Thank you for addressing this problem. People that may consider their right to pursue the recovery of their wallet would have 131 years to do so, after all. On the other hand, if people would not accept a finite time, regardless how long, it would most likely be for unreasonable greed and attachment, rather than believing in the chance, 10, 100, or 1000 generations from then, that they will be recovered by relatives down the line.


This issue could be solved by new mining. It would reintroduce quantities of money gradually over time.


There's no threat to whales. More generally, there is no threat to anyone having access to their wallets. A simple active transaction performed once every 131 years would enable a wallet owner to hold coins indefinitely. Most users need not concern themselves with recycling as they typically perform transactions more frequently due to their activity. Even if an individual were to perform active transactions only once every 100 years, recycling would not be a concern.

Verifying ownership through a sender transaction within a long timeframe is the easiest part of the design. For a very, very small effort, which for most users would be any conscious effort at all, we obtain a system that earns back lost coins and autonomously maintains the predetermined fixed supply, responding efficiently to the law of conservation of energy.

The real complexity and effort to justify such an effort/outcome ratio come from finding the right design of cycles of mining and block rewards post original cycle, as the recycling would be asynchronous. This is the one thing that would require great feats of creativity and neutrality.

The reintroduction of coins from dead wallets would occur gradually through new mining cycles. Please note that the reintroduction of coin quantities would be asynchronous, as each wallet would have its relative clock. The primary benefit of recycling would be reducing the need for future maintenance and forks aimed at lowering satoshis. Without recycling, these forks would become inevitable. In general, recycling would reduce the need for manual maintenance to comply with the constantly changing conditions of the system. Recycling would help avoid subjecting the system to the risk of human failure.


Gold is not a fixed supply; instead, it is potentially infinite. On the other hand, Bitcoin has a finite supply limit (21 million BTC = 1; limit in absolute quantity), but it is infinite inwardly (the smallest unit can be subdivided infinitely, meaning that there is no limit to the amount of decimal places).


When humans pass away, they cannot take their money with them. If coins are irreversibly lost, they cannot be stolen. Once someone loses their coins irreversibly, they no longer own them. Through recycling, the Bitcoin protocol ensures that the original supply is preserved, just as the law of conservation of energy dictates.

Regarding the last criticism, the Bitcoin protocol will not access a wallet and steal the money as long as it is still owned. The wallet's contents will be recycled into the system once it is no longer owned. The way to determine if a wallet is unowned is through the expiration of a set period of zero active transactions.

The replies provide much clarification to the problems you've addressed. If you're interested, I invite you to have a read.

You can solve the legitimate inheritance problem by verifying wallet activity through a simple transaction. The clock will restart safely after every transaction. Wallets that haven't made any transactions in the predetermined time (I proposed 131 years, referencing the mining cycle) will be identified as "dead" by code, and it will reintroduce the energy/money into the network as a form of recycling.

Furthermore, the number of coins necessary for the economy to function properly must be scalable over time. Bitcoin's scalability problem does not only involve scalability over space.

It is very possible that, in the future, the current satoshi will be too large for the proper functioning of the bitcoin economy. The causes could be a too valuable bitcoin, or a too large user base. This may not concern us soon, but future generations will, as they will have to implement more decimal places and perform forks.

There are enough sats for now. In the very-long term, there will be a necessity for manual system maintenance. Specifically, since lost coins will inevitably increase over time, the network must increase the decimal places for a bitcoin each time the necessity presents itself. Recurrent manual maintenance, regardless of how long the period between one and the other, can be a flaw in the system. Each manual maintenance will require to subject the network to risk of failure. Completely neutral and automatic maintenance, such as one provided with the code itself, is necessary to guarantee that bitcoin can persist forever.

The system should be able to perform self-maintenance. Recycling is a form of self-maintenance.

A wallet can "verify" its activity with a single transaction. One can preserve his coins just by verifying once every 131 years through a simple transaction with the given wallet. This will state to the protocol that the wallet is still "alive". If the wallet doesn't make transactions after a period of 131 years, the wallet will be stated as dead by the protocol, and the coins recycled into the network.

There is no threat to holding coins, nor to keep diversified portfolios, or threats to legitimate inheritance.

Reintroduced by the protocol, the code, the system itself.

The use of the word "steal" remains improper. The coins subjected to this process of recycling would be the ones of "dead" wallets, i.e those wallets that have been inactive (no transaction) for a period equal to the full mining cycle (131 years). This same thing happens in nature. The universe doesn't steal energy from dead bodies, it recycles that energy channeling it back into the system. Bitcoin has a curious habit of mimicking nature when it comes to energy, except for recycling. Energy is never permanently lost in nature, it just transforms from one form to another. It seems that bitcoin neglects the recycle of lost money/energy back into the system.

There would be no need to mine new coins, as the total limit would remain constant as originally intended. Instead, mining would focus on the lost coins, which after 131 years of inactivity by the hosting wallet, would be either burned or placed in an intermediate area similar to a mempool, but for coins. These lost coins would be waiting to be reintroduced to the network through remining. This process would be called "recycling". Mining is indeed a cycle. Whenever there would be lost coins recycling, it would result in a circulating supply of 21 million minus the burnt or mempool supply.

So bitcoin core is considered a hardware wallet? I think I misinterpreted it.

It was 131 from the beginning, I just confused the number with 2009. 131 years stands for the full approximate length of bitcoin's mining life.

I've proposed additional solutions in the replies. Should I edit the original post to make it easier to discuss? By the way, I confused the number. It is 131.

I think there is already something like this. It is called the Copyright Act, and its relative Copyright Term Extension Act. It gives us the possibility to channel work into the public domain.

An implementation like this would prevent previous work to be directly wasted through loss of coins. Rather, the reward of that work would be reintroduced into the network through additional work, new mining for missing coins. This additional work would "pay the price" for having lost them in the first place, while maintaining a fixed amount of circulating coins.

The main focus was to reintroduce lost coins, thereby keeping a constant quantity of money (energy) in circulation.

The protocol, which would be the neutral entity performing the process, wouldn't steal people's money. An address owner could "reset" the clock whenever they make a transaction through it. Much like when you breathe: 131 years would be the time for a wallet to die without breathing, that is, transacting, and the energy (money) into it to be reintroduced into the network.

The wallet owner could then provide proof that the coins in the wallet address are still active, potentially able to circulate again (actively managed by an owner). If this doesn't happen, the protocol will resolve the situation.

Let's say we don't identify lost coins, but inactive wallets. So the coins in a wallet that has not performed a transaction in 131 years (full bitcoin mining life), will be reintroduced to the network by another cycle of mining. In this way, we wouldn't steal money from people, because they would be able to prevent the reintroduction, by performing a simple transaction, thereby "verifying their activity".

Thanks, so I don't see how one can use Bitcoin Core without asking for trouble. I suppose the best case would be to use a separate machine (online) with only bitcoin core.

What do you think is the best solution for one-machine-only Joe?

Wouldn't it be better if lost coins were reintroduced into the network after a fixed span of inactivity?

I suppose the first thing one would say no for, would be by virtue of bitcoin's well-known deflationary property. This said, I believe it is much more important, especially in the longest term, that bitcoin keeps its property of conservation of energy, that is, having a fixed quantity of money ever available. By losing coins, instead, and by having them unrecoverable, we have not a fixed quantity of money available, rather a decreasing one, which is why we call bitcoin deflationary.

What would happen if we would make so that coins with 131 years of inactivity would be reintroduced into the network?

I see this having some positive effects:
- decreased impact of hereditary monopoly
- incentive to let the currency flow
- canceled the future necessity to increase the number of decimals for 1 BTC (very-long term perspective: too many coins have been lost, thus the necessity to further subdivide a coin)


FAQ (Further information in replies)

How do we identify lost coins?

Wallets would declare activity status by performing an active (sender) transaction, of any size, within a 131-year span.

How do we prevent reintroduced coins to cause financial distress and depreciation of coins?

This issue can be solved by new cycles of mining reintroducing money gradually over time, starting at the end of a mining age (131 years).

Who is going to reintroduce lost coins?

The protocol.

Does this mean stealing coins from users?

If the protocol reintroduces lost coins from inaccessible wallets, it is not considered stealing because the previous owner has lost control and ownership rights over those coins. The reintroduction is aimed at ensuring the functionality and integrity of the system rather than depriving the previous owner of their rightful property.

I'm the kind of guy which has 1 machine only but still wants to have a full node (pruned) running and using bitcoin core as a hot wallet. Does this mean "I'm asking for trouble"? To what extent?

Also, can bitcoin core run and work as a hot wallet in a machine that is not connected to the internet?

I'm looking for a safe way to use Nostr and have the possibility to send and receive tips in sats.

Apparently, Alby looks like the most popular solution. I'm currently in a limbo, because I want to download it but I don't trust it enough. The extension asks me permissions to communicate with other apps outside of the browser, which certainly seems not something a guy with Bitcoin Core on the same machine should do. Moreover, it seems that Alby developers have not been verified yet.

Is anyone aware of the risks of this extension, or has pursued studies on its reliability and excluded the possibility of scams?

Isn't it a confirmation that we need an intermediary wallet to use the lightning network? In other words, there's no direct access, but we must necessarily use a bridge whenever we want to switch from one to the other. So, there's waters between the layers. Is it correct?

As far as I understood, the lightning network is accessible only through intermediary wallets that have both the on-chain and lightning feature. In other words, it is not possible to send sats directly from a base layer wallet, such as Bitcoin Core, to a lightning-only wallet, like Alby.

Is it possible to implement a lightning network feature on Bitcoin Core?