Possible solution for recovering lost Bitcoin to the "blackhole".

[ThiagoCMC]

Guys,

 I've already saw many threads talking about some Bitcoins that have been sent to the "Bitcoin Blackhole"...

 Those Bitcoins will never back and, the person who sent them, lost money.

 But, WE know that those Bitcoins are now in the Blackhole...

 My proposed solution is, for example, when the last Bitcoin have been mined, I mean, when we reach 21.000.000 Bitcoins, we can measure how many Bitcoin are in the blackhole and append them to the total of Bitcoins in existance.

 So, if 100.000 Bitcoins are in the black hole on the day we mined the Bitcoin number 21.000.000, we can release a new version of Bitcoin, wich will have 21.100.000 Bitcoins.

 It can be done?!

 I do not talking about Bitcoins lost by formated harddrive... But only those Bitcoins that was lost in the "blackhole"... The Bitcoins we all can see, in the blockchain, that are lost anyway.

Cheers!
Thiago

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

Sense = your post makes none.

[tysat]

It's not that easy, the blockchain was setup with an algorithm that has a limit of 21,000,000.  You can't just add more onto that without changing the entire system.  Why would do you think the lost coins would even need to be re-introduced?

[DeathAndTaxes]

1) You can never definitively know they are lost if simply sent to a wrong address. 

2) Why do you care if some coins are lost?  What if 50 tons of gold was "lost".  Would you argue we need to go find an asteroid with no more or less than 50 tons of gold to replace the lost gold?  What would happen if we didn't?

[Littleshop]

It could be done, with a patch but 51% would have to agree to do it.  For most people it would not be in their interest as it would ever so slightly devalue their coins and add unnecessary complication to bitcoin. 

We could just as easily decide to to stop the blocks from dropping in value next year, but again, why change what seems to be working? 

[deepceleron]

Just because I have never spent my coins doesn't mean I don't still have them and want them. Dumb.

[arepo]

many things are wrong with this. one of the biggest is that the 'last' bitcoin will never be mined. it's asymptotic.

[drakahn]

I would leave them lost, we have 8 decimal places so there are two quadrillion one hundred trillion units not twenty one million

[drakahn]

many things are wrong with this. one of the biggest is that the 'last' bitcoin will never be mined. it's asymptotic.

what's with the 2033 estimate then?

[westkybitcoins]

many things are wrong with this. one of the biggest is that the 'last' bitcoin will never be mined. it's asymptotic.

what's with the 2033 estimate then?

The curve may be asymptotic, but as long as the precision of bitcoin stays at 8 decimal places, we'll eventually see the "last" bitcoin mined.

You can check it out by using blockexplorer's stats page. It can tell you what the block reward will be for any block. At one point in the future, the reward goes from 0.00000001 btc one one block, straight to zero on the next.

*fiddles with blockexplorer*

Block 6929998 will produce a reward of 0.00000001 btc, block 6929999 will produce none. Only about 6.2M blocks to go (at an average of ten minutes a block, that's over 117 years from now. I suppose there's a chance bitcoin won't even still be around by then....)

[drakahn]

So, we could say it hits its half life in 2033(ish) (last block above 0.50.... ish)

[westkybitcoins]

So, we could say it hits its half life in 2033(ish) (last block above 0.50.... ish)

I suppose that's one way to look at it. Hopefully by then miners will be relying more on fees than the block reward for their profits.

Block 6929998 will produce a reward of 0.00000001 btc, block 6929999 will produce none. Only about 6.2M blocks to go (at an average of ten minutes a block, that's over 117 years from now. I suppose there's a chance bitcoin won't even still be around by then....)

Wow, it gets too late and I can't even do basic math.

With about 6.77M blocks to go, that's over 128 years from now... past 2140 A.D.

[kokojie]

There's virtually no need to recover the lost coins. If 1 BTC become too valuable to be a standard unit, then we'll just use 0.01 BTC as the standard (and give it a name too, like 1 satoshi).

[Phinnaeus Gage]

I would leave them lost, we have 8 decimal places so there are two quadrillion one hundred trillion units not twenty one million

Basically what I was going to pen after reading the OP.

There's virtually no need to recover the lost coins. If 1 BTC become too valuable to be a standard unit, then we'll just use 0.01 BTC as the standard (and give it a name too, like 1 satoshi).

I believe that 'Satoshi' is reserved for the 8th decimal place. There's a thread discussing name proposals for the other decimal places, but I didn't take time to hunt it.

If I'm not mistaken, there's going to be a problem if we start using .xxxx? Humans are accustomed to whole numbers, not fractions or decimals, when it comes to their medium of exchange--money. At the moment, there's 8M BTC in circulation. If next month a million new people joined the Bitcoin train, not only would the exchange rate be high, but everyone will be seeing .xxxxx no matter what name you call it (nano, being one that just came to mind).

There is one way I can see it working out for all concerns, and it's not meant as a proposal--just a brain fart, if you will. Currently there are 8M+ BTC. Let's say a million new people join. The rate becomes 1 BTC = $100 USD. Even though a $2 USD purchase equates to only .02 BTC, people are less prone to purchase 1 BTC for $100 USD. But if it 1 BTC = $10 USD, all is well again. That can be done by a split. There will then be 80,000,000 MAIN units in play, units that will be called Bitcoin (bitcoins). And when we reach the 10M original bitcoins mined, and there's another doubling or so new users, split again to having 1,000,000,000 units now referred to Bitcoin(s).

This way it's always called Bitcoin or bitcoins or BTC for the main units. Perhaps this can all be done at the mining level during the awarding of BTC blocks.

As I've said earlier, it's just an idea, and I real don't know how to do this or, for that matter, what I'm talking about, let alone trying to relay. But. hopefully, the gist of it comes across, even if the whole thing is shot down.

~Bruno~

[DeathAndTaxes]

There's virtually no need to recover the lost coins. If 1 BTC become too valuable to be a standard unit, then we'll just use 0.01 BTC as the standard (and give it a name too, like 1 satoshi).

a satoshi already exists.

1 satoshi = 0.00000001

Still your point is right.  If through either massive adoptions (hundreds of millions of users) or reduction in usable coin supply the value of a single coin was very high (millions of dollars) clients would simply price things in fractional BTC.

Satoshis is one option.  mBTC (milli Bitcoins) or uBTC (micro Bitcoins) is another possibility.

If one BTC had same buying power as $100K USD a $5 burger might be 0.0005 BTC.  For convenience the menu might show that as 0.5 mBTC. or 500 uBTC.  The formatting and naming convention will likely develop organically depending on relative values.

Banks, large institutions, corporate reports, and possibly large purchases like houses could still use BTC.  

[kjj]

If we ever expand beyond the current 64 bit integer representation of 1e-8 BTC, then mining could go on for quite a while, if I recall correctly.  I'll poke through the source code in a bit, but if I recall, the subsidy is right shifted off the end until it goes to zero.  Switching to 128 bit integers would let it keep shifting off longer than the current setup.  Of course, we are talking about tiny amounts, even with massive deflation.

[Epoch]

Interesting thought, but I don't see the benefit in doing this.

Those 'missing' coins will not be missed, and whatever minuscule effect they may have is to make the remaining coins fractionally more valuable. The 21m limit is not a magic number; it is arbitrary. Whether the actual number is 21,000,000 or 20,900,000 or 20,000,000 makes no difference.

[DeathAndTaxes]

I would leave them lost, we have 8 decimal places so there are two quadrillion one hundred trillion units not twenty one million

Basically what I was going to pen after reading the OP.

There's virtually no need to recover the lost coins. If 1 BTC become too valuable to be a standard unit, then we'll just use 0.01 BTC as the standard (and give it a name too, like 1 satoshi).

I believe that 'Satoshi' is reserved for the 8th decimal place. There's a thread discussing name proposals for the other decimal places, but I didn't take time to hunt it.

If I'm not mistaken, there's going to be a problem if we start using .xxxx? Humans are accustomed to whole numbers, not fractions or decimals, when it comes to their medium of exchange--money. At the moment, there's 8M BTC in circulation. If next month a million new people joined the Bitcoin train, not only would the exchange rate be high, but everyone will be seeing .xxxxx no matter what name you call it (nano, being one that just came to mind).

There is one way I can see it working out for all concerns, and it's not meant as a proposal--just a brain fart, if you will. Currently there are 8M+ BTC. Let's say a million new people join. The rate becomes 1 BTC = $100 USD. Even though a $2 USD purchase equates to only .02 BTC, people are less prone to purchase 1 BTC for $100 USD. But if it 1 BTC = $10 USD, all is well again. That can be done by a split. There will then be 80,000,000 MAIN units in play, units that will be called Bitcoin (bitcoins). And when we reach the 10M original bitcoins mined, and there's another doubling or so new users, split again to having 1,000,000,000 units now referred to Bitcoin(s).

This way it's always called Bitcoin or bitcoins or BTC for the main units. Perhaps this can all be done at the mining level during the awarding of BTC blocks.

As I've said earlier, it's just an idea, and I real don't know how to do this or, for that matter, what I'm talking about, let alone trying to relay. But. hopefully, the gist of it comes across, even if the whole thing is shot down.

~Bruno~

Doing something like a split or revaluing the currency is impossible without creating a fork and once you do that there will be Bitcoin new and Bitcoin legacy and the confusion that goes with that (coins will still exists in both networks).  Bad idea.

Much simpler to just use another unit like Satoshi or mBTC (micromilli Bitcoins) or uBTC (micro Bitcoins)

One way to look at it is there are 21,000 2,100 trillion base units (satoshis) or 2.1 quadrillion satoshis.  It takes 100,000,000 of them to make 1 Bitcoin.   That is how the client and blockchain handle it internally.  If you have an address with a value of 1 BTC the internal code represents that as 100,000,000.

[Epoch]

Much simpler to just use another unit like Satoshi or mBTC (micro Bitcoins).

I thought you had defined mBTC as milli Bitcoins before ... 

[SgtSpike]

So, we could say it hits its half life in 2033(ish) (last block above 0.50.... ish)

I suppose that's one way to look at it. Hopefully by then miners will be relying more on fees than the block reward for their profits.

Block 6929998 will produce a reward of 0.00000001 btc, block 6929999 will produce none. Only about 6.2M blocks to go (at an average of ten minutes a block, that's over 117 years from now. I suppose there's a chance bitcoin won't even still be around by then....)

Wow, it gets too late and I can't even do basic math.

With about 6.77M blocks to go, that's over 128 years from now... past 2140 A.D.

And the blockchain will be 100GB by then, assuming the same level of transactions as we have today...!