Is this idea to counter lost bitcoins possible?

[bitfreak!]

And really, you need to let go of your self-importance.  We don't need to change Bitcoin just to assuage your fears.  We do not exist solely to serve you.  Bitcoin wasn't invented for you.  Bitcoin shouldn't change to be what you want it to be.

You are clearly the one here trying to present your opinion as absolute facts with no flexibility. I'm not demanding that we change bitcoin, I'm presenting my opinion and my rationalization, with the clear understanding that what I am proposing is extremely unlikely to happen; I have stated that multiple times now. You are the one taking it very personally and getting emotionally charged, as if I were attacking you directly. Calm down and stop acting like I'm not allowed to voice my opinions or concerns. I'm not interested if you think I need to shut up or stop using bitcoin, I will do exactly as I please regardless of your bickering and ridiculous demands.

Also can everyone please read what I said at the bottom of the last page to understand my current position on lost coins.

[Rudd-O]

You are clearly the one here trying to present your opinion as absolute facts with no flexibility. I'm not demanding that we change bitcoin, I'm presenting my opinion and my rationalization, with the clear understanding that what I am proposing is extremely unlikely to happen; I have stated that multiple times now. You are the one taking it very personally and get emotionally charged, as if I were attacking you directly. Calm down and stop acting like I'm not allowed to voice my opinions or concerns. I'm not interested if you think I need to shut up or stop using bitcoin, I will do exactly as I please regardless of your bickering and ridiculous demands.

Look and listen, you little shit.  I bought a lot of Bitcoin precisely with the purpose of investing and saving it for a very, very long time.  Your stupid-ass proposal is exactly about robbing me and other people like me, about depriving us of what we worked very fucking hard for, most likely when we will need it the most, about imposing extra uncertainties on top of the long bet we've already signed up for.

How am I supposed to react to that, huh?  Should I write a whitepaper and publish it in a scientific journal?  Should I smile and fart unicorns?

No, turdhead, I'm going to get very pissed.  Justifiedly so.  How should I not get emotionally charged?  Do you seriously think we're playing with marbles here?

Of course I'm taking it personally, you idiot; it's my money you're proposing to endanger.

If I told you that I want to organize people to rob you, to deprive you of your savings, how angry would you be?  I bet you'd be really fucking angry.  If I, to that, added insult to injury by acting "puzzled", failed to respond to good reasons why you shouldn't be robbed, and told you "well I don't know why you get so angry", you'd get even angrier.

Life lesson 1: If you don't want people to get angry at you, don't fuck with other people's money.

[Photon939]

And really, you need to let go of your self-importance.  We don't need to change Bitcoin just to assuage your fears.  We do not exist solely to serve you.  Bitcoin wasn't invented for you.  Bitcoin shouldn't change to be what you want it to be.

You are clearly the one here trying to present your opinion as absolute facts with no flexibility. I'm not demanding that we change bitcoin, I'm presenting my opinion and my rationalization, with the clear understanding that what I am proposing is extremely unlikely to happen; I have stated that multiple times now. You are the one taking it very personally and getting emotionally charged, as if I were attacking you directly. Calm down and stop acting like I'm not allowed to voice my opinions or concerns. I'm not interested if you think I need to shut up or stop using bitcoin, I will do exactly as I please regardless of your bickering and ridiculous demands.

He did the same thing on Wikipedia when SudoGhost wouldn't change the wording regarding bitcoin and ponzi schemes.
When he didn't get his way it degraded into personal insults and shitstorm on the talk page.

I tell you what though, this thread has sparked some actual thought from other members so it's not entirely wasted effort I suppose.

[MoonShadow]

That's more than enough, Rudd-O.

[Rudd-O]

Hahaha, I don't think that picture represents at all what I do, but I gotta admit, it's a pretty hilarious picture and I'm saving it to my GIFs/JPEGs folder.

[bitfreak!]

lol ironically I just finished eating a sandwich before making this reply. The only reason you feel it's such a threat is because you are equating it with theft, but that's a very large stretch to make and has no real basis in reality. Your coins will in no way be endangered because what I'm proposing offers a very large window of time to ensure you don't lose your coins. So there is simply no reason to get so upset about it. Especially when it's so unlikely to happen because of people on your side of the fence. Just because I propose it, doesn't mean it's going to happen. There's simply no reason to get your panties in a such a bunch at the mere proposition. I'm allowed to propose any idea I want, and I expect to have a civil response and discussion about it, not be attacked as if my idea was on the verge of happening.

[drakahn]

But it is theft, again

I can't prove the address is active, I'm dead and the private key is sealed in a gold bar in a safe (perhaps in a bank), Sure whoever I left it to could break it open, but why should they have to? They are the owner of the gold bar now, why does its usefulness as a way to store bitcoins offline have to be made useless?

[bitfreak!]

But it is theft, again

I can't prove the address is active, I'm dead and the private key is sealed in a gold bar in a safe (perhaps in a bank), Sure whoever I left it to could break it open, but why should they have to? They are the owner of the gold bar now, why does its usefulness as a way to store bitcoins offline have to be made useless?

They should have to so that they can prove the active state of the coins and show that they aren't lost, in order to establish a system capable of recycling old coins. That is the price to pay, the trade off for achieving such a system. Yes they "have to" do something that might inconvenience them in a slight way, but it's something which only needs to be done very infrequently, making it almost irrelevant. It does not effect ones ability to store coins offline, it just makes it that tiny bit harder for people who want to store coins in the same address for more than 100 years.

[Rotsor]

Another scenario: consider the people who consciously destroyed their bitcoins as a charity act: to make a gift to the other bitcoin users. Do you think they will be happy to know that their gift will go to waste (burned by the miners) instead of rewarding the bitcoin holders with the increased value of their coins?

I know these people are not too important, but this whole thread is anyway.

[bitfreak!]

Another scenario: consider the people who consciously destroyed their bitcoins as a charity act: to make a gift to the other bitcoin users. Do you think they will be happy to know that their gift will go to waste (burned by the miners) instead of rewarding the bitcoin holders with the increased value of their coins?

I know these people are not too important, but this whole thread is anyway.

That's a valid point, but I would argue that their "donation" did in fact have an effect for the duration before it was re-mined. It wont have an everlasting effect, but it will be a very long time before that effect is reversed.

[Rudd-O]

Sigh.

The futility of this exchange is simple to summarize:

People who are okay with theft will never be persuaded by reasons why theft is a bad idea.  Reason factors not in their decision.  Otherwise they would have deduced, like most everyone else before them, that what they want is bad.

"Everybody knows that theft is bad".  It would be to the detriment of the thief's interests if his intentions were unmasked.  So a clever thief will pretend what they want is not theft; they'll give you all sorts of made-up lifeboat scenarios to rationalize the theft; they'll even promise that they will spend the loot in a noble cause.  (I believe we've seen pretty much all of the above in this thread.)

In sum: the clever thief will abuse reason (spin a story), not because he himself believes in reason, but because he knows that he can misuse reason to manipulate well-intentioned and reasonable people willing to give him the time of day.

But admit that what they want is theft?  No, of course not.  NE VAR.

The greatest evils ever perpetrated, all of them, without exception, were sold to victims as virtues and solutions.

[Photon939]

Such a situation would really only be up for a serious vote if there was an actual way to prove unmoving coins from lost coins.

If there was magically somehow a way to prove that coins were lost, should they be re-introduced into circulation, or is that still "theft" to you?

[bitfreak!]

"Everybody knows that theft is bad".

Yeah, and everybody, except people like you, know what theft is. It's not leaving something untouched for over 100 years and then crying about it when it's taken, when you have countless decades to stop it from being taken.

[drakahn]

"Everybody knows that theft is bad".

Yeah, and everybody, except people like you, know what theft is. It's not leaving something untouched for over 100 years and then crying about when it's taken when you have countless decades to stop it from being taken.

So to you, destruction of my property (the gold bar) or theft (the reclaimed coins) are the only two options? I don't like it and I never will...

[bitfreak!]

So to you, destruction of my property (the gold bar) or theft (the reclaimed coins) are the only two options? I don't like it and I never will...

I never proposed "destruction" of anything as an answer, that's the opposite of what I want. This has nothing to do with taking things from you and reallocating them or destroying them simply because you failed to use them. It's an effort to recycle truly lost coins to ensure a stable money supply. Destroying coins would do the absolute opposite of that.

In that other thread about the design contract, it was suggested that when the cryptography protecting coins is weakened to such a state where it needs to be updated, old coins which aren't transferred into the new system within a specified time frame should be destroyed to avoid sudden inflation. I do not agree with that idea at all for two reasons:

1) the time frame for transferring the coins in that case will be very small, and as such will be more akin to theft for those who fail to do so.
2) it will create a truly irreversible decline in the money supply, where as I'm attempting to ensure we have a limited yet stable supply.

[Rudd-O]

Such a situation would really only be up for a serious vote if there was an actual way to prove unmoving coins from lost coins.

If there was magically somehow a way to prove that coins were lost, should they be re-introduced into circulation, or is that still "theft" to you?

I don't think reintroducing lost (truly lost) coins is theft, but I'd wager that anyone who invented the math to do such a feat, can surely figure out a way to reverse the accident that caused them to be lost, giving them back to the person who lost them.  If at all possible, I think that would be the just solution.

Other than that, I'm quite fine with the donation in value that lost coins provide.

[drakahn]

So to you, destruction of my property (the gold bar) or theft (the reclaimed coins) are the only two options? I don't like it and I never will...

I never proposed "destruction" of anything as an answer

My private key is inside a gold bar, in order to do anything with the coins I would need to destroy the gold bar, else you think its okay to steal, sure, i'd still have some gold, but it is now useless as a way to store bitcoins forever

[Rudd-O]

Yeah, and everybody, except people like you, know what theft is. It's not leaving something untouched for over 100 years and then crying about when it's taken when you have countless decades to stop it from being taken.

"It's not theft if you didn't do some as-of-today unnecessary ritual that I want to impose on you".

See?  I told you guys.  Reasons matter not -- the thief will invent lifeboat scenarios and false reasons to pretend that his theft isn't theft.

I love Bitcoin because it allows me to protect myself from precisely these types of insidious thieves, who love to invent exceptions to the very simple rule "don't steal".

[bitfreak!]

So to you, destruction of my property (the gold bar) or theft (the reclaimed coins) are the only two options? I don't like it and I never will...

I never proposed "destruction" of anything as an answer

My private key is inside a gold bar, in order to do anything with the coins I would need to destroy the gold bar, else you think its okay to steal, sure, i'd still have some gold, but it is now useless as a way to store bitcoins forever

That would be cutting open the gold bar, not destroying it. And if you did put it in something which had all its value destroyed when opened, it would eventually have to be opened anyway unless you plan to leave the coins sitting there forever, so it's a stupid idea either way and would be your own fault for implementing such a ridiculous idea.

[drakahn]

So to you, destruction of my property (the gold bar) or theft (the reclaimed coins) are the only two options? I don't like it and I never will...

I never proposed "destruction" of anything as an answer

My private key is inside a gold bar, in order to do anything with the coins I would need to destroy the gold bar, else you think its okay to steal, sure, i'd still have some gold, but it is now useless as a way to store bitcoins forever

That would be cutting open the gold bar, not destroying it. And if you did put it in something which had all its value destroyed when opened, it would eventually have to be opened anyway unless you plan to leave the coins sitting there forever, so it's a stupid idea either way and would be your own fault for implementing such a ridiculous idea.

Forever or until I WANT to spend them, why is being able to safely store value for any amount of time a problem for you?
I know no one else has accessed my coins because my gold bar is in tact, I can expect them to be safe because we will never have theft built in.