Bitcoin Forum

hello! in X years bitcoin will be gone, not because it won't do what its suppose to do, which it will, but the fact that over time people will lose their wallets and the bitcoins will be behind lock and Key forever. is there anyway we can stop bitcoins from disagreeing from the network to never be used again ?

how many bitcoins are lost today ?

In X years the sun will explode into supernova and the whole milky way will be gone.
Happy now?

hmmm i wounder, what will come first ? the lost of 21 Million BTC or the destruction of our solar system ? hmhmhmhmmhmh

Hmmhm indeed. I think we'll need to wait for 5 billion years to know.

It doesn't matter at all. As more are and more coins end up locked the remaining coin's value will increase. And since Bitcoin is infinitely divisible this is much of a non issue.

This is akin to asking "Is there any way we can stop gold cargo ships from sinking in the ocean?"  :)

Bitcoins each consist of 100000000 integer units.

Therefore there are a total of 2100000000000000 (2.1 X 10¹⁵) units of currency in bitcoin.

How long do you suppose it will take to lose half of those units?

Once half of the units are lost, the remaining units will be worth twice as much as they would have been if nothing had been lost.  This implies that those hold a unit will treat it with the same care as someone today would treat 2 units.

As such, it should take just about as long to lose the next fourth of the original units as it did to lose the first half.

Then three fourths of the units will be lost, and the remaining units will be worth four times as much as they would have been if nothing had been lost.  This implies that those hold a unit will treat it with the same care as someone today would treat 4 units.

As such, it should take just about as long to lose the next eighth of the the original units as it did to lose the first half (which is also as long as it took to lose the next quarter).

Repeat as many times as you like.  If the total number of units becomes so small (and therefore the value so large) that reasonable small purchases can't be accomplished with the smallest possible unit, then the protocol can be updated to allow each of the smallest units to be split into multiple smaller units.

Yep, but first another galaxy would have to intercept with ours before... Oh, wait!

Should take a few more science courses and rethink that.

Ot: lost bitcoins aren't a problem. The moving decimal fixes that. If we have to add 30 more decimals, we can. There is no problem with lost bitcoins. Lost bitcoins simply raise the value of all other bitcoins.