Bitcoin Forum

So the bitcoin currency is designed to have an upper limit of 21M bircoins probably reached in the year ~2100.

Every day people are loosing passwords to their wallets, hdd's contaning bitcoins break down, papers with btc addresses get destroyed somehow.

Is it thinkable that all bircoins are destroyed someday and because there can't be new bitcoins generated, the currency will be dead then?

I searched the forum but didn't find a similar topic.

Possible, but not probable imo.
I don't think you really need that many bitcoins in total, we could just 'use' Satoshis, and maybe someday miliSatoshis and so on and so on.

There is only a very little chance that all bitcois dwindle away with time. With the value of bitcoin constantly increasing people are more and more careful in keeping their bitcoins in a save place. Of course, many bitcoins will be lost in the future - maybe there are only 100k left in 2100. But this would also be a time in which your descendants receive wages and pensions in femtoBTC.       

The upper limit is less than 21 million. The actual amount will be a bit less than 20999999.97690000


Probably closer to the year 2140


That would require that everyone in the world lose all of their bitcoins simultaneously.  Otherwise the remaining bitcoins are just spread thinner and thinner.

I do not think so, Bitcoins are not THAT old and yet over half of the possible Bitcoins that can be mined has already been mined. All 21 million will likely be mined in 10-20 years.

You are wrong, and you clearly have no idea what you are talking about.  Why would you just make a random guess at what you think might happen without any understanding of how things work?

Half of the bitcoins were mined in the first 4 years.

One quarter of the bitcoins will be mined in the second four years. (for a total of three fourths of the bitcoins after 8 years)

One eighth of the bitcoins will be mined in the third four years. (for a total of seven eights of the bitcoins after 12 years)

One sisxteenth of the bitcoins will be mined in the fourth four years. (for a total of fifteen sixteenths of the bitcoins after 16 years)

One thirtysecond of the bitcoins will be mined in the fifth four years (for a total of thirty-one thirtyseconds of the bitcoins after 20 years)

One sixtyfourth of the bitcoins will be mined in the sixth four years (for a total of sixty-three sixtyfourths of the bitcoins after 24 years)

One one-hundred-twenty-eighth of the bitcoins will be mined in the seventh four years (for a total of one hundred twenty-seven one-hundred-twenty-eighths of the bitcoins after 28 years)

And so on, and so on until the last of the fractions of bitcoin are mined somewhere around the year 2140.

I believe bitcoins will not be fully lost.

Several new algorithms are being generated and new thinktanks are discovering many ideas to store and save coins.

Their experience and losses give us tremendous technology to store and use coins in the future.