The line between lost and hodl

[xbetz.io]

I think one of the most interesting parts of this topic is that “lost” and “held” often look identical until they suddenly don’t.

Dormant supply isn’t just about forgotten wallets, it’s also about conviction. Early holders who never needed to move funds created scarcity unintentionally and that scarcity only becomes visible during moments of demand stress.

It makes Bitcoin’s supply feel less like a fixed number and more like a psychological variable.

Curious how others think about dormant coins suddenly re-entering the market, does it weaken the scarcity narrative or reinforce it?

[Satofan44]

Nobody has used the P2TR address at all as a burn destination.

I am not sure about it. There are around 0x80000000000000000000000000000000a2a8918ca85bafe22016d0b997e4df60 unspendable keys. I guess you didn't scan the whole UTXO set, to validate all P2TR addresses, and check, which x-values are outside of secp256k1. Such scanning can be done, but it would be probably quite slow, and I guess it is not worth it.\

What do you mean? Would this not simply show up as a receiving transaction for the address in question? I was talking only about this address bc1pqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqzs2jkusy and to demonstrate that it shows up I burned 1000 satoshis.

My ideas is that we generally replace these with addresses such as bc1pqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqzs2jkusy since coins that are sent there are provably unspendable?

It would bloat the UTXO set for no reason. It is much better to write a GUI support for OP_RETURN instead. For example: "bcret1..." or anything similar could be used, and decoded into OP_RETURN automatically.

It would, but people are already doing this. The idea is not to target the most optimal solution for this but instead replace the already existing one which requires much less work. Nevertheless, it would be good if developers actually added a burn function in the wallet -- we should limit showing it actually does it under some advanced view. However, I am not sure that some people that are working on these things would agree. I can't force someone to merge it into their wallet, even if I were to develop it. Given this constraint, the best what I can do is promote provably unspendable addresses as burn destinations (and provide information about OP_RETURN as an alternative for advanced users).

The very least that we can do is to promote it in discussions regarding burn that come up occasionally.

There is a difference between these addresses. Coins sent to 1CounterpartyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXUWLpVr and similar addresses have around 2^96 valid public keys on average, so it will likely be moved in the future. Coins sent to bc1pqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqzs2jkusy will never move, unless you use it on some altcoin, where Taproot is not active, then it would be spendable by miners in a non-standard way, without any signatures.

That is exactly my point. Since people are using these addresses for burning anyway, and they are not provably unspendable it would be better to simply share updated knowledge on these matters. If one wants to burn this old way, use provably unspendable addresses. If one wants to burn using the best way possible, then use OP_RETURN. If asked most people will bring up old addresses like the 1CounterpartyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXUWLpVr, so therefore it would be wise to start updating the general knowledge.

[DiMarxist]

I believe that there is a change in terms of behavior from the early adopters and the once we are having now maybe due to the fact that when Bitcoin started the attention were not there. So the earliest adopters were not loud but were accumulating Bitcoin in silence but today the opposite is the case. This has a link with the social influence that Bitcoin is associated with now because as it stands now Bitcoin is seen as a symbol of wealth, and anyone holding it is seen by people as wealthy. But this is not a good idea because showing your Bitcoin holdings online is actually a dangerous thing to do, because you can be attracting unnecessary attention to yourself.

[Baki202]

I believe that there is a change in terms of behavior from the early adopters and the once we are having now maybe due to the fact that when Bitcoin started the attention were not there. So the earliest adopters were not loud but were accumulating Bitcoin in silence but today the opposite is the case. This has a link with the social influence that Bitcoin is associated with now because as it stands now Bitcoin is seen as a symbol of wealth, and anyone holding it is seen by people as wealthy. But this is not a good idea because showing your Bitcoin holdings online is actually a dangerous thing to do, because you can be attracting unnecessary attention to yourself.

The early adopters were believers, and despite everything, they did not see Bitcoin becoming this big, but look where it has gotten to, and the ones holding now have their own mindset. What matters is hope, they are still holding because they are people that they bought at a lower price and they sold very early, and they have either been early or not. the most important thing is that you can buy it whenever you want, because you can just buy and this is what is important. and that symbol of wealth has changed a lot of mindsets and people, and now they want to focus on building wealth because that is what should be focused upon.