to the remaining users of this currency. This is where most new users of this technology are missing the whole point... they cannot

see how "lost" coins can actually be beneficial and that Bitcoin can be adapted to create smaller units. { 0.0000000001 for instance }

That's not how hardforks works.

And stop trying to steal my bitcoins. I own them and you have no right to take them away for any reason.

Deflationary features is what makes Bitcoin beautiful.  Please do not remove this feature in Bitcoin.  Once lost, let it be lost forever.  Besides it is not to me or someone else  anyway.  This kind of feature is not broken and  does not need to be fixed.


The problem with this was been discussed in the earlier post.  To determine which is just idle and which is is really lost.  Seems we will be having problem with that.

i am a programmer but not as deep as satoshi was , anyway yes your theory is right it is kind of possible scenario that the coins which are there left for more like 100years will be then automatically distributed so they can be reused but unfortunately bitcoin does not has that future because we already has the documentation for how bitcoin works and there is no where stated this kind of stuff and this can make the whole network vulnerable too

I don't think it's such a bad feature that coins can get lost.
Lost coins decrease the supply and give so the available coins more value.
If the lost coins would somehow show up again, that could disturbe the price developement.

Frozen amounts simply can't 'stay on the wrong side of a hardfork'. They are permanently stored on the blockchain and should a hard fork occur, it will be one of that same blockchain.

I don’t think that this idea is even possible with Bitcoin. With banks and a regular Fiat currency it is possible because you are doing with physical assets and real paper cash. With bitcoin you are dealing with a virtual world where Bitcoins are lost forever. I don’t think one could retrieve someone’s bitcoin that hasn’t been used. This could be bad in the wrong hands too because you would not know if someone would claim you hadn’t used your account recently enough.

Wow, didnt realize such a large opposition but i believe you haven't understood my idea. Nevertheless I do hope that you all prove me wrong for the sake of bitcoin which i also am part of.

Considering the hard fork, I understand it will be multiplied twice for each part, but those who dont believe in a stable non-deflationary side will sell most likely that part and later on realize that they chose to bid on the wrong side. If they decide to keep both sides then that is good for each one who does this.

Furthermore to remention the quantity theory of money, someone mentioned if Price x purchases remains constant then yes velocity can increase by a decreased money supply. But realistically in a deflationary condition price will not stay constant and the more people see the deflation the more they keep onto the coins to see prices go further down and by keeping the coins transactions will also decrease, so it is inevitable a down spiral of both money supply and velocity of transactions, my prediction is not soon but at some point in time if unchanged will.

So back to my suggestion is that to create new bitcoins is not to create inflation but to keep a steady rate of 0% inflation. If this is not conducted then we will have a hyperdeflation at some point which means that essentially people lose interest in something that is not useful for transactions and economic activity anymore and will look for other mediums of exchange. Cause in the end money is suppose to be a medium of exchange. If you want to store value you should look for something tangible.