bitcoins amount going down by being lost

[dewski00]

I would also think that if somebody had a significant amount of bitcoins, they would have paper backups somewhere (under the bed, safety deposit, in a safe, etc).

[bitbybit2]

Hogwash, how can lost bitcoins pull its perceive value down when in fact to soothsayers it doesn't have a perceive value. 

[Alexander The Great]

Many bitcoins are being lost all the time it sucks

[larem]

Hogwash, how can lost bitcoins pull its perceive value down when in fact to soothsayers it doesn't have a perceive value. 

You seriously need to try reading next time. Nobody said the value of them goes down as a result.

[Alexander The Great]

Bitcoins used to get lost by the thousands when the currency was in infant stages.

[msk]

the remaining bitcoins go up in value 

fair tradeoff imo

[ziptie]

If the number of coins in circulation goes down, a number of things can be done to offset the effects of deflation and maintain the velocity of transactions.  For example, smaller fractions of currency can be introduced into transactions, however it would be annoying to have to constantly count a bunch of leading zeros.

[fuzz]

I was just wondering about this situation the other day, interesting article.

Figured the value would just increase, but it's startling to think that so many coins have been lost already.

[DannyHamilton]

If the number of coins in circulation goes down, a number of things can be done to offset the effects of deflation and maintain the velocity of transactions.  For example, smaller fractions of currency can be introduced into transactions, however it would be annoying to have to constantly count a bunch of leading zeros.

No need to count leading zeros.  If the common denomination gets that small, people will naturally migrate to millibitcoins and then eventually to microbitcoins.

Why count the leading zeros in 0.00126 BTC, when you can simply refer to 1.26 mBTC.

I'd certainly expect to see a price of 2.83 µBTC rather than 0.00000283 BTC (or at least I'd expect it to be displayed as 283 satoshi).