Can bitcoin die at some date because of stranded bitcoins?

[SebastianJu]

I understand that such change wont happen because many wont accept it. May it be fear or elsething. Its only an idea. And maybe there will be a coin someday that will use it... i dont know.

But i dont understand your fear kjj of "stealing". How can it be stealing when bitcoins lay 99 years at an address? Do you await to have bitcoins 99 years at the same address from now? That cant happen in my opinion. So stealing cant happen too. If bitcoins are lying at an address that long its a pretty sure sign that they are abandoned.
And its not about taking them away... they vanish for the net. Its not someone who takes them out. The net says they are vanished because they are too old and they can be mined from a random miner then.
Stealing would imply a owner. Where should this owner be?

DannyHamilton... im not sure what will happen once 21.000.000 btc are created. I fear a bit that forced fees will follow when the transactionfees that are normally around arent enough to hold the network stable. And that could mean bitcoin is losing acceptance because there are enough paymentproviders that eat fees anyway. Bitcoins charme lies for many users in the costless transactions. I know how i felt when the standard wallet and multibit wanted to force me to pay a fee. And i see what people write that find that they have to pay a forced fee in btc. When this will be more after all btc are mined the follow ups could be not so cool for the network. Only saying.

[allthingsluxury]

Bitcoin can be divisible to a monster degree. This is impossible. Even if 90% of the coins were lost, the remaining 10% would simply readjust it's value and account for the lost coins. This is pretty standard and is exactly how gold has functioned as a currency for over 6000 years, even in it's insanely limited quantity. The prices simply adjust by the free market.

[kjj]

But i dont understand your fear kjj of "stealing". How can it be stealing when bitcoins lay 99 years at an address? Do you await to have bitcoins 99 years at the same address from now? That cant happen in my opinion. So stealing cant happen too. If bitcoins are lying at an address that long its a pretty sure sign that they are abandoned.
And its not about taking them away... they vanish for the net. Its not someone who takes them out. The net says they are vanished because they are too old and they can be mined from a random miner then.
Stealing would imply a owner. Where should this owner be?

The owner that they would be stolen from is either my estate, or my heir.  Or, if medical technology makes a decent leap forward in the next couple of decades, me.

You don't have to agree with me on any part of this.  I'm just telling you that there have been many proposals to do exactly this, and (approximately) no one here is interested.

[nevafuse]

Can you imagine the day hundreds of years from now when more zeros need to be added?  I wonder if the world will really come together to make that change or if another digital currency takes its place with a larger limit.  It'll be difficult to convince 51% to add more zeros, not because it doesn't make sense, but because they will just be too lazy to upgrade their bitcoind/libbitcoin/bitcoinj/etc or can't agree on how many zeros to add.  That would definitely be a defining moment in history.

[DannyHamilton]

Can you imagine the day hundreds of years from now . . .

Could people hundreds of years ago imagine what the state of technology would be like today?  Things hundreds of years from now could work very differently than they do now.  Entire industries currently unimagined could be built up around bitcoin.  It could be impossible to modify the system to handle smaller divisions of bitcoin, or it could be so easy to do that nobody gives it more than a few seconds of thought.

[Seal]

But i dont understand your fear kjj of "stealing". How can it be stealing when bitcoins lay 99 years at an address? Do you await to have bitcoins 99 years at the same address from now? That cant happen in my opinion. So stealing cant happen too. If bitcoins are lying at an address that long its a pretty sure sign that they are abandoned.
And its not about taking them away... they vanish for the net. Its not someone who takes them out. The net says they are vanished because they are too old and they can be mined from a random miner then.
Stealing would imply a owner. Where should this owner be?

The owner that they would be stolen from is either my estate, or my heir.  Or, if medical technology makes a decent leap forward in the next couple of decades, me.

You don't have to agree with me on any part of this.  I'm just telling you that there have been many proposals to do exactly this, and (approximately) no one here is interested.

I too don't understand your fear. My suggestion was merely to keep all coins in circulation and is more based upon wishful thinking as opposed to actual implementation.

I stand by the concept though, like a house, if you are still living in it after 99 years(!!!) surely you would have renewed its lease. The analogy is relevant to bitcoin... that is, if coins have not been sent in 99 years, then the likelyhood of them still belonging to somebody alive are near zero. If you are not dead and you've not moved the coins in that long, then you have either forgotten about or lost them.

To keep the coins circulating, I don't see how redistribution would be unfair.

[DeathAndTaxes]

It would be unfair because it is changing the rules after the fact.  Essentially the first "post ex facto" rule for Bitcoin.

It also creates a horrible precedent.  Once you show that you can get away with changing the rules to 99 years their will always be pressure from others to change them further.  Why 99 years?  In some years when after a decade or so there are x million unmoved coins there will be pressure to change it to 50 years or 20 years or even 1 year.  There will be pressure to raise the cap, to change the distribution amount ("isn't it also unfair that 75% of all coins were mined in the first 8 years). 

The end result would be a banking elite who can change the minting or deminting rate so that growth and contraction of the money can optimally match the estimated growth or contraction of the Bitcoin economy.  Sound familiar?

Some of us feel it is immoral to take what isn't yours when the social contract between members is that tx are irreversible and that includes if I want to move my coins to an offline wallet for 100 years I can.  Any change violates that social contract and it is a slipperly slope.  Still to change it when it doesn't even need changing makes it even worse.  It shows future generations that the social contract means nothing and Bitcoin can be changed for small or trivial reasons.

[wksantiago]

Agree with DeathAndTaxes 100%

Well said!

[Yuhfhrh]

Bitcoin would only die if every single fraction of a bitcoin was lost. 0.0000000001 total bitcoins would still work fine, but not 0.

[FreeMoney]

It would be unfair because it is changing the rules after the fact.  Essentially the first "post ex facto" rule for Bitcoin.

It also creates a horrible precedent.  Once you show that you can get away with changing the rules to 99 years their will always be pressure from others to change them further.  Why 99 years?  In some years when after a decade or so there are x million unmoved coins there will be pressure to change it to 50 years or 20 years or even 1 year.  There will be pressure to raise the cap, to change the distribution amount ("isn't it also unfair that 75% of all coins were mined in the first 8 years). 

The end result would be a banking elite who can change the minting or deminting rate so that growth and contraction of the money can optimally match the estimated growth or contraction of the Bitcoin economy.  Sound familiar?

Some of us feel it is immoral to take what isn't yours when the social contract between members is that tx are irreversible and that includes if I want to move my coins to an offline wallet for 100 years I can.  Any change violates that social contract and it is a slipperly slope.  Still to change it when it doesn't even need changing makes it even worse.  It shows future generations that the social contract means nothing and Bitcoin can be changed for small or trivial reasons.

[jl2012]

This question has been asked repeatedly, repeatedly, and repeatedly; and the answer is no, no and no

Hello,

in normal world money is printed and it has a value. And it doesnt bring problems when money burns. But bitcoin is different because the amount of bitcoins is limited.

So when in real world someone dies, leaving behind a bank account, the money wont be stranded. Except its black money. But even then more money can be printed.

But what about bitcoins that lie at addresses that doesnt have owners anymore? I mean wallets can be lost because pc crash and no backups. Or user dies and no one knows he has bitcoins. That means there must be a growing number of bitcoins that lie on addresses without owners. And noboday can take these bitcoins away.

So when this is true its only a matter of time until the bitcoins that can be used are going to an end. So bitcoins will raise in value because people need them to pay. But btc only has 8 numbers behind the dot and this will stop at some point too. So...

Am i wrong?

Thanks!

[VeeMiner]

I wouldn't worry about it. The more sparse the resources are the more valuable they are. There are a lot of BTC and a you can divide them very well so no worries here.