Removing old coin uncertainty

[Cubic Earth]

I think it could be helpful to remove some of the uncertainty around old coins, to see if they are truly lost or not.  This is an issue that is will never go away, and in fact will only grow more troubling as bitcoin grows in value.  My proposal is to pick a comfortably far off future date (maybe 1 year) and say that any coins on addresses that have been stagnant since some long-ago date (how about Jan. 1st, 2011?) would be removed from the money supply.

If you had coins on an old address, all you would need to do to protect your wealth would be to transfer them to a new address, or just send a single satoshi, before the future cut-off date.  This would be a one-time event that would require a hard fork and therefore a consensus of the community.

Every market thrives on information.  I would argue that large uncertainty about the amount of lost coins is hurting bitcoin adoption, especially its use as a store of value.  I think this proposal would help bitcoin adoption by providing a count of the number of controllable coins, and it would do so in a manner that would not unfairly penalize anyone. 

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[Liquid]

Not sure if i understand exactly what your saying but what if people want to leave there coins in a wallet for 10 years + without touching them, as a long term saving ? if you want to disturb or force peoples hands just because new comers are concerned about the subject this makes no sense to me, also the more coins that are "lost" increases Bitcoins value as there are less in circulation. 

[Cubic Earth]

In a sense this would force peoples hand to prove they were in control of their coins.  It would be an inconvenience, for myself included, but consider the 'newcomers' will 99.9% of the population.  If we make a reasonable concession to remove a large source of uncertainty about the bitcoin supply, it could actually benefit us early adopters more in the long run.

People could still have long term savings, but if those savings were older than month/day/year of the communities choosing, they would have to demonstrate they had control of that address.

I agree with you the more coins are lost, the higher bitcoin's value will be.  But currently there is no mechanism for knowing if coins have truly been lost or not unless they have been sent to the genesis block.  And I am not proposing a recurring process, but rather a one-time event that the community would agree to.  Of course it could happen again if in the future, if at any point the community reached consensus that it would be a good idea.

[Liquid]

I understand and agree to a degree on what you are saying, but IMO i don't think its a feasible/practical idea...

Its like this when a gold mine first opened up you had people mining like crazy all sorts of trouble and chaos people must have lost gold, moved on with it ect until one day only small amounts of gold were left, but still you had people going into the mine despite all the commotion and missing gold looking for anything they could salvage, I believe people will always come and join in no matter whats happened its never too late to join a party. The owners of the gold mine did not get together say OK all the people who mined from this mine we need proof that you own the gold and you are going to spend or trade it if you don't we will collect all the unclaimed / unspent gold and throw it back into the mine for other people to find. As you can see this is a pretty unrealistic foolish idea, there will always be uncertainty this is fact, but oh no lets reassess everything that happened and put it into some sort of recycled life cycle.

I think there are more pressing matters that need to be solved first.
 

[go1111111]

What about the guy who buys 10,000 bitcoins, goes off to live in a monastery in Tibet for a year, then comes back to find out that you destroyed all of his coins? 

Hard forks should in general make bitcoins less valuable because people will see that the community is overeager to change the rules on a whim.

[Stephen Gornick]

Every market thrives on information.  I would argue that large uncertainty about the amount of lost coins is hurting bitcoin adoption, especially its use as a store of value.

Is that really what your concern is?   Or is this the back-door you are looking at into allowing demurrage to get a foot in the door? (You wouldn't be the first).

[Birdy]

I can see your reasoning, but it could also destroy trust in the currency.
Aka "They have forced everyone to move their coins once, who is gonna say it won't happen again or that worse rules will be enforced in the future?"
Are the benefits worth it? I'm not so sure about that.

[CIYAM]

I think you'll find pretty much *no-one* is interested in this suggestion (it has been made *many* times before btw).

There are alt coins that behave exactly like this - I suggest you use one of those rather than try and convince everyone that something is wrong with BTC the way it was implemented.

[Abdussamad]

This has been proposed before and frankly it is stealing.

[Ekaros]

I'm not entirely sure, but I do feel that there would be some fear of someone hitting pot of 10k BTC in future.

Just think about how much that would mess up things in 100 years time or so...

I don't know if the situation is even fixable with bitcoin... Likely unless there is periodic resets it will always exist...

Either way, things don't look good from this perspective for bitcoin in very long run.

[Birdy]

I'm not entirely sure, but I do feel that there would be some fear of someone hitting pot of 10k BTC in future.

Just think about how much that would mess up things in 100 years time or so...

I don't know if the situation is even fixable with bitcoin... Likely unless there is periodic resets it will always exist...

Either way, things don't look good from this perspective for bitcoin in very long run.

If this is a bigger issue in 50 years, we could still do it then.
Atm it would most likely do more harm than good.

[Gabi]

NO

In case it is not clear: NO

That idiot idea has been "proposed" other times and everytime the answer is NO, it is a total idiocy.

Go and make CubicCoin and apply that "idea" there if you want.

[jubalix]

this really defeats the whole purpose of a store of value, you should be able to leave you coins anyway you want them for as long as you want. Anything less and you knock the foundation out of the whole thing.

[Abdussamad]

this really defeats the whole purpose of a store of value, you should be able to leave you coins anyway you want them for as long as you want. Anything less and you knock the foundation out of the whole thing.

Well yes and no. I don't agree with the OP's proposal but leaving your coins forever and ever is also not an option. At some point in time EC cryptography is going to be broken and then people will have to migrate their coins over to some thing else or loose them entirely.

[josephliton]

It is " The Uncertainty Principle".

[shuttleclock]

I don't think this is a good idea, and yea, frankly speaking, it means stealing people's money..

[DoomDumas]

No need to know how many coins have been lost.. What's the point ?  Why you think it's important to know about how many coins are lost/remaining ?

[Sukrim]

Because for example Satoshi holds more than ~10% of all Bitcoins. Or he has lost the keys already.

This is a large uncertainty factor, but on the other hand I think it would be far worse if someone could loose coins just because they did not read forums or log into the main client for a few years. There are coins out there that work just like Bitcoin with this "feature" added - if you think it is vital, please use these other currencies instead, they will over time overtake Bitcoin because they are superior because of that.

[tysat]

Rehash of a stupid idea... something like this will never go into effect.

[Nancarrow]

To the OP: as you surmised, this is a topic that comes up again and again. You can also see the reaction to it: a very few in favour, most opposed, with the opposition ranging from people who calmly state that it is not necessary, to people who shriek that you have an ulterior motive (or worse, quietly and slyly insinuate that you have an ulterior motive in the guise of 'just asking questions') or that you just want to steal bitcoins.

I'm one of the few who agree with you. Rather than repeat myself ad nauseam, I'll just link here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=295011.

Short version: the only valid concern naysayers should have is that if such a change were adopted, some peeps might not get the memo, to which I have four responses:
1) Shouting about such a change from the rooftops, well in advance, big red letters on every piece of client software, and so on.
2) Recycling time should be sufficiently long that everyone has a chance to learn about it. But not long enough to forget all about it. Thinking 5-10 years is about right.
3) Wallet software can and probably should be made to generate new wallets and shovel the funds automatically.
4) If after all the above, somebody still manages to lose their coins through neglect... GOOD. That hypothetical person would be an imbecile.



ETA: and after reading the thread a bit more carefully, I see you're only proposing a one-time readjustment, not a continual reissue of the old coins. Well, so be it. I still agree with you, even though I now think you're not going far enough!