Bitcoin Forum

Maybe these have already been addressed, but here they are.

1) Early adopters may have stashes of millions of bitcoin. If widely adopted a few super rich could have a huge influence over the whole bitcoin economy. Imagine owning 5% of all USD in circulation(with no fed to inflate).

2) The supply is fixed at 21 million, but bitcoins themselves are not permanent. People die all the time without wills. People die with btc on a computer/flashdrive that no one knows about, they're gone. People don't make backups, their computer crashes, they're gone. You might think this is great, because now your btc are more valuable. But for a currency, it's not such a good thing, to have the supply eroding over time. Theoreticly, the amount of btc could eventually go to zero.

3) Speed of transactions. If btc becomes very widely adopted, can it handle billions of transactions a day without speed becoming an issue?

Don't get me wrong. I love bitcoin and the whole concept behind it. These are just questions of someone looking to learn more.

1) Early adopters may have stashes of millions of bitcoin. If widely adopted a few super rich could have a huge influence over the whole bitcoin economy. Imagine owning 5% of all USD in circulation(with no fed to inflate).

Maybe these have already been addressed, but here they are.

1) Early adopters may have stashes of millions of bitcoin. If widely adopted a few super rich could have a huge influence over the whole bitcoin economy. Imagine owning 5% of all USD in circulation(with no fed to inflate).

2) The supply is fixed at 21 million, but bitcoins themselves are not permanent. People die all the time without wills. People die with btc on a computer/flashdrive that no one knows about, they're gone. People don't make backups, their computer crashes, they're gone. You might think this is great, because now your btc are more valuable. But for a currency, it's not such a good thing, to have the supply eroding over time. Theoreticly, the amount of btc could eventually go to zero.

3) Speed of transactions. If btc becomes very widely adopted, can it handle billions of transactions a day without speed becoming an issue?

Don't get me wrong. I love bitcoin and the whole concept behind it. These are just questions of someone looking to learn more.

Maybe these have already been addressed, but here they are.

1) Early adopters may have stashes of millions of bitcoin. If widely adopted a few super rich could have a huge influence over the whole bitcoin economy. Imagine owning 5% of all USD in circulation(with no fed to inflate).
and once they sell their 5% of BTC the buyers of that 5% then have the control.. look at gold.. initially the US owned most of it in fort knox. now you can buy it at vending machines in dubai...

2) The supply is fixed at 21 million, but bitcoins themselves are not permanent. People die all the time without wills. People die with btc on a computer/flashdrive that no one knows about, they're gone. People don't make backups, their computer crashes, they're gone. You might think this is great, because now your btc are more valuable. But for a currency, it's not such a good thing, to have the supply eroding over time. Theoreticly, the amount of btc could eventually go to zero.
think about all the gold in peoples teeth fillings and in motherboards, and jewellry which are now in coffins/landfill underground, lost forever. eventually one day in many decades someone may have a fast enough computer to unhash a private key from its public key, and redeem the lost coins.. anythings possible.. calm down getting to zero is something your grand kids wont even have to worry about

3) Speed of transactions. If btc becomes very widely adopted, can it handle billions of transactions a day without speed becoming an issue?
this is probably the first valid worry that would appear in your lifetime. but there are multiple solutions to it. such as using paperwallets as bearer bond certificates. handing them across to trusted parties away from the network. also off the chain exchanges such as mtgox use to do, swapping mtgox codes between users instead of transactions on the blockchain. plus many other solutions to grow in the future

Don't get me wrong. I love bitcoin and the whole concept behind it. These are just questions of someone looking to learn more.

Maybe these have already been addressed, but here they are.

1) Early adopters may have stashes of millions of bitcoin. If widely adopted a few super rich could have a huge influence over the whole bitcoin economy. Imagine owning 5% of all USD in circulation(with no fed to inflate).

2) The supply is fixed at 21 million, but bitcoins themselves are not permanent. People die all the time without wills. People die with btc on a computer/flashdrive that no one knows about, they're gone. People don't make backups, their computer crashes, they're gone. You might think this is great, because now your btc are more valuable. But for a currency, it's not such a good thing, to have the supply eroding over time. Theoreticly, the amount of btc could eventually go to zero.

3) Speed of transactions. If btc becomes very widely adopted, can it handle billions of transactions a day without speed becoming an issue?

Don't get me wrong. I love bitcoin and the whole concept behind it. These are just questions of someone looking to learn more.

Maybe these have already been addressed, but here they are.

1) Early adopters may have stashes of millions of bitcoin. If widely adopted a few super rich could have a huge influence over the whole bitcoin economy. Imagine owning 5% of all USD in circulation(with no fed to inflate).

2) The supply is fixed at 21 million, but bitcoins themselves are not permanent. People die all the time without wills. People die with btc on a computer/flashdrive that no one knows about, they're gone. People don't make backups, their computer crashes, they're gone. You might think this is great, because now your btc are more valuable. But for a currency, it's not such a good thing, to have the supply eroding over time. Theoreticly, the amount of btc could eventually go to zero.

3) Speed of transactions. If btc becomes very widely adopted, can it handle billions of transactions a day without speed becoming an issue?

Don't get me wrong. I love bitcoin and the whole concept behind it. These are just questions of someone looking to learn more.

The wiki covers all of this beautifully. I'm not sure why someone is willing to sift through forum responses to find an answer(because I believe they ask the question after they have come to an early conclusion), when they can just look at the Myths page. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Myths

Bitcoin being traded for Fiat seems as if it defeats the purpose, but most of you 'early adopters' have no desire to address this as the speculative world makes you fascinatingly richer every time the price increases by $1-$5

from here going forward, how does bitcoin ensure new adoption and capital inflows until the world itself trades in Bitcoin

Well, for many of us that is the point then, isn't it?

Rich and all that.

I'm not trying to change the World; only make some money.

Preferably a lot of money.

My $.02.

We can't ensure it.

I know people want to get rich. I must say, i never thought I would hear is so commonly and with no shame, "were not trying to fix the world, money and profits are all I/we care about." That is a disease that nature will eventually deal with.

I know people want to get rich. I must say, i never thought I would hear is so commonly and with no shame, "were not trying to fix the world, money and profits are all I/we care about." That is a disease that nature will eventually deal with.

2) The supply is fixed at 21 million, but bitcoins themselves are not permanent. People die all the time without wills. People die with btc on a computer/flashdrive that no one knows about, they're gone. People don't make backups, their computer crashes, they're gone. You might think this is great, because now your btc are more valuable. But for a currency, it's not such a good thing, to have the supply eroding over time. Theoreticly, the amount of btc could eventually go to zero.

This issue keeps showing up every now and then... Well here's the thing: it doesn't matter how many (or how little) bitcoins there are in existence!

The limit of 21 million bitcoins (or 2.1 quadrillion satoshis actually, with the current 8 decimal precision) is just an arbitrary number. Bitcoin is digital and therefore infinitely divisible. The 8 decimals are just a limitation in the current software, which can be increased if the need arises at some point in the future.

It doesn't matter if there are 11.6 million bitcoins in existence, or 400, or just 0.03, it's enough. Even if it goes to zero, literally, i.e. all current bitcoins would be magically destroyed, it's still not a problem as new (fractions of) bitcoins are always being mined.

By definition there is NO shortage of supply, period.

1) Early adopters may have stashes of millions of bitcoin. If widely adopted a few super rich could have a huge influence over the whole bitcoin economy. Imagine owning 5% of all USD in circulation(with no fed to inflate).

2) The supply is fixed at 21 million, but bitcoins themselves are not permanent. People die all the time without wills. People die with btc on a computer/flashdrive that no one knows about, they're gone. People don't make backups, their computer crashes, they're gone. You might think this is great, because now your btc are more valuable. But for a currency, it's not such a good thing, to have the supply eroding over time. Theoreticly, the amount of btc could eventually go to zero.

3) Speed of transactions. If btc becomes very widely adopted, can it handle billions of transactions a day without speed becoming an issue?

Don't get me wrong. I love bitcoin and the whole concept behind it. These are just questions of someone looking to learn more.

Two points:

"lost" coins are indeed an issue, because it's impossible to have decent price discovery without knowing how many coins are actually in circulation, or available to be circulated.

We know how many coins have been mined and we know the total value of those coins, but we don't know the status of them. Therefore, we can only guess what the market cap of issued Bitcoins are. Quick: what is the total value of all Bitcoins available to be spent? We simply have no way of knowing.

If someone bought up 90% of the outstanding Bitcoins and destroyed their private key, the theory would be that the remaining BTC's would then be worth 10 times as much. But there is no way to demonstrably prove that those coins were actually destroyed, and really, no way to even suspect that they were unless someone announced it.

Second - off blockchain transactions. Seems like a complete non-starter. If someone's going to try to exchange their paper wallet for my goods or services, the FIRST thing I'm going to do is import that wallet into my own wallet. It'd be silly to simply accept the paper "bill", verify that the public key its displaying has the balance that was described and have that signal the end of the transaction - afterall, the person who traded the paper wallet could redeem its value long after we parted ways, and I might be none the wiser until i try to exchange the wallet with someone else who then alerts me that there are no coins remaining in it.

2) The supply is fixed at 21 million, but bitcoins themselves are not permanent. People die all the time without wills. People die with btc on a computer/flashdrive that no one knows about, they're gone. People don't make backups, their computer crashes, they're gone. You might think this is great, because now your btc are more valuable. But for a currency, it's not such a good thing, to have the supply eroding over time. Theoreticly, the amount of btc could eventually go to zero.

If someone bought up 90% of the outstanding Bitcoins and destroyed their private key, the theory would be that the remaining BTC's would then be worth 10 times as much.

Supply is determined by the amount being actively traded. The market forces that dictate the price of bitcoin depend on the amount of supply and demand. If bitcoins are not being offered up for sale, then they play no part in determining the price. Whether the bitcoins were destroyed, or are just being saved for later, it makes no difference. But if someone bought up 90% of the bitcoins, the act of purchasing them would cause the price to go up incredibly high. After this large purchase, there would likely be a much higher demand than supply, which would maintain this high price; regardless of whether these 90% of bitcoins were destroyed or just saved away. The act of destroying them of course does not change supply, so it would not affect the price at all.

"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth–the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it."

http://capitalismmagazine.com/2002/08/franciscos-money-speech/

There's only 11.2 million BTC that have been mined to date so it stands to reason that it's not possible for adopters (plural) to have "stashes of millions of bitcoin."  Millions of dollars in Bitcoin, but not millions of Bitcoin.  Also, the blockchain is public ledger so you can see which addresses hold the most amount of coins.  Granted, an early adopter may own numerous "whale" addresses, but I think if you look them over, you'll still see it's not possible that a small handful of people are holding millions of coin.


Theoretically supply can go to zero but not practically.  Remember that Bitcoin is currently divisible to the 8th decimal (and this can be increased) so you shouldn't look at it as 21 million and no more.  The supply is fixed, this is true, but since you can divide each "coin" into fractional amounts, there's enough to service the world's needs if needed.


I think this is and will continue to be an evolving process as we are currently seeing with "dust" transactions.  Wider adoption means more miners and a stronger network so I think you need to account for the increase in network and infrastructure that would arise only in a mass adoption scenario.

Greed is good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONXpaBQnBvE

Maybe these have already been addressed, but here they are.

1) Early adopters may have stashes of millions of bitcoin. If widely adopted a few super rich could have a huge influence over the whole bitcoin economy. Imagine owning 5% of all USD in circulation(with no fed to inflate).

2) The supply is fixed at 21 million, but bitcoins themselves are not permanent. People die all the time without wills. People die with btc on a computer/flashdrive that no one knows about, they're gone. People don't make backups, their computer crashes, they're gone. You might think this is great, because now your btc are more valuable. But for a currency, it's not such a good thing, to have the supply eroding over time. Theoreticly, the amount of btc could eventually go to zero.

3) Speed of transactions. If btc becomes very widely adopted, can it handle billions of transactions a day without speed becoming an issue?

Don't get me wrong. I love bitcoin and the whole concept behind it. These are just questions of someone looking to learn more.

The speed of transactions is the weak side of bitcoin. Bitcoin has been developed for a long time and its technology is outdated. I think that for daily payments bitcoin will never be used. Most likely, bitcoin will be used to save money. And for daily payments there are more convenient coins with fast transactions. For example, such coins as Ripple or NEM.