What to do with lost bitcoins

[rapazev]

i'm not going in to the technical part about privkeys and other stuff, lets assume it is possible..
so, even if it is lost, who gets these bitcoins? how to address them without conflicts?

"let's send them to charity"
ok, so, which one? cancer? africa help? some group fighting isis?

every possible winner of these bitcoins would cause conflicts with a part of the community. that would be always a reason to fight, and fight in blockchain world = fork.

[Yakamoto]

i'm not going in to the technical part about privkeys and other stuff, lets assume it is possible..
so, even if it is lost, who gets these bitcoins? how to address them without conflicts?

"let's send them to charity"
ok, so, which one? cancer? africa help? some group fighting isis?

every possible winner of these bitcoins would cause conflicts with a part of the community. that would be always a reason to fight, and fight in blockchain world = fork.

While the original idea was a good concept, you're also stating a very valid point.

I saw somewhere either in this thread or another that one idea to get around those issues would be to "reset" coins after a 10-year waiting period where the coins are never activated in one way or the other, and they would go back to being mineable coins for the miners to go after.

Not a bad idea, but this does present a ton of interesting problems.

[error08]

We all know that there can be no more than 21M bitcoins. We also know that every day some bitcoins get lost forever. That means that they still exist on the blockchain, but no one can access them since the keys are lost. I don't think that this is a right thing. We should recover these coins somehow, and that issue could be addressed eventually. I suggest setting a grace period of, say, 10 years (or 50 years if 10 years is too little) after which all wallets that remain untouched during that time and not reclaimed by anyone, should be declared as public property. The transactions that credited these bitcoins to such a wallet should be cancelled (just like correcting entries are made in a real ledger), and the coins should be moved to a new wallet, for example, to finance scientific research...

In this way, we will always have 21M bitcoins after the last bitcoin is mined and can also "resurrect" lost bitcoins for the common good

There's no point we talking about lost bitcoins, I mean if someone lost the private key then it gone for good.
But the remaining coins become more valuable and no need to worry as the value of bitcoin has 8 decimals which equals to every pennies.
as Mr.Satoshi said
Those coins can never be recovered, and the total circulation is less.  Since the effective circulation is reduced, all the remaining coins are worth slightly more.

[deisik]

i'm not going in to the technical part about privkeys and other stuff, lets assume it is possible..
so, even if it is lost, who gets these bitcoins? how to address them without conflicts?

"let's send them to charity"
ok, so, which one? cancer? africa help? some group fighting isis?

every possible winner of these bitcoins would cause conflicts with a part of the community. that would be always a reason to fight, and fight in blockchain world = fork.

If you are not quite happy with the expired bitcoins being sent to a piggy bank address, I think they could be just rendered unmined, i.e returned to the pool of yet to be mined bitcoins. In this way, there won't be any conflicts as to who should accept the free lunch. On the other hand, the owner of these coins could explicitly set the address to which they should be sent after the time comes...

That could be construed as a will expressed through the blockchain

I saw somewhere either in this thread or another that one idea to get around those issues would be to "reset" coins after a 10-year waiting period where the coins are never activated in one way or the other, and they would go back to being mineable coins for the miners to go after.

It was in the opening post

[Oilacris]

We all know that there can be no more than 21M bitcoins. We also know that every day some bitcoins get lost forever. That means that they still exist on the blockchain, but no one can access them since the keys are lost. I don't think that this is a right thing. We should recover these coins somehow, and that issue could be addressed eventually. I suggest setting a grace period of, say, 10 years (or 50 years if 10 years is too little) after which all wallets that remain untouched during that time and not reclaimed by anyone, should be declared as public property. The transactions that credited these bitcoins to such a wallet should be cancelled (just like correcting entries are made in a real ledger), and the coins should be moved to a new wallet, for example, to finance scientific research...

In this way, we will always have 21M bitcoins after the last bitcoin is mined and can also "resurrect" lost bitcoins for the common good

There's no point we talking about lost bitcoins, I mean if someone lost the private key then it gone for good.
But the remaining coins become more valuable and no need to worry as the value of bitcoin has 8 decimals which equals to every pennies.
as Mr.Satoshi said
Those coins can never be recovered, and the total circulation is less.  Since the effective circulation is reduced, all the remaining coins are worth slightly more.

This is the most accurate answer for this kind of queries which stated on the OP regarding on lost coins. It does really reduced the circulation of bitcoin all in all since not all coins are active. Prices would really rise up since the supply is already been reduced but well we have still more bitcoins to be mined though and it would take years before all the coins will be mined.

[Xester]

We all know that there can be no more than 21M bitcoins. We also know that every day some bitcoins get lost forever. That means that they still exist on the blockchain, but no one can access them since the keys are lost. I don't think that this is a right thing. We should recover these coins somehow, and that issue could be addressed eventually. I suggest setting a grace period of, say, 10 years (or 50 years if 10 years is too little) after which all wallets that remain untouched during that time and not reclaimed by anyone, should be declared as public property. The transactions that credited these bitcoins to such a wallet should be cancelled (just like correcting entries are made in a real ledger), and the coins should be moved to a new wallet, for example, to finance scientific research...

In this way, we will always have 21M bitcoins after the last bitcoin is mined and can also "resurrect" lost bitcoins for the common good

There's no point we talking about lost bitcoins, I mean if someone lost the private key then it gone for good.
But the remaining coins become more valuable and no need to worry as the value of bitcoin has 8 decimals which equals to every pennies.
as Mr.Satoshi said
Those coins can never be recovered, and the total circulation is less.  Since the effective circulation is reduced, all the remaining coins are worth slightly more.

This is the most accurate answer for this kind of queries which stated on the OP regarding on lost coins. It does really reduced the circulation of bitcoin all in all since not all coins are active. Prices would really rise up since the supply is already been reduced but well we have still more bitcoins to be mined though and it would take years before all the coins will be mined.

For me lost coins are lost coins. I am not bothered by those coins. THough the supply is scarce if we put, it the market will simply adjust to the increasing demand for bitcoin in the form of price inflation.

There are news that maxwell will own bitcoin, well I just hope that he can do something about the lost coins.

[thejaytiesto]

I don't like the idea. As Andreas antonopoulos put it, the blockchain (the bitcoin blockchain that is) is a "monument to perpetuity" or something like that. Whatever happens cannot be changed. I would not like the idea of money moving without my consent only because it's not moved for x years.
What if in the future cryotechnology works and Hal is revived after like 500 years and he finds out all of his money is in the hands of random people?

[erikalui]

No. It's just like dormant accounts with bank that remain unaccessed for a long and the bank freezes the accounts. That doesn't give the bank the liability to use that frozen money as it will always be the account holders funds that remain in the account even if he has no heir to claim it. The method you are suggesting to get back all those coins is termed as an illegal method and if those people have lost access or their private keys, they should find a method to get them back and if it's lost, it's gone. Who knows in future there may be a way the owners may be able to get access to those accounts? Nothing is impossible.

[20kevin20]

We don't have to think about those lost bitcoins for they are totally lost forever and there is no way to recover it. Unless those people who forgotten their private keys will remember it again and then recovers their bitcoin if they still wanted to invest and use their bitcoins.

I don't think it's possible for anyone to remember a private key made by so many characters.... The only thing we can do is wait and hope for the guys who lost their Bitcoin wallets to find them and be able to use the funds again. This is the only thing we can do, which would also affect the price in a positive way.

[Tyrantt]

so if the returning of bitcoins to the original miner are not returned after some longer interval of not using, in the next 100 years and more half of those bitcoins would be lost and the rather smaller amount will be in circulation since people will forget or passs away with their bitcoins storaged with no access to and bitcoin mining will be slowed down due to difficulty.. I honestly think that it should be implemented for bitcoins to be returned.

[raven7886]

I don't like the idea. As Andreas antonopoulos put it, the blockchain (the bitcoin blockchain that is) is a "monument to perpetuity" or something like that. Whatever happens cannot be changed. I would not like the idea of money moving without my consent only because it's not moved for x years.
What if in the future cryotechnology works and Hal is revived after like 500 years and he finds out all of his money is in the hands of random people?

People who lose their private keys have really been too careless and silly to lose their access and they can't really help even if someone manages to hack into their accounts.

Blockchain's support doesn't even help users to get an access to their accounts as they aren't any trusted bank or have opened their account after verifying their identity. If in case what the OP says happens and those coins get unmined again, it's only the owners who have to be blamed for their carelessness and nobody else.

[deisik]

I don't like the idea. As Andreas antonopoulos put it, the blockchain (the bitcoin blockchain that is) is a "monument to perpetuity" or something like that. Whatever happens cannot be changed. I would not like the idea of money moving without my consent only because it's not moved for x years.
What if in the future cryotechnology works and Hal is revived after like 500 years and he finds out all of his money is in the hands of random people?

Andreas Antonopoulos will be happy too

Though I don't know who he is and what he did to Bitcoin to quote his words, but I can say that I support him in full. The Bitcoin blockchain should remain a "monument to perpertuity". In fact, what I suggest is perfectly in line with this paradigm. Transactions which have an expire flag set will remain in the blockchain forever. But that doesn't mean that we can't add the functionality for such transactions

[HaXX0R1337]

No. It's just like dormant accounts with bank that remain unaccessed for a long and the bank freezes the accounts. That doesn't give the bank the liability to use that frozen money as it will always be the account holders funds that remain in the account even if he has no heir to claim it. The method you are suggesting to get back all those coins is termed as an illegal method and if those people have lost access or their private keys, they should find a method to get them back and if it's lost, it's gone. Who knows in future there may be a way the owners may be able to get access to those accounts? Nothing is impossible.

How can that be possible even in the future if people could retrieve the lost coins then all the coins can be hacked just like that. Only coins stored in exchanges and other private sites can be recovered because the site does know its private keys other than that if you are saving in your wallet it much be impossible.When the time comes if people could retrieve those the price of bitcoin will doom. 

[PokemonFun]

? Lol When i heard losted i would send 1000 messages to that wallet to send my money back that is really stupid that they dont have some way to give back money i really cant understand why that isnt created.

[pvaspecialist]

I read many post of you guys.Some people are agree to recover lost bitcoins some people not.I agree to recover lost bitcoins of a certain period if the bitcoin is not used.bitcoin is a currency and you must exchange to fill you daily life leading.you can not find any people who don't spend money from his wallet.if bitcoin used for store once we can see bitcoin on museum.some people said  recover lost bitcoins should be steal some money I want to ask them do you know any property/money lost forever,a certain period someone owner of that property/money,only you will distinguish forever.

[deisik]

so if the returning of bitcoins to the original miner are not returned after some longer interval of not using, in the next 100 years and more half of those bitcoins would be lost and the rather smaller amount will be in circulation since people will forget or passs away with their bitcoins storaged with no access to and bitcoin mining will be slowed down due to difficulty.. I honestly think that it should be implemented for bitcoins to be returned.

The smaller amount of bitcoins is not dangerous

At least, purely on technical grounds. If the amount of coins circulating in the economy diminishes for some reason, it is basically the same as if the amount of goods exchanged for these coins increased. Both of these events lead to coins being more scarce with the prices being rebalanced on a new level. Since Bitcoin can be safely considered as infinitely divisible, new units can get eventually accepted (e.g. half-satoshi)

[streazight]

We don't have to think about those lost bitcoins for they are totally lost forever and there is no way to recover it. Unless those people who forgotten their private keys will remember it again and then recovers their bitcoin if they still wanted to invest and use their bitcoins.

I guess you did not read the full topic mate, actually thoselost bitcoins if brought back in regulation would make it much better since more the bitcoins in regulation better it is. And the lost amount is not 100-200 bitcoins but enormous amounts are lost everyday. Though I don't see a technical way of doing it.

[deisik]

We don't have to think about those lost bitcoins for they are totally lost forever and there is no way to recover it. Unless those people who forgotten their private keys will remember it again and then recovers their bitcoin if they still wanted to invest and use their bitcoins.

I guess you did not read the full topic mate, actually thoselost bitcoins if brought back in regulation would make it much better since more the bitcoins in regulation better it is. And the lost amount is not 100-200 bitcoins but enormous amounts are lost everyday. Though I don't see a technical way of doing it

There is an easy way of doing exactly that, on technical terms

It will just not get accepted, at least, for now. Whether miners' attitude might change in the future is pretty much unknown. But to say that it is totally impossible would be an oversimplification of matters. In any case, I don't see any viable reason against allowing wallet owners to set an expiry period for their wallets or certain transactions. As I have already explained it, that would be a will of sorts done in a decentralized way

[coinplus]

I don't like the idea. As Andreas antonopoulos put it, the blockchain (the bitcoin blockchain that is) is a "monument to perpetuity" or something like that. Whatever happens cannot be changed. I would not like the idea of money moving without my consent only because it's not moved for x years.
What if in the future cryotechnology works and Hal is revived after like 500 years and he finds out all of his money is in the hands of random people?

Actually if something cannot happen doesn't quite mean that its a bad or worst idea. If you see that bitcoins are lost everyday and every minute and if that continues a time will come when most of the coins would be lost.

But still I think that while its good to recover lost coins but the amount lost is not too significant and if lost coins would be recovered so easily how would they learn ?

[Khailerdaz]

What can I do with my lost bitcoins? Nothing, because it disappear quickly so I will start a new one then I wouldn't do the same as my past. I learned from my past so I will be more careful with my new bitcoins. I will do double time to earn more bitcoins then I will use it         in good not for gambling.