Can bitcoin quantity go down?

[MMA]

The quantity of Bitcoin in circulation is less than the actual number in theory, some people have lost their private keys, Hard Disc crash and so on.  It can be lost and destroyed but we can have less than 21 million so the quantity has actually  go down

yes in this sense the over all quantity of bitcoin is decreasing as some people have bitcoins in their wallets and they forgot the their wallets key, or some people may have died having good number of bitcoin so these are just locked and no one has the right to open it unless they find the key to utilize these bitcoins.

[TechnologyExplorer]

Hello,

As per my knowledge, the amount of bitcoins in your wallet shouldn't vary. Agree that Bitcoins rate varies from day to day. But that applies to only those who buy and sell bitcoins. But if you have suppose 3.5 bitcoins in your wallet, they should stay intact even after two or three months unless you used them to pay for a product or service. They should not fluctuate as per the bitcoins rate prevailing on that day or that week.

May I/we know the wallet you are talking about. Please specify the name of the wallet and also the source which gave you the info that bitcoins count in the wallet changes as per the currency rate on that day----which isn't true!

[jak3]

i do not think so. i dont have pritty much knowledge about burning of bitcoins but all i know is there are total of 21million bitcoin in existance yes all are till not being mined but each coin can be devided upto 8unit place so the quantity is pritty much surable for everyone

[Selly Arumsari]

I have some bitcoins in an exchange and I found today that, without any transactions being made, the quantity has gone down.

I have contacted the exchange who have said:

the balance varies according to the prices that are floating

Is this correct? In my view the quantity of bitcoins I have should not fluctuate, only the value of said coins. Or am I missing something?

Any explanations would be great!

i don't think so , in my opinion the only one reason is user of bitcoin

[thisappointed]

Do you mean that your bitcoin's price is going down?, because it is impossible for your bitcoin quantity to go down without doing anything unless you are going to send it to someone that you know or to a shop where you buy something and the payment is bitcoin. The price of bitcoin is always fluctuating but the quantity never go down without doing anything.

[danherbias07]

You are talking about the price of bitcoin .it really goes down and goes up at a very drastic level .well u dont have to worry about this .just keep on bitcoining .

Nope. He meant about the quantity of bitcoin in his wallet is going down which is really unusual or that wallet site is stealing from him or maybe some errors in their applications. He should make a move about that quickly after it happened. Calling the customer service would help if they have one.

[dearbesz1219]

bitcoin itself has nothing to do with an exchange.

inside an exchange you are not looking at bitcoins. you are looking at a database balance of credits that (ethically) should represent bitcoin.
meaning
the exchange is ALLOWING you to have some balance of their database. which if the exchange is ethical they will swap that balance for real bitcoins when you withdraw.

the exchange can do anything they want to their database. they can charge fee's just for having a balance, they can charge fee's for making orders they can charge fees for deposits and withdrawals. they can so anything they like to their database. including making it zero for any lame reason they want.

this is why people hate middlemen, banks, exchanges. with all the "we been hacked" lies, with all the negative interest rates, with all the bankruptcy issues you should not trust handing your funds to a middleman in exchange for their "credits"/"balance".

as for bitcoin itself. knowing eventually there will be only 21mill coins. you cannot make the quantity go down. you can however put them into an address no one can spend from, to make them unspendable.. resulting in less than 21million coins being spendable/in circulation.

now that answer the topic.
it seems like an exchange is messing you around, care to name the exchange, describe the events better?
have you contacted the exchange?
have you checked the trade history/transaction history within the exchange to see where/why the balance missing had gone?

This information about the exchange is very much informative to me, I am so thankful for this information. Anyway, bitcoin quantity for me will never go down as long as the user of it is increasing as time goes by.

[hilmanaaldi]

Maybe can, but it will not happen now, because bitcoin users now is very much, and will continue to multiply because now is the age of the Internet, and bitcoin is a currency that used by many internet users, so the possibility of a decrease in the quantity currently very small.

[alphablitzer]

If maybe you're talking about total quantity of bitcoins, it can never go down, it will still be 21 million. But if you say the spendable bitcoin quantity, it could go down. In that case, if someone bought almost all bitcoins and decides not to spend them, it could cause a lot of chaos. There are so much bitcoins lost over the past years and still continuing. It will still continue to rise because of human error.