Theymos: “Bitcoins Belonging to Satoshi Should Be Destroyed”

[Dabs]

Some banks charge a dormancy fee: if you are account is inactive (no deposits or withdrawals in the past 12 months), then the account is considered dormant and charged a fee every month; until it's all gone.

Some banks send your money to the central bank after 10 years.

5 years is actually a long time for someone who's watching his own bitcoins; however that would be a bummer if you get knocked out into a coma and wake up 6 years later to find your stash destroyed.

[theymos]

I never said any such thing. bitcoin.com again proves that it is absolutely worthless by completely fabricating that quote.

[gadman2]

I never said any such thing. bitcoin.com again proves that it is absolutely worthless by completely fabricating that quote.

Aka: OP, take a break.

[BurtW]

I never said any such thing. bitcoin.com again proves that it is absolutely worthless by completely fabricating that quote.

Theymos,

1) It is not about being accurate it is about getting clicks.  In that respect the article is a success.

2) My understanding of your thinking here, is this correct:

When/If QC becomes a reality (this is a big When/If) and

After QC becomes a viable threat to Bitcoin and

After we have already forked to replace the QC vulnerable algorithms in Bitcoin with QC safe algorithms

Then and only then, maybe, we should consider possibly blacklisting older coins that are not covered by the QC safe replacement algorithms

Moving the coins from one QC vulnerable address to another QC vulnerable address just to keep them from getting blacklisted makes no sense.

This only makes sense after we have transitioned to new QC safe algorithms as a way to encourage (force) people to move their coins to the new algorithms.

At the rate QC is progressing those of us alive right now really don't have to worry about this.  Perhaps our grandchildren or maybe our children.

[theymos]

5 years is actually a long time for someone who's watching his own bitcoins; however that would be a bummer if you get knocked out into a coma and wake up 6 years later to find your stash destroyed.

Ideally, the coins would be destroyed just moments before they would be stolen so that no one would lose coins who wouldn't lose them due to theft anyway. Since we can't exactly predict the future, there may be some cases like that, but it should be extremely rare.

If no one loses any coins, then that'd be a massive success. The goal of the policy would not be to destroy coins, but to prevent lost and insecure coins from being stolen.

Theymos,

My understanding of your thinking here, is this correct:

Pretty much.

I'm talking about the hypothetical situation of advancements in quantum computing making ECDSA insecure. I am not proposing that any code be written or changes be made today, and probably not for several years. When the deletion policy is put in place, the grace period should be as long as possible -- I mentioned 5 years from the initiation of the policy as an arbitrary example.

After we have already forked to replace the QC vulnerable algorithms in Bitcoin with QC safe algorithms

Agreed, though as a minor technical nitpick, note that you can actually roll out both changes at once (with the expiration change set to only take effect after a several-year grace period), and both the crypto upgrade and the expiration are softforks.

as a way to encourage (force) people to move their coins to the new algorithms.

From my perspective, the motivation for doing this would be to prevent thieves from stealing a ton of almost-certainly-lost bitcoins. It would be very bad for the overall Bitcoin economy if the ~5% of bitcoins that are "permanently lost" come back into circulation, especially when the new owners would be unethical thieves.

At the rate QC is progressing those of us alive right now really don't have to worry about this.  Perhaps our grandchildren or maybe our children.

I think that QC could get to a worrying state for Bitcoin in as soon as 10 years, though perhaps it will take much longer. According to several standards bodies, Bitcoin's 256-bit elliptic curve is only considered secure up to 2030, in part due to QC.

[AgentofCoin]

...

At the rate QC is progressing those of us alive right now really don't have to worry about this.  Perhaps our grandchildren or maybe our children.

I think that QC could get to a worrying state for Bitcoin in as soon as 10 years, though perhaps it will take much longer. According to several standards bodies, Bitcoin's 256-bit elliptic curve is only considered secure up to 2030, in part due to QC.

It's possible QCs are closer than people have been led to believe.

Usually the military/R&D have certain technological advances about 40 years
ahead of any public disclosure. The question is when will it be used in a manner
in which others will know that there is a fully operational one out there somewhere.

When the public learns that "blank" exists, it is usually because it has already been replaced.

[btcjoin14]

Satoshi has the right of his coins if he is still alive if he's no longer on the scene or not alive then they should burn them but as long as he wants them no point burning them.

[cjmoles]

This doesn't make sense!  If bitcoins security is so bad that we have to worry about other peoples coins getting stolen and crashing the price, then maybe we should be talking about bitcoin's security issues instead of figuring out what to do with other people's property.  Wow!  Unbelievable!  There are so many other alternatives to destroying other people'c coin to preserve the value of our own coin....just entertaining that thought is so very telling.  Maybe we should all just take a vote on whether or not to take all the coin in the ledger and distribute them equally among the community....Majority rule?  Just fork the whole thing and start over with equal shares!  That's the fair thing to do!  Right?

[Quickseller]

little to no effort.

I don't think any QC will ever allow someone to crack the private key of a bitcoin address with "little to no effort" as I anticipate that QCs will be very expensive to build and use (via electric costs). I also believe that there will not ever be any "personal" uses for QCs which will increase the friction associated with trying to do something malicious with a QC

Whoever got those coins would have immense power over Bitcoin's economics.

The same can be said about satoshi. In the event that satoshi were to give the coins to his heirs upon his death, then the same can be said about his heirs.

If Satoshi wants his coins so badly, then he can move them himself before they are destroyed.

This is not necessarily true. It is possible that satoshi did something along the lines of the below in order to protect his coins:

• Create an n-time-lock transaction(s) that is only valid far in the future that happens to be after some time after his coins would be set to be "destroyed"
• After creating the above transaction(s), destroying the original private keys
• The transaction(s) would spend his coins to previously unused addresses
• If satoshi were to become aware that the private keys to the above were compromised, then satoshi could draft transactions that depend on the above transactions to newly created addresses whose private keys he know is not compromised, and broadcast both sets of transactions as soon as the transaction(s) in step 1 become valid.
• This would greatly reduce the chances of successfully stealing his bitcoin in the event that his private keys were to become compromised via having physical access to them (eg having access to whatever the private keys are stored on)

Another possibility is that satoshi is dead, and he left his coins to his heirs, however his will (or trust document) read something along the lines of "the coins shall remain unspent until x time and thereafter shall remain unspent with the exception of giving 5% of my coins each year to each of Johnny and Sally Grandchildren". In the world of estates and trusts the will and/or trust documents are generally followed to the "t" as deviating in any way from the will/trust documents will open up the administrator of the estate/trustee to potential liability.

A third possibility is probably the simplest in that it is possible that satoshi is in jail and will not be able to access his private keys until a long time in the future.

However, based upon the current trend of those coins not moving, destroying them in the proposed manner would not have any effect on the economy whatsoever as they are essentially acting as burned coins.

I am not sure this is necessarily true. I think that setting the precedent of blacklisting any coins, regardless of the reasons will open up the possibility that coins belonging to a "criminal" and/or someone who is unpopular will be blacklisted in the future, which will reduce the confidence in bitcoin.

[pooya87]

this sounds like a good idea at first but has some bad points in it too. i think the biggest one is that we shouldn't be able to decide about other's bitcoins satoshi included.

and it also rises a question for me:
what if "I" want to hold bitcoin for more than that time frame. like placing some in a cold storage and keeping it for 10 years. will that be subjected to the proposed rule of lost coins?

[SFR10]

There seems to be a pros and cons to this move (if ever went through). The good thing would be the avoidance of future inflation (in case someone will be able to get their hands on them) but on the other side, it's still Satoshi's property and by doing so, it's like a centralized move instead. On the other hand I do like Theymos OP_LAMPORT soft fork proposal since it makes it more secure than now.

[AgentofCoin]

this sounds like a good idea at first but has some bad points in it too. i think the biggest one is that we shouldn't be able to decide about other's bitcoins satoshi included.
and it also rises a question for me:
what if "I" want to hold bitcoin for more than that time frame. like placing some in a cold storage and keeping it for 10 years. will that be subjected to the proposed rule of lost coins?

In theory, you can keep your coins in cold storage for 10 years, AFTER
you move those coins to a QC resistant address. Anyone who stored their
coins away with the idea that encryption and Bitcoin would be the same for
the next 100 years is ignorant to the reality of encryption and Bitcoin.

If you or anyone due to ignorance, or purposefully decides not to move
their coins in time, those coins will either be taken by the QC or be destroyed
to prevent the QC from taking them.

Of course, this is all speculative. We may just move to QC resistant addresses,
but let the QC take all old coins (not purposely destroy coins, let them lay).

[pureclckr]

No, Satoshi is the owner of this currency and we cant destroy his coins

[iCEBREAKER]

Satoshi has the right of his coins if he is still alive if he's no longer on the scene or not alive then they should burn them but as long as he wants them no point burning them.

Exactly.

The Holy Stash is the ultimate dog food feast; if Bitcoin is to serve as a radically deflationary store of value, it will do so primarily for its Creator.

We can't change the social contract to screw Satoshi without destroying Bitcoin for everyone.   

[Herbert2020]

can anyone give a quick explanation or a link to help me understand what exactly is QC and QC resistant address that i keep hearing about this subject?

[Embroiderymate]

Wouldn't it be impossible to remove someone else's coins from there wallet?

[TKeenan]

Wouldn't it be impossible to remove someone else's coins from there wallet?

If you really want to save Bitcoin, Theymos should be destroyed.

[iCEBREAKER]

If you really want to save Bitcoin, Theymos should be destroyed.   

If some random sysop can destroy Bitcoin, it never deserved to exist.   

[BitcoinSupremo]

Thats a no no no no no no no no no no move. Whats the point of Bitcoin when someone can destroy some coins which are sitting in some dude wallet since 5 years ago? Like the above reply I agree bitcoin shouldn't have existed at all if some dude can just go and destroy someone else's bitcoin. Security is 0 this way. No no no no this should not happen.

[AGD]

Et tu, Brute?