The great "Lost btc problem"

[cbhelp]

So there are only 21 million btc's that will ever be mined, and the last coin is projected to be mined sometime around the year 2140.  Awesome, no government printing money at their whim.

However.... People are bound to pass away.  When people with btc die, lets say for optimisms sake that most will have someone that can access their wallets ringer to the bitcoins.  But, the problem is that not every person will.  So these coins are inaccessable by anyone, ever.  

This becomes an issue not right away, but it is an issue.  

Some say modifying the protocol to add more btc, but that defeats the purpose of having a limit in place.

Some say set something up to where if a wallet goes unused after a certain time, to raid it and reintroduce those coins.  That's not good...if I get coins in a Wallet and wait 50 years to touch them, and someone takes them thinking they were lost, that's not good.

Ideas?

[Trongersoll]

Yeah, just don't consider it a problem. It is not your money, so it is not your problem.

[bbit]

Ummm for each BTC lost the BTC value goes up! I'm all for people dying who have BTC! 

[odolvlobo]

Simply stated, it is not a problem. Nothing needs to be done.

[cbhelp]

Yeah, just don't consider it a problem. It is not your money, so it is not your problem.

Pollution is not my problem then either, since it won't affect me directly in this lifetime.  I think this is a statement that is not thought through at all. 

[knight22]

If one day the lost bitcoins is causing a lack of liquidity, more zeros can be added after the dot 0.000000000000000000000002 BTC

Problem solved

[cbhelp]

Ummm for each BTC lost the BTC value goes up! I'm all for people dying who have BTC! 

That's good for today.  But if this is something that will last, and not a novelty, then this needs to be fixed at some point.  We are like the pioneers of bitcoin. Our baby will be dying out and what happens when there is only 1 million left, and btc has been mass adopted?  Sure, its divisible into many decimal places. But eventually they are all gone. Probably very slowly, but they still will be gone.

[cbhelp]

If one day the lost bitcoins is causing a lack of liquidity, more zeros can be added after the dot 0.000000000000000000000002 BTC

Problem solved

This is a good idea I think. Simple but effective.  Any other ideas?

[odolvlobo]

People mistakenly believe that all the bitcoins will eventually disappear, but the truth is that they can only disappear completely if bitcoins are are no longer used or there is an organized burn of all existing bitcoins. Thus there is no problem.

[cbhelp]

People mistakenly believe that all the bitcoins will eventually disappear, but the truth is that they can only disappear completely if bitcoins are are no longer used or there is an organized burn of all existing bitcoins. Thus there is no problem.

There is going to be a never ending loss of coins. Regardless of if they are used are not, coins get lost.  Just as money gets lost.

[Tirapon]

Its honestly not a problem, and you aren't the first to bring it up. The choice of 21 million coins in total is completely arbitrary, because they can be divided indefinitely. So even 1/21 000 000 of a coin would be enough for the whole world economy to function - we'd just have to add more decimal places.

[LiteCoinGuy]

Simply stated, it is not a problem. Nothing needs to be done.

+1

because there also could be just 10 bitcoins for 1.2 billion of dollars. then 1 bitcoin would cost 0,12 billion dollar. these are just numbers.

[will1982]

Simply stated, it is not a problem. Nothing needs to be done.

Yes, that's the beauty of divisibility

[cbhelp]

I now pronounce the great lost byc problem as solved, thanks!

[ArticMine]

The solution to this issue is to increase currency divisibility. This will permit the continuation of mining well past 2140 where the reward per block would diminish with time to an ever smaller fraction of a satoshi. The 21000000 BTC limit is still respected. The economic impact of this would be below the addition of 1 satoshi to the total Bitcoin money supply because of the change in the rounding.

Actually the last whole coin per block will be mined well before 2140. What is estimated is that before 2140 the last whole satoshi per block will be mined.

[mgio]

There is a problem here, but not what the OP was saying.

As more coins stop being used we become more unsure of the total market cap of bitcoin because we don't know if those coins are actually lost or simply not being spent.

What if there is a 1 trillion dollar bitcoin economy but 20 of the 21 million coins are considered "lost" because they haven't participated in a transaction in hundreds of years.

But actually 4 million of those coins are simply sitting in a misers wallet.

One day he decides to spend them.

Now suddenly the number of bitcions increases by 5, causing everyones bitcoins value to plummet by 80%. This would be a huge disaster.


So as you see, as more bitcoins become "lost" the value of a bitcoin becomes more uncertain.

[odolvlobo]

There is a problem here, but not what the OP was saying.

As more coins stop being used we become more unsure of the total market cap of bitcoin because we don't know if those coins are actually lost or simply not being spent.

What if there is a 1 trillion dollar bitcoin economy but 20 of the 21 million coins are considered "lost" because they haven't participated in a transaction in hundreds of years.

But actually 4 million of those coins are simply sitting in a misers wallet.

One day he decides to spend them.

Now suddenly the number of bitcions increases by 5, causing everyones bitcoins value to plummet by 80%. This would be a huge disaster.


So as you see, as more bitcoins become "lost" the value of a bitcoin becomes more uncertain.

It is unlikely that a "miser" is going to decide one day that he is going to spend $800 billion. Even if he does, the value of a bitcoin won't plummet. The U.S. money supply has more than tripled in just a few years and the value of the dollar hasn't plummeted (yet).

[Gorgoy]

There is a problem here, but not what the OP was saying.

As more coins stop being used we become more unsure of the total market cap of bitcoin because we don't know if those coins are actually lost or simply not being spent.

What if there is a 1 trillion dollar bitcoin economy but 20 of the 21 million coins are considered "lost" because they haven't participated in a transaction in hundreds of years.

But actually 4 million of those coins are simply sitting in a misers wallet.

One day he decides to spend them.

Now suddenly the number of bitcions increases by 5, causing everyones bitcoins value to plummet by 80%. This would be a huge disaster.


So as you see, as more bitcoins become "lost" the value of a bitcoin becomes more uncertain.

You are correct and great observation, this will be a very serious issue as time goes by. If millions of coins enter the market at once it will cause the value to plummet. It is important to know the number of coins that are in the system. Maybe the Devs can come up with something.

[rampantparanoia]

simple solution.

print your private key, store it in your will with instructions on how to redeem it in today's technology.

[Stephen Gornick]

So as you see, as more bitcoins become "lost" the value of a bitcoin becomes more uncertain.

And here I thought this thread would lead to the argument that fewer coins would cause the exchange rate of the remaining ones to rise, and as a result the deflations.