Can coins be destroyed in a more 'polite' way?

[Mikez]

Say someone wanted to 'destroy' a sum of coins. He could for instance send them to the 1BitcoinEater address, basically no one would ever gain access to those coins(without the priv key), hence... he destroys that sum of coins.

Wouldn't sending those coins as a(possibly huge) fee be a better approach? That way, those coins get back to the miners and not sent into oblivion to a valid, but onowned, address.

[byt411]

That is also a good idea.
They could also simply donate it to charity, whether BTC directly or convert into USD first.
Then it's not a waste.

[cooldgamer]

If you ever need to 'destroy' some coins you can send them to me

[BitDice.CC]

If you want to destroy, just send to this address :

1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa

https://blockchain.info/tr/address/1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa

[Joshuar]

If anyone wants to destroy coins. This wallet is available 1MYpNKj25HRBFpv22YpuZsuz2zZHKBLUu and will dispose of those coins  immediately(Bitcoins only)

[lemfuture]

by saying ..please

[DeathAndTaxes]

Wouldn't sending those coins as a(possibly huge) fee be a better approach? That way, those coins get back to the miners and not sent into oblivion to a valid, but onowned, address.

That wouldn't be destroyed.

[byt411]

Wouldn't sending those coins as a(possibly huge) fee be a better approach? That way, those coins get back to the miners and not sent into oblivion to a valid, but onowned, address.

That wouldn't be destroyed.

There is no actual way of "destroying coins". Even sending to an address with a private key that isn't known, a person can also get a lot (and i mean a real lot) amount of hashpower to bruteforce the key. Although it would be difficult, the coins are still recoverable.

[chrisLG]

There is no actual way of "destroying coins". Even sending to an address with a private key that isn't known, a person can also get a lot (and i mean a real lot) amount of hashpower to bruteforce the key. Although it would be difficult, the coins are still recoverable.

No they are not.

[DeathAndTaxes]

There is no actual way of "destroying coins". Even sending to an address with a private key that isn't known, a person can also get a lot (and i mean a real lot) amount of hashpower to bruteforce the key. Although it would be difficult, the coins are still recoverable.

Coins can be mined out of existence (miner selects a reward less than the max allowed).

Still coins sent to addresses with no known private key are effectively lost.  No you can't brute force it with a lot of hashing power (not even all the computing power on the planet).  If you could then Bitcoin would be worthless.

[chrisLG]

Coins can be mined out of existence (miner selects a reward less than the max allowed).

Oh nice - I did not know that. Is the miner able to take "up to" the block reward? I was under the impressum the miner gets credited the reward and that was it.

[byt411]

There is no actual way of "destroying coins". Even sending to an address with a private key that isn't known, a person can also get a lot (and i mean a real lot) amount of hashpower to bruteforce the key. Although it would be difficult, the coins are still recoverable.

Coins can be mined out of existence (miner selects a reward less than the max allowed).

Still coins sent to addresses with no known private key are effectively lost.  No you can't brute force it with a lot of hashing power (not even all the computing power on the planet).  If you could then Bitcoin would be worthless.

As far as I know, you can perfectly try and bruteforce a bitcoin address. By simply using VanityGen. Your odds will be next to zero, but that DOES NOT mean it is impossible. Also, how do you know that in the near future there won't be asics capable of doing so?

[chrisLG]

There is no actual way of "destroying coins". Even sending to an address with a private key that isn't known, a person can also get a lot (and i mean a real lot) amount of hashpower to bruteforce the key. Although it would be difficult, the coins are still recoverable.

Coins can be mined out of existence (miner selects a reward less than the max allowed).

Still coins sent to addresses with no known private key are effectively lost.  No you can't brute force it with a lot of hashing power (not even all the computing power on the planet).  If you could then Bitcoin would be worthless.

As far as I know, you can perfectly try and bruteforce a bitcoin address. By simply using VanityGen. Your odds will be next to zero, but that DOES NOT mean it is impossible. Also, how do you know that in the near future there won't be asics capable of doing so?

See my post. It is also possible to be struck by lightning every minute for the next 14 Billion years. It's just so unlikely that you might say it is impossible.

[Nancarrow]

There is no actual way of "destroying coins". Even sending to an address with a private key that isn't known, a person can also get a lot (and i mean a real lot) amount of hashpower to bruteforce the key. Although it would be difficult, the coins are still recoverable.

Coins can be mined out of existence (miner selects a reward less than the max allowed).

Still coins sent to addresses with no known private key are effectively lost.  No you can't brute force it with a lot of hashing power (not even all the computing power on the planet).  If you could then Bitcoin would be worthless.

As far as I know, you can perfectly try and bruteforce a bitcoin address. By simply using VanityGen. Your odds will be next to zero, but that DOES NOT mean it is impossible. Also, how do you know that in the near future there won't be asics capable of doing so?

D&T knows that ASICs won't be capable of doing so because, like everyone else who assures you of that, he has done the maths. There's nothing more to add to that (by now cliched, but for good reason) sun pic. When a non-zero probability becomes sufficiently small, it becomes foolish and obscurantist to continue to treat it as "0.0000001". What part of "made of something other than matter or occupying something other than space" is relevant to ASIC design? The argument presented in that sun pic is dependent ONLY upon very well tested deep laws of physics. Nobody is going to design an ASIC that breaks the laws of thermodynamics until some time well AFTER a theoretical physicist has shown those laws don't hold, which is a remote and non-quantifiable possibility.

[kjj]

Since we are all repeating what always is said in these threads, I'll add my 2 cents.

We have no promise that each possible outputs of our hashing algorithms are reachable by some valid input.  So, addresses where the private key has been lost are fundamentally different from addresses that never had a private key to begin with.  Thus, coins sent to the bitcoin eater are "more lost" than coins sent to bitomat depost addresses.

Physics won't let us iterate all possible private keys, but if we could, we are sure to find the bitomat coins.  We aren't sure at all that we'll find the bitcoin eater coins.

[fbueller]

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script#Provably_Unspendable.2FPrunable_Outputs

There is a way in the protocol to 'destroy' coins. By setting your scriptPubKey in your raw transaction to OP_RETURN then the people will never be able to create an acceptable transaction to redeem these funds.

[teukon]

Since we are all repeating what always is said in these threads, I'll add my 2 cents.

I want to play too.

Wouldn't sending those coins as a(possibly huge) fee be a better approach? That way, those coins get back to the miners and not sent into oblivion to a valid, but onowned, address.

Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more.  Think of it as a donation to everyone.

[Amitabh S]

An even more guaranteed way to destroy coins:

Mine a block. Make sure the sum of fee and reward is less than the output of the coinbase tx.
 The difference is effectively destroyed.

[ning]

Sending the coins as a large fee benefits one lucky miner; sending the coins to a "black hole" address benefits all the people who use Bitcoin, because by deflating the currency, the value of everyone's coin increases slightly.

[cbeast]

"Bitcoin, we need to talk. It's not you, it's me. We need to take a break and see other people. Excuse me, I have a date with Litecoin."