Lost coins redistribution

[CocolinoFan]

I like the idea of only having 21 million bitcoins.
Bitcoins get lost all the time, lost private keys.
In time we will have fewer and fewer bitcoins, currently it is thought 3-4 million bitcoins are already lost. This makes me sad.

I propose a redistribution method:
>If an address did not have any activity in let's say the last 100 years the address is considered lost and the bitcoins are free to be mined in the next block.

To prevent losing your bitcoins you make sure to transfer them to a new address every 100 years (I am not aware of any other method of "proving" you still have access to an address).

P.S. This would be a change in the consensus mechanism, I know 
P.S.S. I am aware of Satoshi's view on this "lost coins are a donation to everyone". Yes, but 4 million is a lot, do we want Bitcoin to still be used 1000 years from now? If this trend continues most if not all bitcoins would have been lost by then.

[mk4]

This is an interesting topic that I sparked up back then once just for discussion purposes — safe to say a lot of people didn't like it lol.

If this trend continues most if not all bitcoins would have been lost by then.

It definitely wouldn't be like that. Sure, the supply still shrinks and shrinks slowly, but as time goes bitcoin goes up in value as well. People will be incentivized to not lose them; not like back then when bitcoin was merely a few cents so people didn't care much about their private key backups.

[DapanasFruit]

I also love the idea but then again with the current set-up of Bitcoin this is actually an impossibility. So maybe we can propose like creating a new cryptocurrency or a token corresponding to the number of BTC presumed to have been lost already...but then maybe the next question is how it is going to be distributed and who will be the recipients. Maybe all active members of this forum can be entitled to get some - anyway this is just my humble opinion. Otherwise we have to accept the fact that what was lost is already history and can never be recovered anymore.

[joniboini]

In time we will have fewer and fewer bitcoins, currently it is thought 3-4 million bitcoins are already lost. This makes me sad.

Why though? It is not like people must spend 1 BTC to make one transaction. I would not be surprised if 100 sat is worth $100 or something in the future if Bitcoin continues to be valuable. While it can happen, I doubt the BTC price will continue to increase that 10 sat or so is no longer affordable for small payments/transactions. Even if it does happen, we'll probably see many layer-2 solutions or something similar at that point in time.

So maybe we can propose like creating a new cryptocurrency or a token corresponding to the number of BTC presumed to have been lost already

That's basically creating an altcoin IMO.

[bittraffic]

This Is coercing holders to so some activity for their address to be considered alive. This will be an approaching big bear market season at every 100 years to come. What fud can be spread during that time will be quite damaging to investors but also an opportunity.

Can they leave Satoshis stash alone? Problem is that they are not identified as his.

[Don Pedro Dinero]

I propose a redistribution method:
<...>

The lost coins are already redistributed in the sense that thanks to this, due to scarcity, the bitcoins of the other holders are worth more.

People will be incentivized to not lose them; not like back then when bitcoin was merely a few cents so people didn't care much about their private key backups.

You're right, far fewer bitcoins are lost today than in the beginning, when people mined them on their laptops, at a time when they were worth pennies and they didn't know if they would still be around in a few years, nor did they have options for spending them as they do now. Today there are many more security measures, more knowledge, and people consider them much more valuable than they did then.

They will always continue to be lost, but in percentage terms much less.

[dzungmobile]

Bitcoins get lost all the time, lost private keys.

Bitcoin is Bitcoin by itself. It does not lose anything by itself.

What or who lost? The people who owned bitcoin lost private keys and lost their bitcoins. You must correct the sentence.

In time we will have fewer and fewer bitcoins, currently it is thought 3-4 million bitcoins are already lost.

It is only estimation which is estimated by inactive UTXOs. Estimations are always not exact numbers for what's actually going on and the exact number of lost bitcoins.
You can use this UTXO chart and make your estimations. Not all inactive UTXOs are from lost bitcoins.

• https://www.lookintobitcoin.com/charts/hodl-waves/

This makes me sad.

You should feel more happy about that because those coins lost for good.  

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

They are lost for good.  Think of it like someone losing their wallet in the ocean.  It seems like it would be a problem but it's really not that significant.  People lose their gold jewelry all the time but it doesn't make much of a difference to the value of gold.

[adaseb]

I don’t think there will be a consensus for a hard fork to add this feature. Seems the only people to benefit would be miners pretty much. No Bitcoin holder would want this since it increases the supply and will lower price.

I think one of the Bitcoin forks had a feature to do this. Might of been BSV where it allows the unspent coins to be in circulation again. Had a bad negative response from the community and most likely BTC won’t have a positive response either for this to happen.

[pooya87]

Bitcoins get lost all the time, lost private keys.

Actually losing bitcoins is an event with decreasing number of occurrence. In early days price was low and people were less careful so there were more cases of losing keys. As time went up and bitcoin gained more value people also became more careful hence the number of cases where people lose their keys diminished significantly.
So you can't say it gets "lost all the time".

currently it is thought 3-4 million bitcoins are already lost.

Wrong. Nobody knows how many bitcoins were actually lost. This is just an estimation you posted.

If an address did not have any activity in let's say the last 100 years

There are two problems with this:
1. Not having any activity is not the same as being lost. For example there are people who have coins from 2009 that they haven't touched but they still own the private key.
2. You can't really talk about what people should do in 100 years from now!

[Aanuoluwatofunmi]

I propose a redistribution method:
>If an address did not have any activity in let's say the last 100 years the address is considered lost and the bitcoins are free to be mined in the next block.

It's a good idea just as mk4 had said earlier for only discussion matter but no one would want this kind of implementation accepted, if this is acceptable then i don't think there's more need to hodl our bitcoin for long anymore since there must be an activity experience with using a particular wallet over time, this could mean no difference from using the commercial banks which are prone to domancy of account over long time inactivities.

[Z390]

Every 100years? Many people won't make it that long, there is nothing that can prevent losing some Bitcoin because many people are not ready to share their private keys with others, when death comes unexpectedly,  no one will know that they have some Bitcoin somewhere safe, now the Bitcoin will be lost forever.

I will also like to correct you that a Bitcoin wallet that's inactive for years is none of your business, it does not meant the owner is dead, some people want to keep their Bitcoin for a very long period, and furthermore inactivity doesn't mean the Bitcoin is lost or something.

[retreat]

I think that this topic has been discussed some time ago. You can search that thread to find the answer. But I personally do not agree with the redistribution of lost coins, because logically do you want your hard-earned assets to be redistributed to others just because you died or for whatever reason? especially with the redistribution of these coins will reduce the value of Bitcoin itself, because it will disrupt the economy of Bitcoin. So it's best to just leave the coins there and not need to be discussed further.

[buwaytress]

What a great suggestion, but not really, I always thought lost coins was also already thought out in the scheme of supple design.

So instead of a figure that's estimated in lost coins, we'll just constantly revive dormant coins? Apart from the very poor distribution method of next block riches (what's wrong with a democratised resupply?)... Suppose I want to leave an inheritance for 3 or 4 generations after me (I won't have genetic descendants but that's okay, let's call them spiritual descendants), or deliberately want to burn coins, should all my effort be removed after an arbitrary century? Or a nation's 100-year development plan. Do they really have to move coins out just to avoid that?

[vv181]

I like the idea of only having 21 million bitcoins.
Bitcoins get lost all the time, lost private keys.
In time we will have fewer and fewer bitcoins, currently it is thought 3-4 million bitcoins are already lost. This makes me sad.

I propose a redistribution method:
>If an address did not have any activity in let's say the last 100 years the address is considered lost and the bitcoins are free to be mined in the next block.

I think that is a horrendous idea. Without a clear definition of the coin that is being lost and a proven method of counting lost coins, coin recirculation would be prone to a bigger problem.

Besides, for the sake of keeping the roughly 21 million bitcoins intact, I think that is a lame reason that has no urgency. There are intended coins burned by OP_RETURN. So that won't happen. If we truly want to address the legitimate users who forgot, missing, corrupt private keys, or has any other genuine cause. That might be the sensible motive. But still, it is a tricky one dues to the nature of how bitcoin essentially works.

(I am not aware of any other method of "proving" you still have access to an address).

Signed messages. Take a look at Digital Signatures for further information.

[Kemarit]

I like the idea of only having 21 million bitcoins.
Bitcoins get lost all the time, lost private keys.
In time we will have fewer and fewer bitcoins, currently it is thought 3-4 million bitcoins are already lost. This makes me sad.

I think this is part of the design of Satoshi, same as bitcoin transaction is irreversible, so why change it?

I propose a redistribution method:
>If an address did not have any activity in let's say the last 100 years the address is considered lost and the bitcoins are free to be mined in the next block.

To prevent losing your bitcoins you make sure to transfer them to a new address every 100 years (I am not aware of any other method of "proving" you still have access to an address).

P.S. This would be a change in the consensus mechanism, I know  
P.S.S. I am aware of Satoshi's view on this "lost coins are a donation to everyone". Yes, but 4 million is a lot, do we want Bitcoin to still be used 1000 years from now? If this trend continues most if not all bitcoins would have been lost by then.

Yeah and in addition to that, he also says that:

When you forget a password to your wallet, your Bitcoins are lost forever. Which makes everyone else a bit richer.

So that's it, everyone will be richer if someone lost his access to his BTC. So no need to put it back and be mined again.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I propose a redistribution method:
>If an address did not have any activity in let's say the last 100 years the address is considered lost and the bitcoins are free to be mined in the next block.

There will be absolute chaos in around 86 years.

Assuming early coins are truly lost, then even with a very conservative estimate of the bitcoin price being $100,000 in 86 years, each block will be able to claim 50 BTC in unmoved coins from the first several dozen thousand blocks. With blocks currently netting around $200,000 in total block reward, a reward of $5 million per block will be more than enough for every miner on the network to constantly attempt to reorg the chain many blocks deep for their own benefit. The same thing would happen every time a large enough cache of coins became eligible to be reclaimed.

[Lucius]

Those characters who came to the conclusion a few years ago that 3-4 million BTC was lost using the methodology "not moved x years = lost" should apologize publicly for creating such confusion that obviously has nothing to do with reality.

In addition to what Satoshi mined, and those few characters who lost a few thousand BTC on thrown/locked hard drives, and those who deliberately burn some BTC, I think that maybe less than 10% of max supply is currently lost.

However, as I read in some posts before, in the future it will be possible to "save" some of these coins, and then we will really know if they were really lost or just stored safely.

[CocolinoFan]

The 100 years can be changed to 200, 500 years, the time does not really matter.
I was thinking for the coins to be "free" to mine as a simple and elegant method of putting the bitcoins back into circulation; but if that's unfair to the bitcoin holders we can find another redistribution method.

True, lost coins are like a wallet or jewelry lost in the ocean. But, fiat can always print more and gold can be mined or found in set ocean. Bitcoins on the other hand, can be thoroughly lost forever.
Again, this is an approximation, but 4 million lost coins out of 21 million. That's like 20% of the total gold/fiat supply just vanishing forever.
But yes, this is not really the biggest problem for Bitcoin right now and a consensus change against Satoshi's view will never happen anyway.

[Eternad]

I propose a redistribution method:
>If an address did not have any activity in let's say the last 100 years the address is considered lost and the bitcoins are free to be mined in the next block.

To prevent losing your bitcoins you make sure to transfer them to a new address every 100 years (I am not aware of any other method of "proving" you still have access to an address).

This is same to not your keys not your coins logic. Lost Bitcoin or not, We shouldn’t decide on other coins fate if we don’t have rivate key. We can consider it as a treasure waiting to be discovered because not all lost coin is due to lost of private keys. Some of them is just owner died without transferring ownership to his/her heir.

Redistribution coins like this will lost the purpose of power holding or something since we are redistributing coins that is not moving without any verification that it’s really lost and unrecoverable. Best scenario here is a family passing Bitcoin from one genration to other generation.

[Husires]

I propose a redistribution method:
>If an address did not have any activity in let's say the last 100 years the address is considered lost and the bitcoins are free to be mined in the next block.

Who will be alive after 100 years, if we assume that you are currently 7 years old, then most likely she will not be able to know much at that age. This is the problem of future generations, not ours.
one bitcoin can be divided into smaller categories, so we practically have more than 21 million pieces.
we have about ~ 2.1e+15 Sat

P.S. This would be a change in the consensus mechanism, I know 

If your proposal does not get consensus, which it assumes, you can do a hard fork, where you can modify whatever you want in the code.