Is there a long-term strategy to deal with "lost" bitcoins?

[c789]

People will forget/lose their wallet passwords. For some multisig wallets, some funds will never be released due to disagreements. Over time, the number of BTC in circulation will decrease because of these things. I don't want to use the word "risk" because this is more like an inevitability, but has a mitigation strategy been planned for this?

[1714968559]

1714968559

[1714968559]

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[MicroGuy]

People will forget/lose their wallet passwords. For some multisig wallets, some funds will never be released due to disagreements. Over time, the number of BTC in circulation will decrease because of these things. I don't want to use the word "risk" because this is more like an inevitability, but has a mitigation strategy been planned for this?

This is a good thing for the wider community because it increases scarcity. No plan needed.

[7788bitcoin]

People will forget/lose their wallet passwords. For some multisig wallets, some funds will never be released due to disagreements. Over time, the number of BTC in circulation will decrease because of these things. I don't want to use the word "risk" because this is more like an inevitability, but has a mitigation strategy been planned for this?

It is actually very difficult to define "lost coins". For example, some people are very active in the community but hodling quite a bit of coins for long time in the same address- are the coins considered "lost"? Some people are very lucky to generate very special vanity addresses, and therefore we can't say those are addresses with no private keys...

I think this has been discussed by Satoshi himself and there is no action needed for these presumed lost coins...

[c789]

I agree that lost/misplaced (or whatever one wants to call them) BTC will make BTC more scarce, which should make the remaining BTC more valuable.

[gogodr]

Sounds like its actually a good idea to open up some sort of business helping people with lost passwords ect. You could charge a fortune but is it even possible. How long can it take to try and crack the wallet.

[c789]

Sounds like its actually a good idea to open up some sort of business helping people with lost passwords ect. You could charge a fortune but is it even possible. How long can it take to try and crack the wallet.

If it's a good password and the original password setter can't provide input about possible characters, it's pretty much impossible to crack with today's technology. If parts of the password are known, a custom word list could be created and a brute force crack could be attempted.

When quantum computing is more widely available, all bets are off.

[Hirose UK]

People will forget/lose their wallet passwords. For some multisig wallets, some funds will never be released due to disagreements. Over time, the number of BTC in circulation will decrease because of these things. I don't want to use the word "risk" because this is more like an inevitability, but has a mitigation strategy been planned for this?

can't we just save our wallet passwords in a file e.g microsoft word so we won't forget it, or if it's risky of hacking, we can write it down in a piece of paper then save it in a safe place?

[franky1]

this question has been asked nearly every 6 months for the last few years.
here is a summery of answers:
1. less coins in circulation=more scarce=more demand/less supply=higher prices.. yay
2. coding in some way to redeposit funds back into circulation destroys fungibility and essentially ruins bitcoins 'trust' as a secure store of value that cant be manipulated
3. even if no one cared about fungibility, there would be civil war in regards to who deserves these released funds
4. how do you know funds are actually lost, and not just hoarded by someone waiting to reach retirement age. who will choose which funds should be released. if you dont have the private key to move them. you cant prove XYZ funds are yours to even suggest moving XYZ
5. we should not even raise the cap to, lets say 22m if we think 1m are 'lost' because what if those 'lost' 1m resurface when the owner retire and decide its now time to spend.. now we are at 22m circulation and scarcity is ruined

now my thoughts
we should not code in any time-release features to destroy fungibility. or cause civil war over who gets "free" coins
instead happily open up a service to crack passwords with the aid of the owner advising possible password combinations that may have been used.. but if they cannot be cracked. refer to point 1 and enjoy a slightly higher demand/lower supply in future.

[reRaise]

Dont think so

[btccashacc]

People will forget/lose their wallet passwords. For some multisig wallets, some funds will never be released due to disagreements. Over time, the number of BTC in circulation will decrease because of these things. I don't want to use the word "risk" because this is more like an inevitability, but has a mitigation strategy been planned for this?

can't we just save our wallet passwords in a file e.g microsoft word so we won't forget it, or if it's risky of hacking, we can write it down in a piece of paper then save it in a safe place?

save your password on your computer might be risky due to some conditions like hacking,distruction, formating, or any bad situation, i think the best way is just memorize single of it, but if you can't do this you could write it down but never to write it directly, atleast hint password or some clue about it to make you remember the original password, that's all just in my opinion

[gogodr]

Sounds like its actually a good idea to open up some sort of business helping people with lost passwords ect. You could charge a fortune but is it even possible. How long can it take to try and crack the wallet.

If it's a good password and the original password setter can't provide input about possible characters, it's pretty much impossible to crack with today's technology. If parts of the password are known, a custom word list could be created and a brute force crack could be attempted.

When quantum computing is more widely available, all bets are off.

yeah, once quantum computing comes out its a whole different ball game, but when I made my post I was assuming that the people with the lost passwords would have some idea of what it could be. Otherwise there would e no point.

[shinratensei_]

Sounds like its actually a good idea to open up some sort of business helping people with lost passwords ect. You could charge a fortune but is it even possible. How long can it take to try and crack the wallet.

If it's a good password and the original password setter can't provide input about possible characters, it's pretty much impossible to crack with today's technology. If parts of the password are known, a custom word list could be created and a brute force crack could be attempted.

When quantum computing is more widely available, all bets are off.

Better to make a repair password from email and another way can help if we lose the password. and give a two verification authentification to make a more secure on the wallet. But one of the problems is not only losing password but it's also losing an email or other data for making this account and us can't repair the password.

[DebitMe]

Remember though, if your worried about a diminishing money supply, you can always go out to more than 8 decimal places with bitcoin, which in theory, could create unlimited amounts of coins.

[gogodr]

Remember though, if your worried about a diminishing money supply, you can always go out to more than 8 decimal places with bitcoin, which in theory, could create unlimited amounts of coins.

Not unlimited amounts of coins, unlimited amounts of satoshis.

[franky1]

Remember though, if your worried about a diminishing money supply, you can always go out to more than 8 decimal places with bitcoin, which in theory, could create unlimited amounts of coins.

Not unlimited amounts of coins, unlimited amounts of satoshis.

going from
2,100,000,000,000,000 satoshi cap to just a single extra decimal is
21,000,000,000,000,000 satoshi cap

going from 2.1Trill to 21trill sats, is technically the same as going from 21m(coins) to 210m(coins). which is even more ridiculous idea then just going to 22m coins or even 42mill coins.

put it another way
if there are 170,000 tonnes(170,000,000,000grams) of gold. and specialists told you there will no longer be another tonne of gold ever..
but a year later some one makes 1530000000000 grabs of gold meaning
now 1,700,000000000grams of gold.
you cannot seriously say "but theres still only 170,000 tonnes"

seriously people. why are you people thinking that destroying fungibility or increasing the cap are things we should even consider!

your missing the point of bitcoin and you should go back to FIAT if you are even thinking changing fungibility or scarcity is a good thing

[MingLee]

Remember though, if your worried about a diminishing money supply, you can always go out to more than 8 decimal places with bitcoin, which in theory, could create unlimited amounts of coins.

Not unlimited amounts of coins, unlimited amounts of satoshis.

going from
2,100,000,000,000,000 satoshi cap to just a single extra decimal is
21,000,000,000,000,000 satoshi cap

going from 2.1Trill to 21trill sats, is technically the same as going from 21m(coins) to 210m(coins). which is even more ridiculous idea then just going to 22m coins or even 42mill coins.

seriously people. why are you people thinking that destroying fungibility or increasing the cap are things we should even consider!

your missing the point of bitcoin and you should go back to FIAT if you are even thinking changing fungibility or scarcity is a good thing

I think what he was aiming for was sort of like aiming for unlimited decimal places, rather than actually increasing the amount of satoshis available. It could be wrong terminology that is causing an issue here.

If a Satoshi was to be lock in at the smallest unit of Bitcoin, and you increased the number of decimal places, it technically only changes the fungibility, which I can see you having an issue with and I also have an issue with.

[gogodr]

Remember though, if your worried about a diminishing money supply, you can always go out to more than 8 decimal places with bitcoin, which in theory, could create unlimited amounts of coins.

Not unlimited amounts of coins, unlimited amounts of satoshis.

going from
2,100,000,000,000,000 satoshi cap to just a single extra decimal is
21,000,000,000,000,000 satoshi cap

going from 2.1Trill to 21trill sats, is technically the same as going from 21m(coins) to 210m(coins). which is even more ridiculous idea then just going to 22m coins or even 42mill coins.

seriously people. why are you people thinking that destroying fungibility or increasing the cap are things we should even consider!

your missing the point of bitcoin and you should go back to FIAT if you are even thinking changing fungibility or scarcity is a good thing

I think what he was aiming for was sort of like aiming for unlimited decimal places, rather than actually increasing the amount of satoshis available. It could be wrong terminology that is causing an issue here.

If a Satoshi was to be lock in at the smallest unit of Bitcoin, and you increased the number of decimal places, it technically only changes the fungibility, which I can see you having an issue with and I also have an issue with.

I was just trying to say that new bitcoins wont be available but breakdowns of btc will be. Still not new coins.

[franky1]

I was just trying to say that new bitcoins wont be available but breakdowns of btc will be. Still not new coins.

you do realise that the mechanics of the system are actually from satoshi's UP.. not bitcoin DOWN

though you may see on the front end a bitcoin as being 1btc
underneath, a bitcoin in the code is actually, technically and realistically.. displayed, calculated, validated and treated as 100,000,000
the 1btc is just a "userfriendly" visual aid that people have got used to seeing

so if you wanted to increase the "decimals of a bitcoin" you are just creating more bitcoin by having more satoshi's

[gogodr]

I was just trying to say that new bitcoins wont be available but breakdowns of btc will be. Still not new coins.

you do realise that the mechanics of the system are actually from satoshi's UP.. not bitcoin DOWN

though you may see on the front end a bitcoin as being 1btc
underneath, a bitcoin in the code is actually, technically and realistically.. displayed, calculated, validated and treated as 100,000,000
the 1btc is just a "userfriendly" visual aid that people have got used to seeing

so if you wanted to increase the "decimals of a bitcoin" you are just creating more bitcoin by having more satoshi's

but you're having no more actually full btc's, just more sats. So all I'm trying to explain is that even though you have more sats available you wont have more full bitcoins available. And I do know it works up.
 

[ObscureBean]

This shouldn't be an issue in the short term or even relatively long term. But yea if we keep losing coins, over 100s of years this problem will eventually require attention from the devs. I'm sure they'll figure something out when the time comes. For the immediate future though, it'll only boost the value of the remaining coins.