21 mio Bitcoins - an implemented end of life?

[Mik]

Hello,

if there are only 21million BTC ever, then I can't imagine, that this system will last very long! Since people loose, lost and will loose their wallets, the quantity of coins will decrease continually until there are so few coins left, that the system cannot work anymore! Where am I wrong? 

[1714127501]

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[1714127501]

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[ciphermonk]

Hi, welcome to the board.

This topic has been heavily discussed already throughout the forum. Loosing bitcoins is not an issue as they are highly fungible. Today they can be divided up to 8 decimal places ( 0.00000001 BTC = 1 satoshi ). If the need arises in the future, we can modify the protocol to allow for even more decimal places.

Once you understand this concept, you realize that the number of bitcoins in circulation doesn't really matter and is only a matter of convention:

21 000 000 BTC
21 000 000 000 mBTC
21 000 000 000 000 uBTC
2 100 000 000 000 000 satoshis

And hypothetically, if we increase the number of decimal places to 16 in the future, we would have:

210 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 units

So even if all the bitcoins except 1 are lost, you can still run a world economy on it as long as it is fungible enough ( you set enough decimal places in the protocol ).

[Mik]

Ah! Thanks, and sorry if I didn't find the dicussions already. So hopefully I'm the one who owns the last bitcoin then  lol

[Ottoman1]

Thanks for the explenation I have been searching for an answer to the decimal issue in the forum, it all makes sense on the theoretical level at least. But on the practical level can it (and/or will it) be implemented by the whole network? is that possible?

i.e. let's say that people decide to go mainstream BTC and we see huge (I mean huge) inflow of fiat into BTC will the network decide this somehow together that we should split the existing BTC? Or is it on the accounting level, meaning that each and every one will have to revise their wallet as they see fit? I guess I am missing something crucial here, but I would be upmost grateful for an explenation.

 /O-man 

[theta]

Thanks for the explenation I have been searching for an answer to the decimal issue in the forum, it all makes sense on the theoretical level at least. But on the practical level can it (and/or will it) be implemented by the whole network? is that possible?

i.e. let's say that people decide to go mainstream BTC and we see huge (I mean huge) inflow of fiat into BTC will the network decide this somehow together that we should split the existing BTC? Or is it on the accounting level, meaning that each and every one will have to revise their wallet as they see fit? I guess I am missing something crucial here, but I would be upmost grateful for an explenation.

 /O-man 

No need to split anything, it's a personal matter whether you prefer to say 0.0000001550 BTC or 15.50 satoshis for example.
If you go to google earth you see the scale in km at first. Then as you zoom in, it will change to metres, does that mean that the actual distance changes? 

[Ottoman1]

Ok, thanks

So, a scenario would be that my local restaurant accepts BTC and one dinner would cost me 0.0000001550 BTC and when I make payment it costs me 15,50 Satoshis. This must mean that there exists a potential for wallet services that make conversions between different BTC units of account - in a mainstream BTC scenario.

Btw - you seem knowledgable and informed:) Perhaps do you know whether the transaction time of BTC will ever go lower than 10 mins? And/or is there a potential for intermediary parties to make transaction happen instantenously on demand?


thanks

[DannyHamilton]

So, a scenario would be that my local restaurant accepts BTC and one dinner would cost me 0.0000001550 BTC and when I make payment it costs me 15,50 Satoshis. This must mean that there exists a potential for wallet services that make conversions between different BTC units of account - in a mainstream BTC scenario.

No need to "make conversions"  The current wallet already does all it's internal accounting in terms of Satoshis.  As the daily interactions move towards smaller units, the wallet interface will be configured to display in terms of these smaller units.

Btw - you seem knowledgable and informed:) Perhaps do you know whether the transaction time of BTC will ever go lower than 10 mins?

Transaction time is already much less than 10 minutes.  Most transactions are relayed throughout the bitcoin network in a few seconds.  Confirmations of transactions on the other hand will always require a block, and the protocol is designed to keep the average time between blocks close to 10 minutes.  That actual time for any particular block is somewhat random.  They can (and have) occur in a few seconds.  They also can (and have) occur in over 90 minutes.  This randomness and adjustment towards 10 minute averages will almost certainly not change.

And/or is there a potential for intermediary parties to make transaction happen instantenously on demand?

Yes, there is definitely potential for intermediary parties to provide instantaneous guarantees of transaction confirmation.  I suspect that such intermediaries will come into existence prior to bitcoin being widely accepted in "mainstream" use.

[Vladimir]

Hello,

if there are only 21million BTC ever, then I can't imagine, that this system will last very long! Since people loose, lost and will loose their wallets, the quantity of coins will decrease continually until there are so few coins left, that the system cannot work anymore! Where am I wrong? 

Do not worry. I'll keep 1 BTC for such an eventuality. Then the world economy can buy it from me use it to run itself.

[theta]

Ok, thanks

So, a scenario would be that my local restaurant accepts BTC and one dinner would cost me 0.0000001550 BTC and when I make payment it costs me 15,50 Satoshis. This must mean that there exists a potential for wallet services that make conversions between different BTC units of account - in a mainstream BTC scenario.

Btw - you seem knowledgable and informed:) Perhaps do you know whether the transaction time of BTC will ever go lower than 10 mins? And/or is there a potential for intermediary parties to make transaction happen instantenously on demand?


thanks

DannyHamilton answered brilliantly both questions. I would just say that it's not a "conversion", any more than there is conversion between bytes, KB, MB and GB in your hard drive. They are just different denominations of the same unit of measure. Another example is dollars and cents. You can say that something costs 55 cents or $0.55. In theory the world economy could operate with a total money supply of 1 dollar. It would just mean that we would use pico-cents (trillionths of a cent) for our daily transactions.

And thanks for the compliment, but I have to admit that on most technical aspects of bitcoin I am not that knowledgeable, I'm still a newbie in fact. So for your second question I wouldn't have an answer. Luckily someone really knowledgeable answered it first.