Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin! Bitcoin!! Bitcoin!!! We’re enthusiasts and solely want to know the future of this technology. I believe Satoshi Nakamoto the founder original intention for creating Bitcoin is to develop a Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. This electronic cash system can be used for daily payment and cash circulation in general. It is believed that the total amount of bitcoin in circulation is 21 million bitcoin that exist.
Many capitalized on the worth of bitcoin and use it as a store of value. they end up trading their bitcoin, converting it to physical currencies (Fiat) to solve material problems like buying properties. If this action continue like this and people keep selling their bitcoin for material possessions. Wont the amount of bitcoin in circulation depreciate or even vanish? Because bitcoin is been converted to fiat currency and consumed for material things.
Jack just sold the bitcoin in his wallet to buy 2020 GLK Mercedes Benz, leaving the wallet empty. Is this action not detrimental to bitcoin?

You somehow seem to not understand that when somebody "convert bitcoin into fiat" doesn't burn that bitcoin, instead it ends up in the wallet of somebody else who have paid the right fiat amount for it.
So if Jack's wallet is empty, it only means that Peter now has some more bitcoins. And it's not detrimental, it's actually the reason Bitcoin was invented.

Also you didn't read. For now there are 18.8M bitcoins mined. There will have to pass many years until all 21M bitcoins will be mined. Also because some people have died or made mistakes, some bitcoins are lost forever hence not in circulation.

Your bitcoin doesn't go into the oblivion whenever you sell. For every seller, they should also be a buyer. The same way when you buy/sell stocks or even when you sell on eCommerce platforms, sold assets just go to new owners. There isn't such thing as a sort of "central bitcoin exchange" that buys/sells the coins.

when someone sells their bitcoins and converts them to fiat it doesn't mean the bitcoins will disappear, that's not the concept my friend.
You don't forget the trading system where when someone sells there must be someone who buys it.
and in bitcoin it's like that when they sell their bitcoin on the other hand the bitcoin is bought by someone else and the cycle continues like that it will not disappear.
and in the case of jack who sells his bitcoins to buy mercedes, it means that jack has indeed lost his bitcoins but on the other hand there are people who increase their bitcoins from the results of buying bitcoins.

When someone after a year on the forum draws this conclusion, I wonder what that person has been doing all this time? You should start the crypto school again and start with the basics - Chapter 1 -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

Another misconception I have often read is about halving, as some think it means that every 4 years the total supply of BTC is reduced by 50% - which is somehow in line with what the OP thinks, the conversion of BTC -> fiat and halvings leads to the complete disappearance of Bitcoin ::)

Probably needs to go back further and understand how marketplaces of intangible assets work lol. Though I guess the UIs of the likes of Coinbase are so good that it makes some people think that Coinbase(or maybe Satoshi lol) themselves are the ones buying and selling the coins.

Not to belittle you though, OP. There's no such thing as a stupid question, and you're a tad bit smarter now. ;)

When you buy something from a store and pay fiat to the cashier does the fiat money get vanished ? No right.
Same thing happens with bitcoin and when you exchange it for fiat you are just giving your bitcoins to someone who is giving you the fiat money.
The bitcoins remain in the wallet of the person you got the fiat from. So it is basically still present in the circulation.
The number of bitcoins will remain in circulation unless and until they are lost by the owner.

If there is a seller, there will always be a buyer too.
Using these popular people selling their Bitcoin will make Bitcoin useless. For sure each of us got different reasons why we bought Bitcoin in the first place, some could be because of investment, some are for technology or some are just for nothing (because they don't know how Bitcoin works).

So using "Person A sold their Bitcoin", is not a proper way of defining what Bitcoin is and how Bitcoin works.

I think too what OP saying is bitcoin in circulation will vanish if Bitcoin is totally lost like private keys lost so that the Bitcoin will not be accessible at all, but then again it's still part of the circulation or supply.

Well, it would have been better if people sold to invest in things that are beneficial to Bitcoin. For example, you sell to buy something from people that accept Bitcoin, or use the Bitcoin to buy from them directly. If you need to buy expensive things, better to buy those that earn you more Bitcoin and do not rely on the centralized systems to operate...more like independent businesses.
I think this is better done in peer-to-peer manner on decentralized and transparent platforms.

If everyone is contributing to Bitcoin and not just benefitting from it, we could end up creating robust self-sustaining economy for Bitcoin, as it should be.
*You earn Bitcoin as independent human and also pay independent businesses/people.

I was totally lost in thought about the perfect reply until I saw this, this is very educative@Op thanks for the response.
Same flow of bitcoin continues until bitcoin is used totally right ?
What I meant is that, bitcoin is not detrimental or lost in this process right,the process/chain flows till total adoption of bitcoin use huh ? ?

The only way that Bitcoin is disappearing is when someone sends it to a burn address or loses their private keys or dies without giving anyone access to the keys. The rate at which t his happens is extremely slow compared to the total supply, and because Bitcoin is highly divisible and can theoretically be even made more divisible, this likely won't even be a problem for the network.

Yes the real circulation supply won't be exact 21 mils at the end because there must be some wallets that "lost" because it's already too long not doing any transaction and probably the owner of the wallet lost it or passed or something like that, we could consider that as a natural "burn".
But there are also the real "burn" when someone sends his btc to burn wallet and the bitcoin won't be recover forever. And i think it's good for the holders because the more the bitcoin "vanish" the more valueable the thing is.

That was the initial idea for sure but we have already deviated from that path. Bitcoin is nothing but an investment right at this moment and that's why we are seeing this madness from almost all segments of the society. It has purely became an accumulation game!


These kind of things won't hurt bitcoin. Because bitcoin is not water that will vaporize in the air. It is just exchanging hands. When a transaction happens, there is a seller and on the other side, there must be a buyer. So it is just changing ownership and nothing else.

Jack sells Bitcoin for a car that has an updated version year after year. Removes Bitcoin from his wallet which has non-renewable value. After the ownership of the Bitcoin left, the price of the Bitcoin he bought was over when it was cheap. No one can go back to the previous price and if Jack wants to have it back then queue up at the current price.

It's as simple as that, what you have let go of is no longer yours. Someone else has an additional portfolio that Jack is selling. Ironic isn't it? only car ownership he can be proud of right now.

Maybe you should learn more about bitcoin, how crypto works or even how transferring money works? The idea of Bitcoin as a mean of P2P payment was change over time, just the same as gold on its earlier days of humanity and now become a store of value.

No. It's no different to when you buy ice cream or a Mercedes Benz with fiat. It goes to someone else who will use that currency for something else. Therefore, it continues to circulate around, the very definition of a currency.

Though, you didn't really touch upon it specifically, there is actually a way Bitcoin could "vanish" as you put it. As the generations pass, the amount of people dying with Bitcoin will increase, and therefore the amount of Bitcoin in circulation will decrease. Now, we can't accurately measure when this happens, but we do know regardless that this is happening at a very slow rate, and shouldn't be a problem within yours, and my lifetime.

selling all the assets we have doesn't mean it burns coins so even if we don't have assets in our portfolio, many other people still have them and that's not a problem and bitcoins don't disappear.
maybe bitcoins can disappear when you forget the password in the portfolio you have and in it there are lots of bitcoins then it's certain to be lost and dangerous for you :D

One of the most common things on which you would really be having in mind when you are still a noob on this market which it isnt surprising that these kind of question arise but if he do knows on how this market or bitcoin works then for sure he would definitely be taking back these kind of question.
On answering out on OP queries then its true that whenever you do sell off your coins it doesnt mean that it is totally been burned.
There's no such thing about vanishing unless in to those coins which are locked or doesnt have an access of its true owners.

It is odd that you believe that this is the way bitcoin works, after all if that was the case and the moment you convert your bitcoin to fiat and your bitcoin was burned then the person giving you their fiat would not receive anything in exchange for it, as such it is obvious that no currency can work like that over the short or long term.

Bitcoin is just like any currency in that regard, if you want a product then you need to pay with the necessary amount of money needed to pay such product, then a trade takes place in which the possession of the item and the bitcoin exchange hands and now you got the item you wanted and the one that sold you the item now has your bitcoin, this works in the exact the same way any other form of money has ever worked.

This action is only detrimental for bitcoin if there is nobody else to buy the coins Jack sold in the market. Otherwise, it's positive not only for bitcoin, but also for every parts involved in the negotitation, because all of them are accomplishing with their personal goals (Jack got money to purchase his car, another person bought the bitcoins he was looking for from Jack and the currency's price was maintained). These negotiations are like the blood circulating in our bodies, transporting oxygen to the cells of our organisms. Without blood there isn't life and without negotiations there isn't crypto market.

Do not be too hysterical. Bitcoin is there to stay and even if you see thousands to millions of owners start selling their bitcoin, there will be people that are always waiting for the bottom to catch those bitcoins. It's a market that there's always the takers and the sellers. Also, there have been a huge number of lost bitcoins forever and they have a value that's contributing to the market cap that cannot be removed anymore. As you've said bitcoin should be used for payment as the real intent of satoshi and if somebody sold his bitcoin to buy for something, that's on him and it's about profit-taking.

There is no depreciation as to the supply of Bitcoin. A Bitcoin cannot vanish. It is hard-coded in the system. It can only be forever inaccessible. Bitcoin converted into fiat, even Bitcoin sent to the wrong network, or lost Bitcoin keys, and so on do not mean the supply of Bitcoin has decreased.

It is totally understandable for some people to convert their Bitcoin to fiat in order to buy something. Bitcoin is not yet that widely acceptable as payment by businesses.

The value of the bitcoin in circulation will not decrease or fade away, even if the bitcoin is converted into a fiat currency and its consumption for physical things will not vanish, it only goes from hand to hand or rather from wallet to wallet, it is true that we sell bitcoin to buy physical things such as a car or other things but on the other hand, there is someone who receives the bitcoin in his wallet as a price for the car, so the bitcoin will remain the same without missing anything from it, but only the owner and the wallet change.

This will never be the case because you always have to withdraw bitcoins using an exchange, which accept unlimited amounts of liquidity.

When you are exchanging your bitcoin for physically cash or any kind of currency or service, you are giving it to a person or a company that is going to sell it to individuals, that means that bitcoin does not vanish or gets taken out from the network it is just have been moved from your own wallet to another ones', but there is an issue that has been the topic of many discussion that is the fact that more on more we are focusing on  constantly trying to use bitcoin just to get to our fiat needs, thus we are just using bitcoin as an asset and a way to make profit, rather than actually use it as it was intended to be, and for the most part some people nowadays don't even look at bitcoin as a currency.

When I saw the title of the thread I thought it was going to be about Bitcoins that will be lost, or people who are going to do HODL in the very long term, but I didn't expect that basic confusion.

OP, it seems to me that you are not very clear on how Bitcoin works, you better review basic concepts. Maybe some videos of Andreas Antonopoulos would help you.

When you sell your bitcoin to buy fiat currency, cars or property so where does that Bitcoin go ? It just changed hands. It went from you to the person selling the things for bitcoin. So the Bitcoin will not vanish if the bitcoin transcations are increased.
The only way to lose bitcoins if you lost your private keys. Those lost bitcoins are gone forever as they cannot be spend.

I hope that the OP will learn something from all the answers he received - and that he will not be angry with anyone because we are surprised for a reason - 1 year on the forum is not a short time to understand at least some basics. I believe there are others who think like OP or something like that, and it's never too late to learn something new - and maybe pass that knowledge on to someone else.

Misunderstanding what Bitcoin really is, is a big obstacle to greater adaptation, and I don't just mean individuals like OPs - but politicians and powerful people who aren't as intelligent as they seem.

Technically, it hasn't dropped or vanished. However, realistically speaking as soon as Bitcoin becomes inaccessible, and there's a good enough reason for it to be considered permanently inaccessible i.e death without inheritance or losing of credentials, seed, and private key then realistically they aren't ever going to get recovered, unless quantum computers eventually break the encryption of Bitcoin addresses, then really those coins can be considered as lowering the supply.

Perhaps , if you're talking absolute facts, and want as much accuracy as possible, they are inaccessible, and haven't reduced the total amount in circulation, though I'm trying to put an emphasis on the realistic thought process, if they've been lost it's almost impossible at least with the present technology that they'll ever be realistically introduced back into circulation.

Yea, you could say that he/she probably was just MIA that whole year hence the lack of knowledge, but like come on OP already has 302 posts. ;D Again, no offense to OP, but it's really just a bizarre question to be asking after being here for a while.

The OP’s concern was rather naïve to place it kindly, and that is something that the posts in this thread mostly address and debunk through logical arguments. Your post seems to have gone no further than the heading, lacking the context provided by the OP, and versing on something rather different and pretty disjoined.

Even when that problem comes, and perhaps I wouldn't call it a problem, it's just a feature of supply and demand - we would expect the price per coin to increase. Right now there are probably millions of coins that are forever locked away and will not be recovered. The true supply of Bitcoin that could ever be in circulation is less than 21 million. The current price per coin factors in all Bitcoin in circulation, so if some were permanently lost from the supply, the remaining coins in circulation would just increase in value.

When talking about the future, I don't think it's difficult because adoption is booming, besides that, payment methods via bitcoin are now starting to happen.
we can't know about the future but when it comes to speculation this is very likely to happen because the bitcoin era is getting better and better.

If bitcoins are traded for fiat, this means that some other people took the coins' ownership in exchange of fiat. There is no loss of bitcoin during the exchange but rather it only changed hands. Furthermore, the 21 million limit on supply can be further divided into smaller units, thus partly eliminating your concern of bitcoin vanishing. While 21 million seems to be an arbitrary number, I don't think satoshi hadn't think of any countermeasures regarding your worry.