Is Bitcoin Burning useful?Am I not understanding Bitcoin concept completely yet?

[11sticks]

I am pretty new to Bitcoin and exploring the stuff. Able to understand how difficult is to mine new coins.

Recently came to know about Bitcoin Burning (it seems opposite to mining). Checked some of those burn addresses in blockchain explorer and found 'even in 2021' they are receiving Bitcoins. With Bitcoin price being so high now a days, why people are burning the coins instead of spending for themselves?

At some place read that people are burning the coins for fun (which I can't believe).
Instead of burning, people can spend the coins themselves or send to their friends/relatives.

Some burn addresses are having more than 100 BTC. (Being a late starter, even a hundredth of BTC is a very distant target for me)
1CounterpartyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXUWLpVr (2130.93142654 BTC)
1ChancecoinXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXZELUFD (480.19566656 BTC)

I am not giving any kind of advice not to burn. I am just being logical and trying to understand reason behind burning.

Or is Bitcoin Burning useful in any way? Am I not understanding the Bitcoin concept completely yet?

[BlackHatCoiner]

Or is Bitcoin Burning useful in any way? Am I not understanding the Bitcoin concept completely yet?

Okay. Let's assume that I create a new coin, which is exactly like bitcoin, but there's no mining. There is no fixed supply, you can only "get into the game" by sending an amount of real bitcoins to one burning address. This way, I've created something that follows a different blockchain but it's based on the bitcoin blockchain. If this coin has value is a different thing to discuss. What matters is that I created a new cryptocurrency that "issues" with Proof of Burn instead of Proof of Work. Any bitcoin address that will send funds to the burning address will be a proof of burn.

There are other reasons to burn coins too. For example, if you want to send a message through the blockchain.

[ranochigo]

The address with the unique vanity with Counterparty is burned to obtain Counterparty tokens. It's known as proof of burn and those who burn their Bitcoins receives a proportional compensation of Counterparty tokens.

People burn Bitcoins for a variety of reasons, most common having received dust transactions. Some of those transactions are used for deanonymizing attacks and/or spam advertisment. People spend those transactions to the burn address to avoid having to spend that output together with the other outputs and thus revealing the addresses the user owns.

Economically wise, there really isn't a reason for you to burn Bitcoins. Theoractically, it would result in Bitcoin being more scarce but the amount that is being burned is really minuscule which wouldn't make any difference.

[ranochigo]

there is no burning concept in Bitcoin. it is sending coins to addresses from which it is not possible to have private keys.

It is, there is very likely to have a corresponding private key. It's just that the generation method ensures that it is very unlikely for anyone to ever find a private key-public key pair that would lead to that address.

Note that your address is not burn addresses it is A bitcoin vanity address.

Addresses specified in OP are burn addresses.

[bryant.coleman]

Rather than burning the coins, why can't these people spend that amount for the global adoption of Bitcoin? If they give small handouts to students and freelancers, then it is going to help the global adoption of Bitcoin in a big way. And if I am not wrong, back in 2013-14, Coinbase had a similar giveaway program for its new users, which was then copied by many other Bitcoin-based startups.

[witcher_sense]

~
Economically wise, there really isn't a reason for you to burn Bitcoins. Theoractically, it would result in Bitcoin being more scarce but the amount that is being burned is really minuscule which wouldn't make any difference.

There might be an ideological reason to burn your coins in some cases. Burning doesn't necessarily mean sending your coins to a random valid address with no pregenerated private key. It also means destroying your own private keys thereby making it infeasible for anyone to spend coins locked in corresponding UTXOs. Satoshi Nakamoto could very well destroy their own keys in order to make bitcoin more scarce, more valuable, more decentralized, more evenly distributed, etc. He intentionally designed Bitcoin in such a way that it would be both scarce and highly divisible so that it could satisfy economic activities despite its current supply. Every time someone loses his private key and burns his coins, he makes the other coins more valuable, the purchasing power of each coin grows correspondingly. In my opinion, Satoshi could very well burn his coins to show others the benefits of such economic order.

[ranochigo]

There might be an ideological reason to burn your coins in some cases. Burning doesn't necessarily mean sending your coins to a random valid address with no pregenerated private key. It also means destroying your own private keys thereby making it infeasible for anyone to spend coins locked in corresponding UTXOs. Satoshi Nakamoto could very well destroy their own keys in order to make bitcoin more scarce, more valuable, more decentralized, more evenly distributed, etc. He intentionally designed Bitcoin in such a way that it would be both scarce and highly divisible so that it could satisfy economic activities despite its current supply. Every time someone loses his private key and burns his coins, he makes the other coins more valuable, the purchasing power of each coin grows correspondingly. In my opinion, Satoshi could very well burn his coins to show others the benefits of such economic order.

If you're losing your private key, yes you will reduce the total circulation of Bitcoins but that won't be a provable burn. Unless you actively send it to an OP_return and thereby eliminating that UTXO completely or to a provable burn address, the total market cap of Bitcoin remains the same; there is no way to tell others or for anyone else to prove that your Bitcoins are burned. By definition, the current supply of Bitcoin includes all of Satoshi's Bitcoin as well as those with hard disks sent to dumpster, those who accidentally wiped their own computer. It doesn't necessarily make Bitcoin more valuable.

[BrewMaster]

Rather than burning the coins, why can't these people spend that amount for the global adoption of Bitcoin?

because those who come up with these methods aren't really thinking ahead about what they really are doing. there really isn't any logical explanation for any of the coins that have ever been burnt.
for example there is no reason to burn bitcoin to receive some token on another chain while there are better ways to do that (locking coins in a smart contract like what side chains or LN are doing).