Random thoughts/questions.... Please respond

[Dafar]

Hey smart investors and forward thinkers, I hope some of you respond.

1. What determines the price of each BTC? Is it purely based on supply and demand... or is it assessed by dividing each bitcoin available with the market cap? Do the exchanges set the price automatically or do the miners set the price themselves? I'm still not clear on how this works.

2. Say in 100 years when all of us are dead, along with most of the initial bitcoin holders... will all these bitcoins be 'lost' because no one will have access to our private keys? Do you think there will be some sort of problem around this?

3. Do you think bitcoin will come into play during the next US presidential election? I'm hoping by then even more people will be aware of bitcoin and there will be more debate around it. Whoever has the best policy in favor of bitcoin will have my vote.

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[SprichtZarathustra]

1. Good question. Someone else can explain better.
2. Make sure your descendants inherit your private keys. The coins will live on.
3. Don't bother voting at all.

[franky1]

Hey smart investors and forward thinkers, I hope some of you respond.

1. What determines the price of each BTC? Is it purely based on supply and demand...
yes
or is it assessed by dividing each bitcoin available with the market cap?
the market cap is set by the current price multiplied by the amount of coins mined.. not the other way round as you suggest


 Do the exchanges set the price automatically or do the miners set the price themselves? I'm still not clear on how this works.
exchanges are not one person. the price is not set by the owner of the exchange, but by the people that trade on the exchange, these people do include miners, investors, payment gateways selling off, individuals buying in.. the question most people are truly asking is why are people dumb enough to allow themselves to sell bitcoin below 1000. if no one agree's to sell below $1000, the price would not drop below $1000.

2. Say in 100 years when all of us are dead, along with most of the initial bitcoin holders... will all these bitcoins be 'lost' because no one will have access to our private keys? Do you think there will be some sort of problem around this?
sometime in the next 100 years i would have either sold off my millions and retired to some island. or i would have had time to write a will offering instructions how my inheritors can claim my left over bitcoins. in this time the bitcoin would as my first thought suggests, transfered from those retiring, to the next generation of young, aspiring entrepreuners and users, simply through trade between now and 100 years time.

3. Do you think bitcoin will come into play during the next US presidential election? I'm hoping by then even more people will be aware of bitcoin and there will be more debate around it. Whoever has the best policy in favor of bitcoin will have my vote.
well ron paul was bitcoin friendly and that did help him get a few extra votes. but not enough to win. maybe if bitcoin was mainstream and a part of everyones life, then yes it would be part of every candidates agenda to be involved. but in the end all politicians lie. so most people smart enough to be into bitcoins dont really believe or care about politics.. in the end they all turn out to be the same

[Dafar]

Thanks guys, that helps.

2. Make sure your descendants inherit your private keys. The coins will live on.

True, but with bitcoin it seems like the individual is completely responsible of their own money. I can see there being more and more lost bitcoins in the future because people either randomly dying or not thinking of providing any instructions to transfer their money to their inheritor. Maybe there will be ways to recover it or it might not be too much of an issue in the near future.

exchanges are not one person. the price is not set by the owner of the exchange, but by the people that trade on the exchange, these people do include miners, investors, payment gateways selling off, individuals buying in.. the question most people are truly asking is why are people dumb enough to allow themselves to sell bitcoin below 1000. if no one agree's to sell below $1000, the price would not drop below $1000.

So that was my next question. If all the sellers who are setting the price decide to just gradually keep increasing the price, wouldn't that be beneficial for everyone? It will attract new buyers because they can see that they will have an obvious return on their investment because the price never goes down. Maybe i'm thinking of this the wrong way

[franky1]

So that was my next question. If all the sellers who are setting the price decide to just gradually keep increasing the price, wouldn't that be beneficial for everyone? It will attract new buyers because they can see that they will have an obvious return on their investment because the price never goes down. Maybe i'm thinking of this the wrong way

well everyone agreeing to set prices and gradually increasing them is the utopian dream of investors. but for customers, newbies and buyers they will always want it cheaper. and as the whole idea of bitcoin is free-market bartaring and not fixed prices, then that utopian dream would be hard to accomplish, which may even turn away fresh people as they would see it as a scheme and not a free market

[pungopete468]

My greatest question regarding BitCoin is as follows:

Over the next century as thousands of BitCoin owners will undoubtedly lose BitCoins due to disk failures or other unrecoverable problems, what will happen to the network in the event of a very large number of dead coins? Would the hypothetical complete loss of a large account (say that of an entire BTC exchange) cripple the entire world economy? If the lost coins were no longer in existence it would thereby reduce the number of coins in circulation and devastate the entire market as I can see it... But I honestly don't know on this one.

Please somebody explain the criteria by which dead coins might be replaced with active coins available to be mined.

[Rannasha]

My greatest question regarding BitCoin is as follows:

Over the next century as thousands of BitCoin owners will undoubtedly lose BitCoins due to disk failures or other unrecoverable problems, what will happen to the network in the event of a very large number of dead coins? Would the hypothetical complete loss of a large account (say that of an entire BTC exchange) cripple the entire world economy? If the lost coins were no longer in existence it would thereby reduce the number of coins in circulation and devastate the entire market as I can see it... But I honestly don't know on this one.

Please somebody explain the criteria by which dead coins might be replaced with active coins available to be mined.

Dead coins are not being replaced. After all, how do you determine whether coins are no longer accessible or just stored in a very long term cold storage?

Anyway, if coins are lost, there are less coins in circulation and that means the price will go up (if demand stays constant or increases). Bitcoins can be divided into 100 million smaller units, so it will take quite a while before a single satoshi is too large of a unit of value. And at that point, the divisibility of the Bitcoin can be increased through software updates.