Is there a way to publicly destroy a BTC?

[CryptoPhilanthropist]

One of the great things about BTC is the reversibility of transactions. If you lose your private key, then your BTC are essentially destroyed because there is no way to access them.

My question is whether there is a way to INTENTIONALLY destroy BTC so that other users can tell that the supply of BTC has decreased? I realize that you could always claim to have destroyed the private key. But my question is whether there is any conceivable means of proving that to be true.

[Kenshin]

You could have a paper wallet, and then burn it.

[CryptoPhilanthropist]

The problem would be that there is no guarantee you didn't back up the private key. Essentially, I want to know if there is some way to record in the block-chain that certain BTC are transferred somewhere that they can never be retrieved from.

[tehconz]

Didn't btc-e publicly destroy a whole pile of litecoins? I think they were able to generate a valid but unspendable address or something.

[CryptoPhilanthropist]

Thanks for the tip. I am looking into how they did it.

[casascius]

Sure just send it to this address: 1111111111111111111114oLvT2

it's well understood that nobody has the private key for this.  It is the bitcoin address that corresponds to a public key hash of 0.

[greyman]

Sure just send it to this address: 1111111111111111111114oLvT2

it's well understood that nobody has the private key for this.  It is the bitcoin address that corresponds to a public key hash of 0.

Ops, there are almost 3BTC there, seems that people are really destroying BTC's. ;-)

OP: Basically, you can just randomly generate a valid public bitcoin address (without the corresponding private key) and send the money there.

[CryptoPhilanthropist]

I understand now. Thanks for explaining! Well, that is easy to do! Yet another cool feature of BTC.

[gostrol]

It was an interesting read, thank you

[izaa12]

Yes, there are wasy.  But 99.9999% of the population dont have the means.

[jongameson]

I guess an anonymous donation of 1,300 BTC into a fake account might stir up the market and cause a rally (due to decreased supply)  

[Sheldor333]

Well if you want to destroy them just send them to me. It's like trowing it into abyss.

[kuverty]

Sure just send it to this address: 1111111111111111111114oLvT2

it's well understood that nobody has the private key for this.  It is the bitcoin address that corresponds to a public key hash of 0.

Ops, there are almost 3BTC there, seems that people are really destroying BTC's. ;-)

OP: Basically, you can just randomly generate a valid public bitcoin address (without the corresponding private key) and send the money there.

Just note that it should also be an address like "1ThisisABitcoinEaterAddressjkjf8ejifnsin8w3" or "111111111111111idjfiufj3" (probably not valid) so that people can be sure (at least sure enough) that you don't have the private key. Of course you can "destroy" (render unusable) your BTC but to do it publicly as OP wanted to, others need to be sure they are untouchable, which will not happen if you just generate some address; it must be obvious that with a very high probability no one has the private key (nor will ever have).

Yes, there are wasy.  But 99.9999% of the population dont have the means.

Most certainly, everyone who has control over any amount of BTC can send them to for example 1111111111111111111114oLvT2 as Mike suggested. We should come up with a clever plan to get people to send their BTC there (of course knowing what they do!). Some kind of a "who's the richest" pissing contest type of thing but something with more appeal 

[CryptoPhilanthropist]

Imagine when 2,000 years from now, some alien civilization uses its advanced technology to reverse engineer all the private keys and take the BTC. 

[infinitybo]

No because there is no way to publicly destroy a BTC irl.

[Gemminyc]

No because there is no way to publicly destroy a BTC irl.

You can, send it to 1ThisisABitcoinEaterAddressjkjf8ejifnsin8w3

It is unlikely someone has private key to this vanity Bitcoin address

[nonplussed]

Imagine when 2,000 years from now, some alien civilization uses its advanced technology to reverse engineer all the private keys and take the BTC. 

2000 years! Quantum computers will probably exist before then, and this is the sort of problem they eat up. Then again, they've been fifty years away for the last fifty years...but we're really close I promise!

Come to think of it, the fear that quantum computers can find private keys ought to harm confidence in cryptocurrency once it becomes feasible that the government might be there already. It's totally going to happen, it's just a matter of time. I know cryptography for the purposes of secure communication will simply move to symmetric algorithms with quantum key distribution to preshare the key, but I wonder how cryptocurrency will adapt. RSA being broken sorta breaks their entire model.

[DannyHamilton]

If you want to really destroy bitcoins, you'll need to get some serious mining equipment (or convince others to join your bitcoin destroying mining pool).

Then, everytime you successfully mine a block, you can permanently remove from the bitcoin economy the block subsidy (currently 25 BTC) as well as all the transaction fees from all the transactions included in your block.

In this case, the bitcoins aren't stored at an address that everyone assumes has no known private key, they are actually eliminated from existence entirely.

[Sheldor333]

If you want to really destroy bitcoins, you'll need to get some serious mining equipment (or convince others to join your bitcoin destroying mining pool).

Then, everytime you successfully mine a block, you can permanently remove from the bitcoin economy the block subsidy (currently 25 BTC) as well as all the transaction fees from all the transactions included in your block.

In this case, the bitcoins aren't stored at an address that everyone assumes has no known private key, they are actually eliminated from existence entirely.

Wait if it was done this way. He would just destroy his BTC. Wouldn't that mean that there would be just that same amount of BTC available for creating again?

[McMillan]

Imagine when 2,000 years from now, some alien civilization uses its advanced technology to reverse engineer all the private keys and take the BTC. 

2000 years! Quantum computers will probably exist before then, and this is the sort of problem they eat up. Then again, they've been fifty years away for the last fifty years...but we're really close I promise!

Come to think of it, the fear that quantum computers can find private keys ought to harm confidence in cryptocurrency once it becomes feasible that the government might be there already. It's totally going to happen, it's just a matter of time. I know cryptography for the purposes of secure communication will simply move to symmetric algorithms with quantum key distribution to preshare the key, but I wonder how cryptocurrency will adapt. RSA being broken sorta breaks their entire model.

I often hear about the quantum computer threat, but still I haven't heard about what exactly quantum computer could do with modern cryptographic. Is it really such a threat, and if it is, wouldn't it be a threat not only to Bitcoin but to all modern world (like password bruting etc)?