Bitcoin Forum

After reading the Bitcoin white paper, there is a very big confusion, whether Satoshi Nakamoto considered the problem of the high loss rate of Bitcoin when designing Bitcoin.
In the future, if the natural loss rate of the Bitcoin network is 1%-2% per year, it is not a big problem, which is equivalent to 1%-2% interest for depositors. If the loss rate reaches more than 5% per year, will it seriously affect the circulation of Bitcoin. If Bitcoin is used as a common currency, it is equivalent to hard-working people, and the new value they create every year will all be taken away by the people who deposit the currency.
After this happens, the circulation of Bitcoin will be greatly restricted.As an expert in cryptography, it may be difficult for Satoshi Nakamoto to imagine that ordinary people have a high rate of losing coins, so in the economic model, there are only 21 million bitcoins.
If Bitcoin is only used as a store of value like gold, rather than as a universal currency like the US dollar, then its market value and imagination will be greatly reduced.

I know this，did he say anything else.
worth slightly more is not bad.
the worry is that the loss rate is too high.
According to the data I know now, the bitcoins owned by bitcoin addresses that have not been moved for more than 5 years already account for 23% of the total.

I am inclined to think that Satoshi (being it one person or a collective) did not think about the situation where BTC and crypto are at this point in time. Not that he couldn't have conceived it, but he might not think BTC should reach that point and thus never put much thought into it. Crypto is definitely pushing its boundaries further and constant changes to it should be made to meet the demands of its expansion. 

Thank you very much. If Bitcoin's economic system doesn't take into account the high loss rate, then as you said, some changes may need to be made.
If the loss rate is too high, it may affect the circulation of Bitcoin. No one is willing to let others take away the wealth they have created.

I don't know where you get those percentages from but certainly your assumption is exaggerated. As of today, we are not losing anything close to 5% per year. At the beginning it was more normal that many were lost, because it was a new thing, which was worth very little and people were not careful. Today, in general, much more measures are taken to avoid losing your private keys, but even so, inevitably a small percentage will continue to be lost, much smaller than the 5% per year that you suggest.

But even if they were lost that much it would not be a problem because what would happen is that the rest would be worth more and when the time came a consensus could be reached to further subdivide the remaining ones. Just as 1 Bitcoin is equivalent to 100 million Satoshis, each Satoshi could be subdivided into 100 million miniSatoshis or whatever name you want to give it. And in fact, this is something that is already done with LN because millisats are used. (https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/69700/what-is-a-millisatoshi-i-thought-satoshi-is-the-smallest-unit)

Problem solved.

thank you very much.
A loss rate greater than 5% per year is an assumption, a possible scenario.
If the loss rate is too high, the person who owns Bitcoin first can take away the labor value of the new person who wants to own Bitcoin only by depositing coins.
This risk-free return is too high, and newcomers will no longer want to own Bitcoin because their labor is being exploited by others.

And subdivide doesn't solve this problem,What it solves is the convenience of currency use. Because no matter how subdivided, new people need to use labor to acquire new bitcoins.

I don't think a future annual loss rate of 5% is realistic. With currently around 19 million mined Bitcoin, this would mean that almost 1 million BTC would be lost per year. Even 1-2% I think is too much. In the past, this may have been the case, because the hodlers were more careless with the private keys, since Bitcoin had only a low value. Nowadays, Bitcoin are also priced like gold, and people are taking care of them accordingly.

It's good that as a newbie you are thinking about these things. As for me, getting struck in the head by lightning the next time it rains is a possible scenario, but I don't base my life on it.


I consider the premise false, therefore the conclusion false as well. Although you are partly right that as time goes by Bitcoin is more expensive, therefore it costs people more money than they earn from their labor to buy it.


But I, to anyone who is hesitating whether to buy Bitcoin today, I would recommend not to think too much about it. These forums are full of people who could have bought at one point in the past, didn't and then regretted not having done so.

A good strategy is to DCA, with as much weekly or monthly as you can according to your finances. It's better that than waiting without buying and then complaining that it's too expensive and you're working too hard to get it.

Hoarding has the same effect, so you don't even have to have 5+% loss rate, the price will rise anyway.
But isn't it the same with gold, stocks and so on? The early birds always have a big advantage.


Newcomers will want to profit themselves. This is why people are investing, actually. And with companies already acquiring bitcoin as reserve/store of value, I don't see any problem here.
Again, you have this "problem" with anything that's scarce and is being hoarded, no matter the loss rate.


The loss rate can be a problem only for the coins in circulation, used as currency. That's why people came with solutions like using satoshi or even millisat as measure unit.

You may live in the belief that Bitcoin will replace all other currencies and become a kind of world currency, but this is completely wrong thinking. Do you think it would be realistic to expect countries like China, India, the US or maybe Russia to give up their national currencies to start using Bitcoin as some kind of common currency?

Bitcoin has been around since 2009, and if we take some optimistic research into account, the percentage of people who use it in some way is around 5% - but most still not as a currency. There is enough Bitcoin for everyone who wants it, and it will be the same in the years ahead. 21 million may seem like a small number, but there is certainly a reason why that number is not 31 or 41 million. Maybe Satoshi was a big fan of Blackjack ;)

Well, you know Bitcoin is just 21 million but it is divisible to much more units of Micro Bitcoin. Therefore, the loss of even 5% Bitcoin won't affect the Bitcoin System. I will do something about it. If I have to do something in order to help the people who lost their Bitcoin.

5% is still a million bitcoin though so even if we are trying to think that it's no big deal, we still must keep an eye out on it just in case, things are starting to get a little concerning. And we shouldn't have Satoshi put in the spot regarding this problem, I'm sure that leaving the space meant that he or a collective group of people don't want to get involved in it because they think that it's already a system that can thrive on it's own.

Considering bitcoins I am perfectly sure that Mr. Satoshi is going to hold onto until the supply of the bitcoins finishes perse, the demand of Bitcoins at the moment is really something that was unexpected and it has continued to grow since 2009, we would be reaching the cap supply soon and I am sure that there won't be any extension of that cap as well, thus it would end up making things better for investors since that's the time when the price will certainly sky rocket like never before. So I think of it, if I was a person who had that many bitcoins I would definitely wait till the big run and at the same time I would also not sell of all them, you have to keep the circulation in the market and they are going to be beneficial for other things as well, not just as an asset.

It becomes more scarce.  Satoshi said himself we should consider lost coins a donation to everyone.  I do not see lost coins as a problem with Bitcoin but rather a feature.

But just because coins have not been moved in 5 years does not mean they have been lost forever.  I have not moved coins out of some of my wallets myself but I still do have access to them.  It is unreliable to analyze coins that have not been moved in a while because there is no way you can find out if they are truly lost or not.

Worst case is, hundreds of years from now there will be only a few Bitcoins left in circulation.  But we are so far away from this scenario it is useless to think of ways to fix the issue.  With the evolution of technology we had in the last few decades, I would imagine Bitcoin may not even exist a hundred years from now anymore.  Maybe only in museums, or as an obsolete oldschool currency.

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Regards,
PrivacyG

alot of people are still stuck with the delusion of btc..
by this i mean people still think that at the hard data/ raw data level that btc exists.

however, at code/data level its satoshis. so in reality there are not 21million units
but instead there are
2.1quadrillion units of measure

yep there are going to be 2,099,999,997,690,000 satoshis ever created

so lets say 5million 'btc' are 'lost'
meaning there are still
1,599,999,997,690,000 satoshi's for people to share out

no one thinks about the many many tonnes of gold that are lost from putting devices into landfill or where people have been buried with their valuables when they die
they dont think about that there are 190,000 tonnes of gold
instead people only look at the
6,702,052,770ounces that are available

yep people in gold markets dont shout about 190k units.. instead they look at the 6.7bill shareable ounces
where by even if a couple billion ounces are lost. its still many billion ounces to share

As Satoshi said:

That was basically his attitude, and I do believe he factored this in, I actually think Satoshi was quite aware that we would be able to pretty much scale Bitcoin better than any existing currency using Satoshi's as we know of them today. We don't need to deal in whole numbers in the future, and if we want to see the price of Bitcoin continue to increase when compared to other traditional fiats, we definitely won't be using whole numbers in the future, well to transact as normal usage that is.

Without going down the tin foil hat route, I tend to believe that the most plausible result, is the simplest. So, its highly likely that Satoshi has either lost access to his coins or simply has passed. Otherwise, you'd think he would be actively involved with Bitcoin, and his pretty sudden disappearance doesn't really have a good explanation other than either being physically not able to develop or talk online anymore, i.e prison or he's passed away.

The only other possible explanation to me is Satoshi decided to distance themselves from Bitcoin, as Bitcoin could have been branded criminal if Satoshi ever had any convictions, which may have stunted the growth or the initial adoption, although I think Bitcoin has largely separated itself from their identity now, and yet still nothing.

As you have explained if Bitcoin continue to "lost" it will more scarce and the price might increase, so it can't be used to be as universal currency/USD to pay bills in the future. Now I'd like to ask, "when Satoshi Nakamoto ever mentioned Bitcoin will be used to replace fiat?" he never mentioned it either this forum or whitepaper, it just how many people hoping Bitcoin will overtake Banks someday.

It involves human nature, so naturally 1%-2% of the temperament is normal.
For example, in the selfishness of people, I have saved private money, and I don’t want to let my family know. If I die accidentally or forget the private key, the money will be lost. .

I mean it's not like most transactions would occur in terms of Bitcoin (considering the current price). We'd probably be measuring stuff in satoshi in that case, and since 1 BTC equates to 100mil satoshi, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have much of an issue. Plus, it's not like fiat is disappearing, so maybe if there really was an issue with using Bitcoin as a currency, then maybe a payment system where a mix of payments of crypto and fiat/cbdc can be made (which ofc, makes it centralized).

And idk if it's possible, but maybe if needed, satoshi can be subdivided into even smaller units. just an idea.

Your biggest mistake is that you are making conclusion based an initially wrong assumption which I don't know where it came from. The fact is that the "loss rate" is not only nowhere near 5% annually but also it will keep decreasing significantly as we move forward for two main reasons.
First is the fact that price keeps rising so each individual owns less amount of bitcoin compared to when it was worth a lot less. So if one person loses bitcoin it is a small amount lost.
Another reason is that as bitcoin becomes more valuable, people are more careful about not losing it. So they take more precautions like keeping more backups in multiple places, etc. and that reduces the number of loss cases.

thank you very much.
In systems thinking, if I find that a thunderstorm might hit me, I will install a lightning rod.
I don't think it's a problem that Satoshi Nakamoto didn't consider this aspect, it's just that the results would be different.
Bitcoin is gold, not dollars.

I get it
I just want to know what Satoshi Nakamoto has to say about this, and it is not a problem in itself, it just determines the positioning of Bitcoin.

It has already been mentioned on the first page of the thread.  I said Satoshi did talk about this but did not have the quote myself.  I will quote the quote.

Satoshi was well aware of the fact that coins will be lost along the way.  He covered pretty much all the other issues through his lines of code and had he considered lost coins would become a problem, he would have taken the right steps to prevent it.

Bitcoin makes you responsible for your own holdings and if you lose them, they are just gone and the circulating supply becomes lower.  There is no way you can do anything about these coins because you would either have to not be decentralized anymore or you would have to impose a 'theft' in the Bitcoin code as in the Z number of coins that have not been moved for X years will be labeled obsolete, will become impossible to move and the max supply will therefore be increased by Z coins.  How do you make this work?  You just ignore the 'issue' because it is not even an issue at all.  As I previously said.  It is a feature.

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Regards,
PrivacyG

I think a big chunk of coins were already lost, and as the time goes by, I think it's unlikely that the loss rate is going up. On the contrary, it seems logical that it would become smaller, for a number of reasons. One is that in the early days Bitcoin wasn't worth much, so it's natural that tons of BTC could get lost just because their owners didn't care much about securing the coins. Another reason is that lots of BTC was initially mined, so there were lots of coins to go around with, whereas now there are much fewer new coins, so a more acutre understanding that if you lose some, there might never be enough new ones. The third reason is that cryptos are becoming way better known than they used to be, and they're taken more seriously. A lot of attention is dedicated to protecting the coins, so they're less likely to be lost in large quantities nowadays.

Please don't worry about it, I know what is happening and what impact can happen if the percentage of loss of Bitcoin increase. I have the solution to it. I cannnot explain it here right now but I will publish it in future.

Also, education will play into it. The more time goes on, the more people will become a little more educated about protecting their Bitcoin, and in some cases even considering handing down their Bitcoin, once they've passed. The biggest early contributor was that a lot of users didn't take Bitcoin seriously, I've had my doubts in the past, and its probably my biggest regret, since I would have been in a far better position than I am now if I believed a little more, well it was more that I let others opinions get the better of me, rather than listening to my gut feeling. Anyway, people now know either the potential of Bitcoin or can see for themselves the potential for the price to swing wildly, therefore people will be much more careful handling that money.

When you consider both of those things, people become more educated, therefore more careful, organised, and they know the value. I can see the loss rate being very minimal.