[2015-09-15] BTCBurns: Tracking How Many Bitcoins Have Been Burnt

[tyz]

In 2014, Counterparty controversially burned over 2,000 bitcoin, the largest amount to date. This was to create their native digital currency XCP, in a process know as ‘proof-of-burn.’ In proof-of-burn, bitcoins are sent to an address that is guaranteed to have no known or discoverable private key, which means that those coins can never be used again.

http://www.altcointoday.com/btcburns-tracking-how-many-bitcoins-have-been-burnt/

[Kakmakr]

Ok, I do not get it. Why would anyone want to willingly burn money? The estimation could be way off at the rate people are depositing coins to wrong addresses. They should create a website where people provide proof of coins that they "burned" by depositing it to the wrong address. I think the total amount of coins that are lost because of this would be huge. If you only take Satoshi's unused coins away, we will already be in the millions.

The thing is, proof will be difficult to verify and most people would be too ashamed to admit it, so those will be lost forever, without anyone knowing about it.

[cr1776]

I think the key difference here is between burn being done intentionally whereas people losing coins due to hardware issues, lost keys etc are unintentional.  There was a thread somewhere on here trying to detail lost coins at one point.