What happens to all the lost bitcoins

[footrot_flats]

Hi Ive been reading alot about people transferring coins from exchange to wallet or visa versa, or from wallet to wallet etc etc and people loosing their currency. What happens to these bitcoins e-currency?. Ultimately these coins disappear into the ether - or do they. There must be some sort of record, I mean thats the whole idea of bitcoin isnt it? they are able to be traced from person to person as there is a record associated with each?

[adozark]

I'm assuming you are talking about when someone looses their wallet because hard disk failure or some other reason.
Someone else might correct me, but I believe they remain in existence, but no one has the private key to spend them. So essentially they still exist, but are unspendable.

[palmcoins]

Better be careful when transferring between online and local wallets

[CIYAM]

If the wallet (private keys) are lost then so effectively are the coins.

Although not making any assumptions *if* you were next thinking of starting a topic with a title like "How to fix the problem with lost coins" I would ask you to first *please* search the forum (that kind of thread has been done to death here).

[TomUnderSea]

If I understand the block chain concept, it should be possible to identify coins that are no longer active.  The definition of "active" is up to the viewer.

With the knowledge of what coins are no longer "active", why not recover those coins and reissue them for mining post 2140?

[drakahn]

If I understand the block chain concept, it should be possible to identify coins that are no longer active.  The definition of "active" is up to the viewer.

With the knowledge of what coins are no longer "active", why not recover those coins and reissue them for mining post 2140?

bad newbie, bad

[Joshster]

From what I have researched, once you loose the private key to that coin it is gone for good and you are unable to use it. Just make sure you keep good backups.

[TomUnderSea]

If I understand the block chain concept, it should be possible to identify coins that are no longer active.  The definition of "active" is up to the viewer.

With the knowledge of what coins are no longer "active", why not recover those coins and reissue them for mining post 2140?

bad newbie, bad

LOL.  Ok, point me at the thread / white paper / that says why this would be bad and / or not work?

[drakahn]

If I understand the block chain concept, it should be possible to identify coins that are no longer active.  The definition of "active" is up to the viewer.

With the knowledge of what coins are no longer "active", why not recover those coins and reissue them for mining post 2140?

bad newbie, bad

LOL.  Ok, point me at the thread / white paper / that says why this would be bad and / or not work?

every 20th new user wants to solve the problem of lost coins, but there is no problem to solve
1) you cannot tell the difference between kept safely offline for 100 years and lost for 100 years
2) bitcoins are almost infinitely divisible, so even if there were less than 1 bitcoins, the whole system could work with it
3) its just theft, they are not your coins to take, lost or not.

[coinerd]

If I understand the block chain concept, it should be possible to identify coins that are no longer active.  The definition of "active" is up to the viewer.

With the knowledge of what coins are no longer "active", why not recover those coins and reissue them for mining post 2140?

It won't take very long before your definition of "Active" runs afoul of someone else's definition of "Invested" and you're the thief when you "recover" them.

There's no way to contact the owner of the (seemingly) inactive wallet and ask.

LOL.  Ok, point me at the thread / white paper / that says why this would be bad and / or not work?

Very against the whole principle of the thing, I think.

[CIYAM]

LOL.  Ok, point me at the thread / white paper / that says why this would be bad and / or not work?

Exactly why I posted what I did.

Start here:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ#But_if_no_more_coins_are_generated.2C_what_happens_when_Bitcoins_are_lost.3F_Won.27t_that_be_a_problem.3F

[Cashoney]

I've always wondered that myself

[bzh]

What prevents a large entity or corporation from screwng with the market with huge amounts of coins? They buy 100000 then horde, and when the value rises because of the lack of supply they flood the market with their coins making a huge roller coaster bubble crash cycle to either profit or destroy the currency.

[CIYAM]

Nothing prevents people/organisations from *manipulating* the market (it is a free market after all) - the price recently crashed from above 250 to around 50 but guess what - Bitcoin is still here.

[TomUnderSea]

Thanks for the polite and responsive guidance.

[lance4681]

'lost' coins should stay lost.


it's impossible to tell if a coin just hasn't been used in a while or if it's been lost. Just make sure you have at least 3 or 4 back up's of your wallet. Right now I have 3 and one of those isn't at my house.

Of Course with any backup you'll need to encrypt that as well and make sure you have a backup of the encryption or remember the phrase REALLY well.

[blue42]

Consider your lost coins a donation to everyone else.

[DannyHamilton]

Just for the sake of education...

When most people talk about "lost" Bitcoins, they are talking about someone having lost their wallet and as such the private keys necessary to spend the bitcoins.  Those bitcoins can still be seen in the blockchain, and will remain unspent forever (unless either the private keys are found or a weakness is discovered in the future in  ECDSA, SHA-256, and RIPEMD-160).

However, there is another way that bitcoins can be "lost".  It isn't very likely to happen, but if a miner claims a smaller block reward than they are due (perhaps because of a bug in the mining software being used), then the unclaimed bitcoins simply vanish from existence.  They no longer exist in the blockchain, and can never be spent even if ECDSA, SHA-256, and RIPEMD-160 are broken in the future.  Poof. Vanish. All gone.

[TomUnderSea]

Unfortunately the mechanics of lost bit coins have been conflated with the inflationary / deflationary aspects of monetary supplies.

To be absolutely clear, I am NOT interested in that discussion.

I am interested in tracking "inactive", "stale", "lost" coins in the block chain.  For the sake of discussion, I will just call them "dead".

Over the _very_ long term, they are a problem.  Their existence in the block chain increases the computational cost without a commiserate increase in monetary supply.  Yes, BTC are divisible down to insanely small amounts now and that can be increased with future computational tweaks yet still, why have 10% of your computational load be supporting dead coins that are unusable?

The idea of declaring a coin "dead" is contentious.  My definition of a "dead" coin might be someone else's idea of multi-generational wealth transfer.  While I would consider 50+ years of inactivity to be sufficient to declare a coin dead, others might reasonably argue for 10 years or even 1000.

If we could agree on how long to wait before declaring a coin "dead", the next question is what, if anything, should be done about it.

Personally, I would support using them to continue to fund the block chain.  This keeps the miners working which supports the entire currency and it is a known, reasonable way of adding currency to the monetary system.

The challenge is reaching some agreement on what a dead coin looks like.

The good news is we don't need to worry about finding a way to keep the miners happy until 2140.  That makes a 100 year time limit for that dead coin seem pretty reasonable.

[Dumbastronaut]

Unfortunately the mechanics of lost bit coins have been conflated with the inflationary / deflationary aspects of monetary supplies.

To be absolutely clear, I am NOT interested in that discussion.

I am interested in tracking "inactive", "stale", "lost" coins in the block chain.  For the sake of discussion, I will just call them "dead".

Over the _very_ long term, they are a problem.  Their existence in the block chain increases the computational cost without a commiserate increase in monetary supply.  Yes, BTC are divisible down to insanely small amounts now and that can be increased with future computational tweaks yet still, why have 10% of your computational load be supporting dead coins that are unusable?

The idea of declaring a coin "dead" is contentious.  My definition of a "dead" coin might be someone else's idea of multi-generational wealth transfer.  While I would consider 50+ years of inactivity to be sufficient to declare a coin dead, others might reasonably argue for 10 years or even 1000.

If we could agree on how long to wait before declaring a coin "dead", the next question is what, if anything, should be done about it.

Personally, I would support using them to continue to fund the block chain.  This keeps the miners working which supports the entire currency and it is a known, reasonable way of adding currency to the monetary system.

The challenge is reaching some agreement on what a dead coin looks like.

The good news is we don't need to worry about finding a way to keep the miners happy until 2140.  That makes a 100 year time limit for that dead coin seem pretty reasonable.

I completely agree.

What other methods do you think will spring up for dead coins??