Never recovered bitcoins? Less than 21million?

[Q7]

I think the total Bitcoins that never going to be used due to lost wallet files, lost passwords, etc will be around 1,000,000BTC MAX

Wrong, it is natures law that number eventually will be 21,000,000.
It only takes time and you and I are going to be dead for sure when that happens.

Yes it's just a matter of time. How long we will never know. Imagine this generation of bitcoin adopters, if half of those people never tell anybody or pass along their private key before they die...

Eventually number of available bitcoin in circulation will be too low causing price to increase insanely just for a few fraction of  sats. This will turn off mass adoption.

You are wrong.  Everyone I personally know that has a large amount of BTC has made provisions to transfer them to their heirs.  Bitcoin can operate just fine if we lose all but one BTC.

Bitcoin can operate just fine if we lose all but one BTC

can you enlighten how that is possible?  
i pay tom 0.00000001 btc which is worth 40 bucks (assuming predicted price at year 2050) for the sandwich which is only 12 bucks and try to give a change?

And have ever heard of sudden death? I assume all the so called guys u personally know will construct a will at 40 years of age?

[BurtW]

Age has nothing to do with it because some of them are fairly young, but wealth may have something to do with it.  Someone who owns more than 100 BTC will probably think more about how to deal with the transfer of their wealth in the event of death than someone who has less than 1 BTC.  Oh, and for tax and other reasons almost nobody I know mentions their BTC in a will, they have just made "provisions".

If we were to lose a vast majority of the BTC and the price were to go up to the levels you are talking about then the protocol can be modified to simply add more decimal places.  Currently the protocol operates on (up to) 2,100,000,000,000,000 satoshis.  In the unlikely scenario that all but one BTC are lost we would only be left with 100,000,000 satoshis.  Add a few more decimal places like this:  100,000,000.000000000 and wala! you now have 100,000,000,000,000,000 "Q7s"

[sifter]

Oh, im sure a lot of coins are lost forever, especially those that mined at the very beginning and didn't keep track of bitcoin. I would bet that up to 10 percent of all bitcoins are perma lost... Thats actually good for the the rest of us. Sucks for the guys that lost them, but the fewer the coins, the better off we are..

A situation like this would be one where a developer was paid in 7000 bitcoins and forgot about and during the $1000 hype he realised he then threw out 7000 bitcoins.
What a loss.

[Q7]

Age has nothing to do with it because some of them are fairly young, but wealth may have something to do with it.  Someone who owns more than 100 BTC will probably think more about how to deal with the transfer of their wealth in the event of death than someone who has less than 1 BTC.  Oh, and for tax and other reasons almost nobody I know mentions their BTC in a will, they have just made "provisions".

If we were to lose a vast majority of the BTC and the price were to go up to the levels you are talking about then the protocol can be modified to simply add more decimal places.  Currently the protocol operates on (up to) 2,100,000,000,000,000 satoshis.  In the unlikely scenario that all but one BTC are lost we would only be left with 100,000,000 satoshis.  Add a few more decimal places like this:  100,000,000.000000000 and wala! you now have 100,000,000,000,000,000 "Q7s"

Which fiat are you referring to?  
To summarize it, Loss is inevitable...

[Rishblitz]

I don't see how bitcoin will exist once 21 mil is mined because the percent on transactions wouldn't be enough for miners.

[redhawk979]

The more coin lost, the more valuable it will be.
RARITY.

We should get everyone to send 1/3 of the Bitcoins they own to the Bitcoin Eater address to increase the rarity. Then the price will go TO THE MOON!

[vipgelsi]

Lost bitcoins=rarer=higher value at least in theory.

[jbreher]

Of course they stay on blackchain. And with time when computers will get stronger, they will be companies, that will search for this long lost wallets.  Same as are now companies, that search fro sunken ships from oceans. Pulling them out and sell their Gold or other things to pay costs and divide profit. So some coins on today lost wallets are not lost forever.

I think it would be disastrous if it ever happens, it would simply mean that wallet are not secure enough and people confidence in bitcoin would drop. If a vulnerability is found, we can just hardfork and go on a new algorithm and the old wallets would not be cracked.

Don't sweat it. Febo hasn't done the necessary calculations to determine how profitable such an endeavor might be.

Protip: barring some breakthrough in cryptography, our computers will never be powerful nor plentiful enough to make such an endeavor profitable.

[Bizzaran]

I say, that would be the only use of a mining pool to be over the 50 percent mark.... so they could conduct a couple unauthorized transactions to recover those lost bitcoins.... sadly something like that would never go over well.

[BurtW]

I don't see how bitcoin will exist once 21 mil is mined because the percent on transactions wouldn't be enough for miners.

Transaction fees will go up to compensate.

[Unbelive]

I don't see how bitcoin will exist once 21 mil is mined because the percent on transactions wouldn't be enough for miners.

Transaction fees will go up to compensate.

And technology will go up, so less electricity will be needed to make one transaction.

[BurtW]

I don't see how bitcoin will exist once 21 mil is mined because the percent on transactions wouldn't be enough for miners.

Transaction fees will go up to compensate.

And technology will go up, so less electricity will be needed to make one transaction.

Generally the power consumption of the Bitcoin network follows (Bitcoin price) x (the number of Bitcoins the miners get from the subsidy + fees)

Basically the miners will burn up as much energy as they can afford to.  See:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=694401.msg7841420#msg7841420

[darrenwgray]

those proposing to redistribute coins that are not spent, are the same people that probably dont have $100 spare and are looking for ways to get free coins..

they have no understanding of economics and would prefer ruining the security of bitcoin for a one time money grab of $100 if any coin was evenly distributed to all bitcoin active users.

i truly hate the greedy people that care more about free hand outs rather than security for the long term.. i truly hope they go back to their fiat lives and steal their grandma's pensions as they should atleast learn the lessons of life ripping off people they do know and care about.. maybe then they will learn to not rip off others, once seeing the pain of wanting free handouts by taking from other people.

That is exactly what I was thinking....

There are probably billions and billions of currency around the world "lost" or "destroyed" and never to be used again; maybe we should just reprint the notes with serial numbers we have not seen in a few years.....

[Jeramom]

I say, that would be the only use of a mining pool to be over the 50 percent mark.... so they could conduct a couple unauthorized transactions to recover those lost bitcoins.... sadly something like that would never go over well.

Hashing power does not give you the ability to spend coins without the private key.