Deflation, Doomsday and the return of Lost Coins

[Meni Rosenfeld]

Some of the responses here were quite harsh

If the suggestion is shit, i say that it's shit, why should i lie?

Basically he is suggesting to steal people savings  

Unless someone explicitly agrees to follow Crockers' rules, how you say something is as important as what you say.

Can I assume you never said anything wrong in your life, or that you had no problem being humiliated when you did?

[Kettenmonster]

Unless someone explicitly agrees to follow Crockers' rules,

Crockers' rules are fine for Wikipedia where it is about facts and truth. Whilst nobody can sanely claim to own such things.
Think of or talk about or even dare to touch my property, but then don´t cry if you can´t stand the response.

[rini17]

Interesting,nobody takes into account tech progress and advances in computing. It may be feasible to recover lost bitcoins by cracking the blockchain by quantum computers in, say, 50 years. Of course, official btc will be moved to more secure hash algo,but as long as there will be path to move coins to new quantum blockchain, someone will inevitably use quantum computer to crack lost coins from old blockchain...and thus the problem will be solved itself!

[Gabi]

Some of the responses here were quite harsh

If the suggestion is shit, i say that it's shit, why should i lie?

Basically he is suggesting to steal people savings  

Unless someone explicitly agrees to follow Crockers' rules, how you say something is as important as what you say.

Can I assume you never said anything wrong in your life, or that you had no problem being humiliated when you did?

Welcome on the internet, where people will say what they think  If i say an idiocy i expect people to tell me it's an idiocy.

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

Thanks Meni Rosenfeld for your support.

I didn´t get angry, I was just a bit ironic. I don´t mind Gabi´s comments, he may be right, and the idea of returning coins is bad. It was not my idea, anyway. It was Hamacher, & Katzenbeisse, as I said.

Though I (as most of the people of the world) would like to be treated politely. Gabi is probably a (clever) teenager. Teenagers tend to talk like that. 

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world
...

Regards!

[Meni Rosenfeld]

It was not my idea, anyway. It was Hamacher, & Katzenbeisse, as I said.

It's not theirs either. Here is a June 2011 reference to it, and I doubt it's the first.

Interesting,nobody takes into account tech progress and advances in computing. It may be feasible to recover lost bitcoins by cracking the blockchain by quantum computers in, say, 50 years. Of course, official btc will be moved to more secure hash algo,but as long as there will be path to move coins to new quantum blockchain, someone will inevitably use quantum computer to crack lost coins from old blockchain...and thus the problem will be solved itself!

We take it into account, occasionally... Even without QC stuff, ECDSA could very well be broken. I wonder what is the proper procedure to handle this - let the first person to build a working ECDSA breaker take all the lost coins? Or, when cracks in ECDSA are found, set a widely publicized expiration date that would force long-term savers to move to a secure address, while keeping truly lost coins lost?

[Technomage]

Bitcoin is based on the idea of a fixed money supply which relies on divisibility a lot. Fundamentally it really doesn't matter if we have 21 bitcoins, 21k bitcoins, 210k bitcoins or 21 million bitcoins in existence, their divisibility matters. I for one will be very happy for each and every lost coin, it will increase the value of my Bitcoin savings.

[unclescrooge]

In the long term, lost coins will be mined (because wallet security will be easy enough to break for future hardware). All you will have to do to keep your bitcoins savings wil be to move it too upgraded wallet.

[Fuzzy]

Is there a way to find out how many coins haven't moved since bitcoin reached parity with the USD? I'm assuming that's about the time that people started to take their BTCs seriously.

Can you imagine how many wallets/BTCs people have lost in the first few years, thinking this was just an interesting fad before formatting their drives?

In the long term, lost coins will be mined (because wallet security will be easy enough to break for future hardware).

The consensus is that this won't happen within our lifetime.

[rini17]

Is there a way to find out how many coins haven't moved since bitcoin reached parity with the USD? I'm assuming that's about the time that people started to take their BTCs seriously.

Can you imagine how many wallets/BTCs people have lost in the first few years, thinking this was just an interesting fad before formatting their drives?

We are talking about time frame of only ~ 2 years till bitcoin gained significant value. I really don't believe that large part of computer-savvy users managed to lose their wallet.dat in such short time, do you?

In the long term, lost coins will be mined (because wallet security will be easy enough to break for future hardware).

The consensus is that this won't happen within our lifetime.

What consensus? Citation needed...

[unclescrooge]

Losing their wallet.dat? No. But no caring about it and forgetting it was even there? yes.

[Fuzzy]

Is there a way to find out how many coins haven't moved since bitcoin reached parity with the USD? I'm assuming that's about the time that people started to take their BTCs seriously.

Can you imagine how many wallets/BTCs people have lost in the first few years, thinking this was just an interesting fad before formatting their drives?

We are talking about time frame of only ~ 2 years till bitcoin gained significant value. I really don't believe that large part of computer-savvy users managed to lose their wallet.dat in such short time, do you?

I'm not saying they lost them by accident, I just don't think they took the project seriously enough to keep an interest in it and backed up their wallets. And a gain, that doesn't go for ALL the miners in the first few years, just some. I've lost quite a few SolidCoins simply because I never took that cryptocurrency seriously.

In the long term, lost coins will be mined (because wallet security will be easy enough to break for future hardware).

The consensus is that this won't happen within our lifetime.

What consensus? Citation needed...

That's just what I took away from this thread. Feel free to worry about it if you wish, but I'm no longer concerned.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

In the long term, lost coins will be mined (because wallet security will be easy enough to break for future hardware).

The consensus is that this won't happen within our lifetime.

What consensus? Citation needed...

That's just what I took away from this thread. Feel free to worry about it if you wish, but I'm no longer concerned.

You're confusing brute-forcing a private key, which is impossible, with breaking ECDSA and being able to find private keys (or to create signatures) without brute-forcing, which may be possible and not all that unlikely.

But contrary to Raphy's comment, this is a software problem, not a hardware problem.