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Author Topic: Is the number of available bitcoins decreasing?  (Read 9818 times)
aardvark15 (OP)
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February 19, 2016, 11:04:57 PM
 #1

Let me explain.  Bitcoins are constantly being created (mined) but bitcoins are constantly being lost also.  The number of bitcoins created per year is decreasing (by design) and we could assume that the number of bitcoins lost keeps increasing every year.  If this is true, then at some point the total number of bitcoins available (not lost) would decease because more are being lost than being created.  If it hasn't started happening yet, it will sometime in the future.
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richardsNY
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February 19, 2016, 11:21:32 PM
 #2

The number of freshly created Bitcoins will decrease because of the block halving. In Juli this year the second block halving will kick in and lower the block rewards to 12.5 BTC. Can you explain what exactly you mean with Bitcoins being "lost"?
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February 19, 2016, 11:54:58 PM
 #3

The number of freshly created Bitcoins will decrease because of the block halving. In Juli this year the second block halving will kick in and lower the block rewards to 12.5 BTC. Can you explain what exactly you mean with Bitcoins being "lost"?

People send (voluntarily or by mistake) coins to addresses nobody controls. (https://blockchain.info/address/1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE)
Or have stored their coins in an address which the private key has been lost.  
Coaxme
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February 20, 2016, 12:00:12 AM
 #4

The number of freshly created Bitcoins will decrease because of the block halving. In Juli this year the second block halving will kick in and lower the block rewards to 12.5 BTC. Can you explain what exactly you mean with Bitcoins being "lost"?

People send (voluntarily or by mistake) coins to addresses nobody controls. (https://blockchain.info/address/1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE)
Or have stored their coins in an address which the private key has been lost.  
Who owns that address or created?
It looks awesome.

unholycactus
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February 20, 2016, 12:02:51 AM
 #5

The number of freshly created Bitcoins will decrease because of the block halving. In Juli this year the second block halving will kick in and lower the block rewards to 12.5 BTC. Can you explain what exactly you mean with Bitcoins being "lost"?

People send (voluntarily or by mistake) coins to addresses nobody controls. (https://blockchain.info/address/1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE)
Or have stored their coins in an address which the private key has been lost.  
Who owns that address or created?
It looks awesome.

You can send bitcoins to any address. It doesn't have to be created.
In fact, all addresses already exist.

When you own an address, the only thing that is different is that you control the private key.

Nobody controls the private key of 1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE

You can create (or control like said above) your own vanity address with vanitygen, you should look into it, I think it would interest you.
Coaxme
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February 20, 2016, 12:15:44 AM
 #6

The number of freshly created Bitcoins will decrease because of the block halving. In Juli this year the second block halving will kick in and lower the block rewards to 12.5 BTC. Can you explain what exactly you mean with Bitcoins being "lost"?

People send (voluntarily or by mistake) coins to addresses nobody controls. (https://blockchain.info/address/1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE)
Or have stored their coins in an address which the private key has been lost.  
Who owns that address or created?
It looks awesome.

You can send bitcoins to any address. It doesn't have to be created.
In fact, all addresses already exist.

When you own an address, the only thing that is different is that you control the private key.

Nobody controls the private key of 1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE

You can create (or control like said above) your own vanity address with vanitygen, you should look into it, I think it would interest you.
Im intetested at that vanitygen but i dont know where to find it. Cry

unholycactus
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February 20, 2016, 01:20:42 AM
 #7

The number of freshly created Bitcoins will decrease because of the block halving. In Juli this year the second block halving will kick in and lower the block rewards to 12.5 BTC. Can you explain what exactly you mean with Bitcoins being "lost"?

People send (voluntarily or by mistake) coins to addresses nobody controls. (https://blockchain.info/address/1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE)
Or have stored their coins in an address which the private key has been lost.  
Who owns that address or created?
It looks awesome.

You can send bitcoins to any address. It doesn't have to be created.
In fact, all addresses already exist.

When you own an address, the only thing that is different is that you control the private key.

Nobody controls the private key of 1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE

You can create (or control like said above) your own vanity address with vanitygen, you should look into it, I think it would interest you.
Im intetested at that vanitygen but i dont know where to find it. Cry

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25804.0
It basically generates private keys until the public address matches what you want.
aardvark15 (OP)
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February 20, 2016, 01:55:08 AM
 #8

Without knowing the rate at which coins are lost, it is impossible to know if coins are being lost faster than they are created. Eventually, no more coins will be created so there will be a point at which the number of coins will begin dropping.

Yes that is true.  But my point is basically that at some point, more coins will be lost than created. 
mrflibblehat
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February 20, 2016, 03:15:11 AM
 #9

No wonder. There are a lot of wallets with lost passwords that have many bitcoins in them. Those coins are lost forever.

bonski
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February 20, 2016, 03:19:52 AM
 #10

So in the market, that's one of the major problem why bitcoin rate decreases? there is no cycle when it is frozen in someone's wallet address that lost it's private key/ password for their wallet address accounts. Is there a report if how much bitcoin got lost per year?
aardvark15 (OP)
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February 20, 2016, 03:34:38 AM
 #11

So in the market, that's one of the major problem why bitcoin rate decreases? there is no cycle when it is frozen in someone's wallet address that lost it's private key/ password for their wallet address accounts. Is there a report if how much bitcoin got lost per year?

There is no way to know for sure how many bitcoins are lost when people lose their private keys because they just aren't going to post that anywhere.  Some could be lost when someone dies and no one know they had a bitcoin wallet so those are lost and no one even knows they are lost.
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February 20, 2016, 04:04:43 AM
 #12

So in the market, that's one of the major problem why bitcoin rate decreases? there is no cycle when it is frozen in someone's wallet address that lost it's private key/ password for their wallet address accounts. Is there a report if how much bitcoin got lost per year?

There is no way to know for sure how many bitcoins are lost when people lose their private keys because they just aren't going to post that anywhere.  Some could be lost when someone dies and no one know they had a bitcoin wallet so those are lost and no one even knows they are lost.
Yeah, it's practically impossible to get exact statistics on how many coins are lost forever, but this article gives out a pretty good estimate based on the number of Bitcoins that lay dormant for at least a year and a half.

It's a pretty interesting read:

https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/rise-of-the-zombie-bitcoins

ranochigo
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February 20, 2016, 04:16:27 AM
 #13

Yes. Given that majority of the early adopters gave up on Bitcoin after several hacking incident or market crash, they would have deleted their private keys. This can also happen due to a hard drive failure and the user having no backups. This isn't a huge problem with Bitcoin. The number of decimals can be increased to compensate for the lower market supply.

It is impossible to determine whether a coin is truly lost or just the owner using the address as a cold storage till sometime later. It wouldn't be practical for the network to automatically recover those lost coins.

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pitham1
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February 20, 2016, 04:48:58 AM
 #14

I don't think the number of bitcoins lost per year will keep increasing. This is a function of bitcoin's price. As bitcoins become more valuable, people will take more care of their private keys and bitcoins in general.

Yakamoto
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February 20, 2016, 05:10:17 AM
 #15

As of current, the number of available Bitcoins are likely increasing as opposed to decreasing, due to the 25 coins being generated every 10 minutes, if I remember correctly.

There are some incidents when people lost massive amounts of Bitcoin for one reason or another, however the rate of loss currently does not outpace the rate of creation.

Once all 21m coins are mined, then there will be amounts of Bitcoin being lost.
Amph
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February 20, 2016, 07:33:03 AM
 #16

i doubt that the number of coins lost per years or per day is so high that it exceeds the number of coins that are created

basically you're telling me that there are more than 3600 coins lost per day, which is absurd and not real at all

also they are seen as a gift, for the value of remaining coins...
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February 20, 2016, 07:45:47 AM
 #17

Its not that of losing. A large number of bitcoins have got accumulated in certain people.
So the Bitcoins in circulation looks to be decreasing.
CryingMidget
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February 20, 2016, 07:46:33 AM
 #18

Let me explain.  Bitcoins are constantly being created (mined) but bitcoins are constantly being lost also.  The number of bitcoins created per year is decreasing (by design) and we could assume that the number of bitcoins lost keeps increasing every year.  If this is true, then at some point the total number of bitcoins available (not lost) would decease because more are being lost than being created.  If it hasn't started happening yet, it will sometime in the future.

According to now bitcoin blocks are making nearly 32000 bitcoin, in block halving It will get reduce into half. So It all about the bitcoin which is gonna in future is only get decrease in half the range not which is already created.
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February 20, 2016, 08:48:02 AM
 #19

Although you may have a point, it's not going to always keep on people losing their BTCitcoins due to some human errors and for sure in the future, more functionality could save this problem and help users retain their earned BTCitcoins somehow. But again, there are so many useless and untouched BTCitcoins too and it's a waste unfortunately and does have an indirect effect on it's value, I suppose.

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arbitrage
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February 20, 2016, 10:07:25 AM
 #20

As long as you can easily buy btc on exchanges don't worry.
But when you see price rising with great demand maybe, but not!
BTC consists of how many satoshis?
In future you don't need to buy whole btc at all you can buy 100k satoshis and this can be 100$ for example.
Even if total number of coins falling to 5 millions.
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