Bitcoin Forum

I was wondering if any of the governing parties of any of the coins have plans to introduce coins that are known to be lost or unaccounted for. I'm not talking about hacked or stolen amounts. (which might be considered). But ones we know for a fact fell off the earth. I should not affect inflation at all. but it's just a thought.

Thoughts/ information greatly appreciated.

No. None of the Bitcoins ever fell off the earth.

If you're talking about the Bitcoins which are lost or has never been created, then no. If you spend the coins to a provably unspendable address, there's a reason for the Bitcoin holder to do that and the Bitcoin is theirs; they can do whatever they want with it. Redistributing it would just be an outright theft. If you're talking about the Bitcoins which has never been created, there isn't a way to fairly distribute it nor is it worth it to hard fork the network for this.

Would never happen with Bitcoin in my opinion.

Who would decide what's lost? And when restored, who gets to claim them? It works well as it is now, if you have the private key you have the coins. Any system other than that is kind of defeating the purpose.

And I think lost coins being restored would absolutely affect inflation. As it is now lost and destroyed coins are the only means of deflating the money supply.

First off, how would you actually know if some bitcoins on a certain wallet has no owner? Like when a person accidentally sent bitcoin on a wrong address for instance. How would we prove it? Pretty impossible. If you see an address that had no movement for years, it may just be a holder's wallet hence there's no outbound transactions.

The main reasons are for verified cases where hard drives are destroyed etc. less dubious. I totally understand what you mean though, what governing body would be fair and impartial enough to make such a decision that affects the world.

i think no because if some one can open that lose bitcoins or whatever that coins that can also open some address that are using by other people and some people can stole other coins because of that methods.

Good luck with recovering any lost coins, as far as I know it's not possible.
There are some services (on here even) that offer assistance for BTC recovery, but there is a hefty fee attached.
You're almost better off just forgetting about the misplaced coins and worrying about acquiring more while the price is still low.

I think you've given a fair answer.
No crying over a spilled milk.

I wonder how possible it is. To me I see that if a coin is lost, it is not redeemable. This is because the receiver is anonymous or either it is sent to a wrong wallet id. But if governing parties of a coin can do such, that is nice.

how lost? there will always be the same amount of bitcoins, they are going nowhere. It's only about the lost private keys. Governments won't be able to do anything about it, just to educate the users.

not a good idea

i have a hoard that i will not touch for 20 years
a hoard i will not touch for 10 years
a hoard i will not touch for5 years.

i would not want any pool to have the ability to take control of my 20,10,5 year hoards simply because they have not moved for X blocks.

nor would it work if its a "known loss" because people will then start to shout out that X stash that does not belong to them. (pretend) its actually theirs but they lost the keys.
EG we all know craig wright does NOT own the satoshi stash. all he done was copy and paste some public keys. so in no way should any pool decide to open satoshi's stash based on a rumour that someone has lost the privkeys to certain addresses.

also onc there is code that opens up hoards to be spent without needing the privkey of that hoard.. bitcoin literally becomes broken. the point is if you dont have the key, no one should be able to touch them.. end of.. no if's no buts...  no private key, no access and thats how it should remain

almost every satoshi is unaccounted for. people aren't going to announce that the coins belong to them and they own the private keys! you just see coins (transactions) exist on the blockchain and you have no way of telling whether they have a owner or not. and you have no right to make decisions for these coins. even if they are truly lost.

bitcoin, I think not if we talk about bitcoin
returning the lost coin is tantamount to stealing because if the coin is returned it will be valuable and it will definitely affect the existing coin. what else if to distribute it, would affect inflation.
I hope this does not happen, because if it happens then bitcoin will go down the price.

What if the owner of the wallet containing the lost coin is already dead? It's better if these lost coins just stay lost than getting returned because if everyone had second chances people it feels like Bitcoin would turn into Paypal.

It won't happen with Bitcoin because if lost Bitcoins were somehow retrieved by bruteforce people could start losing trust on Bitcoin.