Halvings

[spazzdla]

1 BTC per block at 21 mill coins is  .2% inflation a year, basically 0 due to lost coins.

IMO a small inflation is equaled out by lost coins.


*Edit*
If you don't understand what the halving in this thread is not for you, sorry.  A little more technical of a discussion.

[lucasjkr]

Lost coins is unquantifiable. What if we start basing assumptions on what coins we think are "lost" only to later find out those coins weren't lost after all?

[jambola2]

This may be worth considering at some point, if there is insufficient mining incentive to keep the network secure. However, the reward will drop under 1 BTC only after x halving (12.5->6.25->3.125->1.5625->0.78125) which should happen only after around 16 years.

Any predictions we make now are likely to be worthless.

However, I do agree with lucasjkr, assuming lost coins doesn't add much to the concept. However, an extremely small rate of inflation (1 BTC per block, or maybe even lesser) might be something to consider in the far future.

[Amph]

isn't the point of fee to keep the network alive? we have enough time to build the value, so by the time fee will be crucial for mining, they would have a very high value, and miners would keep mining without problem

[pedrog]

Fees have to keep the network alive, if we don't keep to the original plan than it's better to support some other coin who does it.

[odolvlobo]

Reducing the subsidy to 0 is good because it reduces the number of variables and potential problems. If you decide to continue the subsidy, then how do we know if its value is good for Bitcoin or bad for Bitcoin. There are problems right now that would be eliminated if there were no subsidy, (e.g. empty blocks).

On the other hand, off-chain transactions (such as lightning network) don't pay fees but still depend on the security of the block chain. In the future, if the majority of transactions are off-chain and don't pay fees, then the security of the transactions will be in jeopardy. One way of reducing the problem might be to keep a subsidy.

[Rubberduckie]

yeah gotta agree you cant put a number on the lost coins and
if they do people could "find" the coins and put us over 21 mill

[Hirose UK]

Lost coins is unquantifiable. What if we start basing assumptions on what coins we think are "lost" only to later find out those coins weren't lost after all?

yeah, probably it's better to look for what the meaning of lost coin, what the effect, where it goes, or at least we know how exactly we lost the coins.

[lucasjkr]

isn't the point of fee to keep the network alive? we have enough time to build the value, so by the time fee will be crucial for mining, they would have a very high value, and miners would keep mining without problem

Fees would/should keep it alive in the long term. But without starting a flame war, most of the hopes for scaling involve off-chain scaling, which effectively removes those transactions from the population that miners could hope to eventually collect fees on.

[pawel7777]

I can see the benefit of small, infinite inflation but Bitcoin should stay capped at 21m. That's one of, if not the most important features of Bitcoin and it should stay this way even if it's clear that BTC would work better uncapped.

That being said, if at some point vast majority decide to remove the cap and fork, then there's not much anyone can do about it.

[pereira4]

Lost coins is unquantifiable. What if we start basing assumptions on what coins we think are "lost" only to later find out those coins weren't lost after all?

In my opinion it doesn't take rocket science to know that the supply is shrinking faster than most people expect. Lost coins is a very frequent thing, sometimes it happens in big amounts. You can go on Reddit and you can read how a bunch of idiots that don't take the required security measures are always losing coins. Now, add in all the unreported coin losing and you will see how people losing coins forever is a very frequent thing. This + halving = the total supply is shrinking fast and Bitcoin will continue getting rarer and more valued.

[spazzdla]

No problem if we're only talking to make bitcoin total supply exactly reached 21 million (current total bitcoin supply will be 20999999.97690000BTC)
Otherwise, i only agree if the inflation is less than 0.1% even though community will disagree with it.

I wasn't aiming to hit and maintain the 21 mill coins really. 

More so a very small inflation rate, .1%, shoot, .01% just to help miners keep mining in 20ish years.


A rate of inflation so small that the lost coins per year would dwarf it.


At this point I think it will always be impossible to know the exact amount of coins in circulation. 


Perhaps a min pay out of .001 BTC. 

Just something I have been thinking about for some time.  I see the risk in changing the payout structure as if it is changed once people get nervous it can change again :S..

Perhaps that merg mining idea is the best answer.

[aso118]

Lost coins is unquantifiable. What if we start basing assumptions on what coins we think are "lost" only to later find out those coins weren't lost after all?

Yes, it is best to ignore them. We have a ceiling on inflation.
Actual inflation will be lower due to lost coins. We don't have to quantify how much lower.

[raphma]

No problem if we're only talking to make bitcoin total supply exactly reached 21 million (current total bitcoin supply will be 20999999.97690000BTC)
Otherwise, i only agree if the inflation is less than 0.1% even though community will disagree with it.

 just to help miners keep mining in 20ish years.

The price probably will take care of that. Right now, halving coming, bitcoin is pumping hard and will keep that way till ~700-800$, then might have a lil drop to 600$.
That way, even with half reward miners will still have the same value(not bitcoin, but in USD for example).

Half reward and twice the price sounds ok.

[lucasjkr]

Lost coins is unquantifiable. What if we start basing assumptions on what coins we think are "lost" only to later find out those coins weren't lost after all?

In my opinion it doesn't take rocket science to know that the supply is shrinking faster than most people expect. Lost coins is a very frequent thing, sometimes it happens in big amounts. You can go on Reddit and you can read how a bunch of idiots that don't take the required security measures are always losing coins. Now, add in all the unreported coin losing and you will see how people losing coins forever is a very frequent thing. This + halving = the total supply is shrinking fast and Bitcoin will continue getting rarer and more valued.

Lost coins are far different than stolen coins. Lost coins are coins whose private key is lost, and therefore unspendable, not just under someone else's control. And it's pretty much impossible to demonstrate a lost key is actually lost. I could say "hey I lost my key and deleted my wallet.dat and 10,000 btc were lost", but woe to whoever revalues Bitcoin on that assumption, as I could have just been making that up to attempt to distort the price.

So no. Unless coins are sent to a burn address, it's dangerous to assume any coins that someone says are lost actually are. Surely there's some, but how do we actually evaluate any of those claims?

[BurtW]

This idea has been discussed hundreds of times in the past.  In fact I would say it is the most often presented idea to "fix Bitcoin" over the years.

The bottom line is that anyone can fork Bitcoin at any time for any reason they want.  This is the most common idea, to remove the cap.

Once you fork for this reason (or any other) it is no longer Bitcoin - it is an alt coin.  Everyone that wants to continue the cap will continue on the Bitcoin protocol just fine.  Everyone that want to use the newly created alt coin will use it until it falls to the wayside and loses all value just like a vast majority of all alt coins do.

[pawel7777]

...

Once you fork for this reason (or any other) it is no longer Bitcoin - it is an alt coin.  Everyone that wants to continue the cap will continue on the Bitcoin protocol just fine.  Everyone that want to use the newly created alt coin will use it until it falls to the wayside and loses all value just like a vast majority of all alt coins do.

It almost sounds like you're saying that every hardfork (even with 99% or 100% support) will create an altcoin. If this was the case, the "real" Bitcoin died long time ago (as we had 2 hardforks already) and what we have now is an altcoin with hijacked name.

[BurtW]

...

Once you fork for this reason (or any other) it is no longer Bitcoin - it is an alt coin.  Everyone that wants to continue the cap will continue on the Bitcoin protocol just fine.  Everyone that want to use the newly created alt coin will use it until it falls to the wayside and loses all value just like a vast majority of all alt coins do.

It almost sounds like you're saying that every hardfork (even with 99% or 100% support) will create an altcoin. If this was the case, the "real" Bitcoin died long time ago (as we had 2 hardforks already) and what we have now is an altcoin with hijacked name.

Let's get the our terminology straight:  If 100% agree with a change and follow it then it is a change, not a fork.  A fork will imply that some percentage of people follow the protocol change and the rest do not.  Do you really think anyone is running the protocol as it was before the two changes you describe above?  No, those were/are changes that everyone followed.

What is described in this thread would be a very controversial change that would not be followed by 100% of the miners and nodes.  I do claim that as long as there is some percentage of holdouts running the capped protocol and calling it Bitcoin - that is Bitcoin since the cap is one of the most fundamental parameters of the protocol.  The portion of miners and nodes that split off to form a cap-less alt coin protocol would not be Bitcoin as long as there is a viable Bitcoin (capped) protocol running.  That is what I meant, that is my story, and I am sticking to it.

[bittraffic]

how does halving work by the the way? how long does it take? a day, a week or a month?

[Cryptonitex]

This PoW won't last forever IMO
PoS coins are the future, but as it currently is, BitCoin is the gold.