How will BitCoin survive as people die, wallets get lost, bitcoin grows, etc????

[DannyHamilton]

If someone takes half, even a quarter, of the twenty one million coins that can ever exist then the price of btc will go up exponentially.

Exponentially?  What do you base this statement on?  Are you talking about the price of bitcoin (the exchange rate), or are you talking about the price of products and services that are purchased with bitcoin?  The price of products and services will almost certainly drop.

[Gator-hex]

Lol your trolling right?

If someone takes half, even a quarter, of the twenty one million coins that can ever exist then the price of btc will go up exponentially.

Stuff is only worth the amount of money units chasing it.

Double the money units, stuff costs double,
half the money units, stuff costs half.

[battmann]

If someone takes half, even a quarter, of the twenty one million coins that can ever exist then the price of btc will go up exponentially.

Exponentially?  What do you base this statement on?  Are you talking about the price of bitcoin (the exchange rate), or are you talking about the price of products and services that are purchased with bitcoin?  The price of products and services will almost certainly drop.

Lol your trolling right?

If someone takes half, even a quarter, of the twenty one million coins that can ever exist then the price of btc will go up exponentially.

Stuff is only worth the amount of money units chasing it.

Double the money units, stuff costs double,
half the money units, stuff costs half.

Rarity. The more scarce an object is the more it is worth. Yes, you can divide the btc down into tiny pieces, but that is also cut if half of the coins are caught up in "dead" wallets. Less bitcoins to go around means more expensive bitcoins. This is considering a time when the 21mil cap has been reached and no more can be made.

I mean if I am wrong correct me, I am just putting out an idea that came to me within about 30 seconds of reading this threads title.

[DannyHamilton]

Rarity. The more scarce an object is the more it is worth.

This is correct, but I'd think it would be linear, not exponential.  Do you have some evidence or source indicating that it would be "exponential", or is that just something you decided for yourself and decided to tell everyone?

[battmann]

Rarity. The more scarce an object is the more it is worth.

This is correct, but I'd think it would be linear, not exponential.  Do you have some evidence or source indicating that it would be "exponential", or is that just something you decided for yourself and decided to tell everyone?

It is from my first statement. First a few people lose their btc in their wallets no big deal, then more and more, once the hoarders get older they will die with more BTC in their wallets than they had in the beginning. Basically it is exponential because the amount of BTC going into circulation is  causing exponential losses in wallet death. Following this the chances of someone loosing a wallet with more BTC becomes higher. Exponentially the price of coinage will go up in time.

That's my 1min argument. I encourage input to the idea, because it might very well be something we will have to deal with at some point.

Don't patronize me dawg its disrespectful.

Edit--

The use of quotes in that manner  on a forum is like using air-quotes in 7th grade

[christop]

Exponential deflation is not a problem when the factor is relatively small (say, 3% or so). The crude death rate, according to Wikipedia, is 8.37 per 1000 per year, or 0.837%. If dying people have 3.58 times as many Bitcoins in their wallets than living people on average, we would see 3% deflation due to deaths. I don't think that's too unrealistic of a figure.

Then again, I would speculate that most people of advanced age or otherwise anticipating death soon would have a will to pass their Bitcoins to their descendants, which would mitigate this effect. I also think that other economic factors would have a much larger impact on prices than people taking their Bitcoins to their grave, so to speak.

Besides, we already have exponential inflation with USD of about 3% over the last 100 years, and it hasn't been a massive problem.

[Jocky]

Bitcoins are different from dollars in this case. If dollars get lost and no dollars can be created anymore, deflation will occur, and you will inevitably be able to pay for your house with a penny, leaving no coins to buy your bread with.
Bitcoins will get lost when people die, but too slowly to initiate great deflation. If the process drives the price up gradually, we will just use smaller fractions of Bitcoin.

[battmann]

Exponential deflation is not a problem when the factor is relatively small (say, 3% or so). The crude death rate, according to Wikipedia, is 8.37 per 1000 per year, or 0.837%. If dying people have 3.58 times as many Bitcoins in their wallets than living people on average, we would see 3% deflation due to deaths. I don't think that's too unrealistic of a figure.

Then again, I would speculate that most people of advanced age or otherwise anticipating death soon would have a will to pass their Bitcoins to their descendants, which would mitigate this effect. I also think that other economic factors would have a much larger impact on prices than people taking their Bitcoins to their grave, so to speak.

Besides, we already have exponential inflation with USD of about 3% over the last 100 years, and it hasn't been a massive problem.

I wasn't talking about other economic crisis, I am talking about the future of the virtual currency. Also, you can make as much USD as you want, until we run out of trees that is, but BTC has a definitive cap of 21mil. Nothing more. Ever. Slowly this could cause problems, not in the foreseeable future (BTC is not suppose to reach the cap till sometime in the 2100's) but it is still a possibly problem to be faced.

Stop comparing USD to BTC. In the later stages, if we get there, there will be no comparison. Now THAT I am just speculating upon.

Again, I want to reiterate I have never studied econ except in college while studying computer science so I just didn't care about the subject while there were more interesting things happening that haven't been done before. So I am in no way a good source of information on these subjects. I just saw a potential flaw, even though small now, which could jeopardize BTC in the far future to a bitter end within its very early stages (now). If this is true, and not fixed, that means that BTC will have a very short lifespan. I would rather take the future with BTC than with USD.

[battmann]

Bitcoins are different from dollars in this case. If dollars get lost and no dollars can be created anymore, deflation will occur, and you will inevitably be able to pay for your house with a penny, leaving no coins to buy your bread with.
Bitcoins will get lost when people die, but too slowly to initiate great deflation. If the process drives the price up gradually, we will just use smaller fractions of Bitcoin.

Correct, until we can't anymore. Those decimals only go so far; it has a limit as well, and it's 21mil^-8 or something like that. I am not sure.

[wachtwoord]

The software uses a 64 bit integer for each value. You can't make that bigger; you can't add any decimals to that. Although the protocol itself is simple enough to change (hell, you could make it add letters instead of numbers and smiley faces), the program that actually does the calculation won't work without a major rewrite.

You'd have to update every bitcoind implementation, linux, embedded, modified/customized copies, windows clients, website backend codes using it, etc.

As a friend said, "That would be a much bigger change than anything that has ever happened since Satoshi's original client was released".

Certainly no bigger than the pending fork. This will happen sooner or later and it is very unlikely to cause big problems.