Lost Bitcoin Recovery

[||bit]

There will be a maximum number of bitcoins discovered. Bitcoins can be lost. I realize they can be divided to so many decimal places, but disregarding how long this would take to become a problem. Assume it is.

What of the idea to "re-encrypt" (for lack of better term) any bitcoins that have shown to be inactive in all ways for something like ten years. In other words, people would have to at least relocate their bitcoins to another of their wallets accounts or spend them within ten years for them to remain in the economy. Otherwise, they could be assumed lost coins, and buried again to be re-mined (like finding some lost gold on the beach). Or re-distributed to all active wallets

Late entry: This solution could possibly be implemented when/if it does become a problem, I'd guess. But should the community have to wait to see when this happens?

[1714759310]

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[1714759310]

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[drakahn]

And what of the bitcoins i put on a flashdriver/paper wallet and put into a time capsule?

whats the point of having a store of value without being able to store value?

[Blazr]

When Bitcoins get lost it increases the value of every other Bitcoin as the supply has decreased.

There is no real reason to bring back lost coins. What if I want to leave an inheritance in BTC for my family? I'd have to keep moving it around every 10 years otherwise I'd lose it with your proposal.

[||bit]

And what of the bitcoins i put on a flashdriver/paper wallet and put into a time capsule?

whats the point of having a store of value without being able to store value?

Minor inconvenience. The value is still there, you'd just have to log onto your flash drive once every ten years (maybe twenty) and just shift the bitcoins to another account in the same wallet on the same flash drive.

But assume the decaying number of bitcoins is real problem. Then your bitcoins may be so rare as to be useless as a currency. Granted, that may not happen in our lifetimes.

[Blazr]

But assume the decaying number of bitcoins is real problem. Then your bitcoins may be so rare as to be useless as a currency. Granted, that may not happen in our lifetimes.

Lets say we loose so many Bitcoins that now 0.00000001BTC (1 satoshi) is worth $1. No problem, all we have to do is add a couple of extra 0's (small change in client software) and were sorted, we'll just price everything in Satoshi's. I don't see how this could make it useless as a currency.

[||bit]

When Bitcoins get lost it increases the value of every other Bitcoin as the supply has decreased.

There is no real reason to bring back lost coins. What if I want to leave an inheritance in BTC for my family? I'd have to keep moving it around every 10 years otherwise I'd lose it with your proposal.

The reason to bring them back would be to keep the money supply viable. I'd rather do that than to take benefit of increasing my BTC value b/c others lost a bad flash drive or something silly like that to which we are all subceptible.

It's not a proposed solution I'm stuck on. Just hashing the idea out to look ahead and solve it. Anyway, make it twenty years if ten years is too soon.   Takes just a few clicks per twenty years. If you forget to do it in that period of time, maybe you already effectively lost them.

Another thought might be to peg BTC to gold, and then increase the money supply after the last bitcoin is mined. Just brain storming.

[Raoul Duke]

This thread is like menstruation. Usually comes every month lol

Why don't people learn to how use the search?

[drakahn]

And again, a store of value that is useless at storing value is... well useless

if i have bitcoins on a paper wallet that i leave amongst my possessions, my great grandkids should be able to use it in 100 years, there is no way to tell the difference between stored and lost, so this would never work.

[||bit]

But assume the decaying number of bitcoins is real problem. Then your bitcoins may be so rare as to be useless as a currency. Granted, that may not happen in our lifetimes.

Lets say we loose so many Bitcoins that now 0.00000001BTC (1 satoshi) is worth $1. No problem, all we have to do is add a couple of extra 0's (small change in client software) and were sorted, we'll just price everything in Satoshi's. I don't see how this could make it useless as a currency.

How many Satoshi's are there? 21*10^14 ... 2,100,000,000,000,000 ... Something like that. A lot I know. With the current world population at about 7,000,000,000. So, maybe 300,000 Satoshi's per person? Care to verify for me?

In that case It shouldn't be a problem anytime soon like I said before. But a hundred years down the road, how many BTC will be lost? Flash drives die very easily. And in these days, if they die, they take out several BTC's, not the very tiny Satoshi's.

[drakahn]

we can add as many decimal places as we want..... 16 would be easy

[Blazr]

we can add as many decimal places as we want..... 16 would be easy

Yep, when Bitcoins were at $20 in July, there were plans to add another decimal place in case the value increased any further. It's literally a line of code change and shouldn't have that much of an impact.

[||bit]

This thread is like menstruation. Usually comes every month lol

Why don't people learn to how use the search?

I know how to search, but chose not to. Thanks anyway.

BTW: How many times would the topic of menstruation appear if I did a search?

[||bit]

we can add as many decimal places as we want..... 16 would be easy

Sorry, I was always under the impression that it was more fixed. That seems like a viable fix or workaround.

Perhaps, the best thing to do for now is to store them to reduce risk of loss. For example, If you used a flashdrive for storage, I would personally not do that. They seem to go bad easier than I'd want to risk with any significant amount of BTC.

[||bit]

we can add as many decimal places as we want..... 16 would be easy

Yep, when Bitcoins were at $20 in July, there were plans to add another decimal place in case the value increased any further. It's literally a line of code change and shouldn't have that much of an impact.

Code in the client software?

[Blazr]

Code in the client software?

From what I understand, yes, like BIP16 or any of those, its a small 1 line change in the various client's.

[Raoul Duke]

This thread is like menstruation. Usually comes every month lol

Why don't people learn to how use the search?

I know how to search, but chose not to. Thanks anyway.

BTW: How many times would the topic of menstruation appear if I did a search?

Don't act stupid. This topic has been discussed to death.
If you chose not to search it, then you're just trying to spam your FUD.

[Stephen Gornick]

but disregarding how long this would take to become a problem. Assume it is.

What I can't seem to get from anyone who expresses lost coins as being a problem is the reason as to why that is a problem?

Yes, there will some point that more coins will be destroyed than there are issued.  Yes, that will contribute to price deflation.

Is that the "problem" that comes as the result of lost coins? 

Or am I missing something?

[dree12]

but disregarding how long this would take to become a problem. Assume it is.

What I can't seem to get from anyone who expresses lost coins as being a problem is the reason as to why that is a problem?

Yes, there will some point that more coins will be destroyed than there are issued.  Yes, that will contribute to price deflation.

Is that the "problem" that comes as the result of lost coins?  

Or am I missing something?

The decrease of granularity is often cited to be the problem. As we all know, Bitcoin does not have a sufficient number of decimal places to allow microtransactions if it is commonly used (2100000000000000/7000000000=300000 average/person) even when no coins are lost. With a large amount of lost coins, this becomes a even larger problem, as merchants would eventually be forced to price items in sub-satoshis, only payable through a) debt, or b) a centralized service. These are generally considered problems.

My suggestion has always been to increase the decimal points now, to at least 12 and even better, 16. This will ensure no chain fork will be needed when Bitcoin reaches critical mass.

Note: I am aware that this is a simplified model. If Bitcoin reaches critical mass, it is highly likely the effective number of Bitcoins will exceed twenty-one million due to fractional reserve. However, as Bitcoin's goal is to offer one to avoid fractional reserve if that is ones choice, the granularity is still a concern.

[Vernon715]

I agree that this is a problem, and we should be thinking about this now, rather that later.

[Blazr]

I agree that this is a problem, and we should be thinking about this now, rather that later.

Please enlighten us how this is a problem, as mentioned we can keep adding decimals when the value if Bitcoins gets too high due to lost coins, therefore I can't see how this can become an issue.

[Gavin Andresen]

There will be 2.1 quadrillion satoshis.

There are approximately 770 trillion pennies in the US M2 money supply.

We've got a VERY VERY long way to go before bitcoins are as popular as dollars, and there are much higher priority things to work on right now than adding more divisibility for a problem that is pretty likely to never actually be a problem.

[dree12]

There will be 2.1 quadrillion satoshis.

There are approximately 770 trillion pennies in the US M2 money supply.

We've got a VERY VERY long way to go before bitcoins are as popular as dollars, and there are much higher priority things to work on right now than adding more divisibility for a problem that is pretty likely to never actually be a problem.

The US is not the world. In fact, it is only 15% of the world, and the number of bitcoins isn't enough for the entire world.

Think about the ease of pushing a +4 decimal point update today (I believe Bitcoin uses int64 anyways), compared to pushing it when it is needed, to billions of people.

Better now than never.

[Blazr]

The US is not the world. In fact, it is only 15% of the world, and the number of bitcoins isn't enough for the entire world.

Think about the ease of pushing a +4 decimal point update today (I believe Bitcoin uses int64 anyways), compared to pushing it when it is needed, to billions of people.

Better now than never.

I don't think Bitcoin will ever be used by billions of people, perhaps in 10-20 years a currency similar to Bitcoin will be used by that many people.

We don't need 4 more decimals and probably never will, IMO 8 is too many now as the value of 1 Satoshi is ridiculously small.

If we do need to add more its a very small change and shouldn't be much harder even if Bitcoin is being used by billions.

[dree12]

The US is not the world. In fact, it is only 15% of the world, and the number of bitcoins isn't enough for the entire world.

Think about the ease of pushing a +4 decimal point update today (I believe Bitcoin uses int64 anyways), compared to pushing it when it is needed, to billions of people.

Better now than never.

I don't think Bitcoin will ever be used by billions of people, perhaps in a few years a currency similar to Bitcoin will be used by that many people.

We don't need 4 more decimals and porbably never will, IMO 8 is too many now as the value of 1 Satoshi is ridiculously small.

If we do need to add more its a very small change and shouldn't be much harder even if Bitcoin is being used by billions.

Right, sell off your bitcoins now. In a few years, they'll be worthless!

Bitcoin was not designed to be used by billions of people; I give you that. But why do we work on scalability, lite nodes, etc., if all we're hoping for is several million users?

Even one billion people would put a lot of stress on Bitcoin's decimal system. Assuming ~5% of the coins will be lost (for simplicity), on average, there will be 0.02 BTC per person, or 2000000 satoshi. Some will be richer than others, and we can assume that the lower middle class (the largest demographic) might have a million (1000000) satoshi. This is a ridiculously small amount when every transaction needs a transaction fee of at least one satoshi.

Realistically, in this situation, banks will offer a) sub-satoshi amounts, and b) fractional reserve. These advantages make banks extremely attractive, contrary to at least a portion (the decentralization part) of Bitcoin's philosophy.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Even one billion people would put a lot of stress on Bitcoin's decimal system. Assuming ~5% of the coins will be lost (for simplicity), on average, there will be 0.02 BTC per person, or 2000000 satoshi. Some will be richer than others, and we can assume that the lower middle class (the largest demographic) might have a million (1000000) satoshi. This is a ridiculously small amount when every transaction needs a transaction fee of at least one satoshi.

Why is that ridiculously small?  Even if your example, the tx fee is 1 millionth of the net worth of the median user.  Lets use US median net worth (2004 is latest figure I could grab).  That is ~$94K per household.  Even if we assume the per capita net wealth is half that we are talking about $50K.  One one millionth of that is ~$0.05.  Oh noes 5 cent tx fees.  Surely the ability to send unlimited amounts of money to anywhere on the planet within a matter of seconds isn't worth a "whole 5 cents".    I mean just look at ACH fees (~$0.35), credit cards ($0.30 + 3%), ATM fees ($2 to $5+), wire transfers ($10 to $50), western union ($10 to $100).  However will Bitcoin compete?    

DOOM I TELL YOU.  The sub 5 cent tx fee will be the end of Bitcoin.  

FUD aside: when 1 satoshi becomes so large as to be ineffective as a discrete unit (say >$0.10 USD in 2012 dollars) it will not be that difficulty to add 4 decimal places dropping the value to <0.001 cent (USD).

[dree12]

Even one billion people would put a lot of stress on Bitcoin's decimal system. Assuming ~5% of the coins will be lost (for simplicity), on average, there will be 0.02 BTC per person, or 2000000 satoshi. Some will be richer than others, and we can assume that the lower middle class (the largest demographic) might have a million (1000000) satoshi. This is a ridiculously small amount when every transaction needs a transaction fee of at least one satoshi.

Why is that ridiculously small?  The tx fee is 1 millionth of the avg net worth of the middle class user.  Lets use US median net worth (2004 is latest figure I could grab).  That is ~$94K per household.  Even if we assume the per capita net wealth is half that we are talking about $50K.  One one millionth of that is ~$0.05.  Oh noes 5 cent tx fees.  Surely the ability to send unlimited amounts of money to anywhere on the planet within a matter of seconds isn't worth a "whole 5 cents".    I mean just look at ACH fees (~$0.35), credit cards ($0.30 + 3%), ATM fees ($2 to $5+), wire transfers ($10 to $50), western union ($10 to $100).  However will Bitcoin compete. 

DOOM I TELL YOU.  The sub 5 cent tx fee will be the end of Bitcoin.  When 1 satoshi becomes so large as to be ineffective as a discrete unit (say >$0.10 USD in 2012 dollars) it will not be that difficulty to add 4 decimal places dropping the value to <0.001 cent (USD).

And I ask: is it easier to push such a change to the 200K bitcoin users today, or to the 5B bitcoin users tommorow?

[Blazr]

Even one billion people would put a lot of stress on Bitcoin's decimal system.

1 billion, Lets put that into perspective. There are ~330 million people who use Euro.

[Blazr]

And I ask: is it easier to push such a change to the 200K bitcoin users today, or to the 5B bitcoin users tommorow?

Roughly the same. The extra users are only a minor inconvenience. Simply put those who don't update won't be able to spend sub-satoshi amounts, so they'd pretty much have to get the update which would be a 1 line of code change that'd most likely be released months in advance and then auto-activate once we reach a certain block (like how namecoin started merged mining).

Also seeing as the world population is slightly under 7 billion, it'd be unlikely any one currency will ever be used by 5 billion people.

[dree12]

And I ask: is it easier to push such a change to the 200K bitcoin users today, or to the 5B bitcoin users tommorow?

Roughly the same. The extra users are only a minor inconvenience. Simply put those who don't update won't be able to spend sub-satoshi amounts, so they'd pretty much have to get the update which would be a 1 line of code change that'd most likely be released months in advance and then auto-activate once we reach a certain block (like how namecoin started merged mining).

Also seeing as the world population is slightly under 7 billion, it'd be unlikely any one currency will ever be used by 5 billion people.

Why delay though?

And I'm not sure where you get slightly under 7 billion from. This US gov't site says otherwise: http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html.

[Blazr]

Why delay though?

And I'm not sure where you get slightly under 7 billion from. This US gov't site says otherwise: http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html.

Because its unnecessary to do it now, we already have too many decimals and plenty of other more important things to fix instead.

I got that figure here:
https://www.google.ie/search?q=world+population

Obviously there are many different methods of estimating the population of the world, each giving a slightly different answer.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Why delay though?

Because there are like a couple million more pressing issues, it serves no point, and it increases the size of every transaction between now and the day when 1 satoshi > 1 penny.

I mean say you got your wish and 8 digits were added tomorrow.  Then what?  Wait? What if Bitcoin is used by some Galactic Imperium?  With countless trillions of users.   In a milenium or two oh noes we might be out of digits.  So to be safe I guess we should add 256 digits now and create exabytes worth of blockchain spam between now and then just to be "safe".

Just to put it perspective how asinine the argument "why delay" is.  The global money supply (all countries, all people, all forms both physical and electronic) is on the order of $70 trillion.   Now if we consider the penny to the discrete unit that means the world has ~7 quadrillion discrete units.  Bitcoin has 21 quadrillion.

[dree12]

Why delay though?

Because there are like a couple million more pressing issues, it serves no point, and it increases the size of every transaction between now and the day when 1 satoshi > 1 penny.

I mean say you got your wish and 8 digits were added tomorrow.  Then what?  Wait? What if Bitcoin is used by some Galactic Imperium?  With countless trillions of users.   In a milenium or two oh noes we might be out of digits.  So to be safe I guess we should add 256 digits now and create exabytes worth of blockchain spam between now and then just to be "safe".

Just to put it perspective how asinine the argument "why delay" is.  The global money supply (all countries, all people, all forms both physical and electronic) is on the order of $70 trillion.   Now if we consider the penny to the discrete unit that means the world has ~7 quadrillion discrete units.  Bitcoin has 21 quadrillion.

Emphasis added.

I'll give it to you; we all make mistakes, and it may as well have just been a typo. But rather than argue about this pointlessly, there's another argument that relates to the entire point of this thread: lost bitcoins.

The bitcoin transaction protocol is not non-extensible; it will require a chain fork, but it is in fact very extensible. It is possible to avoid blockchain spam by using a different transaction parameter to turn on "extended bitcoin precision", while keeping all applications compatible even today. Said chain fork is easier done now than when Bitcoin is used bysome Galactic Imperium.

[DeathAndTaxes]

There are many things needed TODAY.
* Implementing nTimeLock transaction
* Implementing Sequence
* Implementing mult-sig redemption (via multiple wallets)
* Implementing blockchain pruning
* Implementing standardized export/import formats
* Developing double spend prevention systems
* Developing mechanisms to better protect hotwallets
* Developing 0-confirm guarantees (for truly instant purchases)
* Expanding support for bitcoin libraries (bitcoinj is a nice start but lets see something equally comprehensive for php, python, c#, C++, C, etc)
* Expanding the number of clients (centralization of developer is a risk to a p2p network)
* Developing dedicated backend "clients" (think service/daemon connected to enterprise DBMS or did you think Amazon was going to use bitcoind)
* Developing user friendly clients (I mean really user friendly.  Like my Grandmother can split a check w/ friends using Bitcoins friendly).
* Improvement in blockchain download / new node bootstrap process/speed.
* Developing 51% attack detection/mitigation/recovery systems.
* (about 10,000 other things)

 "Worrying" (trolling) about not enough discrete units if Bitcoin becomes millions of times more popular in some future decade is just pointless.

[dree12]

There are many things needed TODAY.
* Implementing nTimeLock transaction
* Implementing Sequence
* Implementing mult-sig redemption (via multiple wallets)
* Implementing blockchain pruning
* Implementing standardized export/import formats
* Developing double spend prevention systems
* Developing mechanisms to better protect hotwallets
* Developing 0-confirm guarantees (for truly instant purchases)
* Expanding support for bitcoin libraries (bitcoinj is a nice start but lets see something equally comprehensive for php, python, c#, C++, C, etc)
* Expanding the number of clients (centralization of developer is a risk to a p2p network)
* Developing dedicated backend "clients" (think service/daemon connected to enterprise DBMS or did you think Amazon was going to use bitcoind)
* Developing user friendly clients (I mean really user friendly.  Like my Grandmother can split a check w/ friends using Bitcoins friendly).
* Improvement in blockchain download / new node bootstrap process/speed.
* Developing 51% attack detection/mitigation/recovery systems.
* (about 10,000 other things)

 "Worrying" (trolling) about not enough discrete units if Bitcoin becomes millions of times more popular in some future decade is just pointless.

Excellent, then I assume the next chain fork will include more decimal points. Or is that going to be put off the next (inevitably failing) chain fork?

[ripper234]

There are many things needed TODAY.
* Implementing nTimeLock transaction
* Implementing Sequence
* Implementing mult-sig redemption (via multiple wallets)
* Implementing blockchain pruning
* Implementing standardized export/import formats
* Developing double spend prevention systems
* Developing mechanisms to better protect hotwallets
* Developing 0-confirm guarantees (for truly instant purchases)
* Expanding support for bitcoin libraries (bitcoinj is a nice start but lets see something equally comprehensive for php, python, c#, C++, C, etc)
* Expanding the number of clients (centralization of developer is a risk to a p2p network)
* Developing dedicated backend "clients" (think service/daemon connected to enterprise DBMS or did you think Amazon was going to use bitcoind)
* Developing user friendly clients (I mean really user friendly.  Like my Grandmother can split a check w/ friends using Bitcoins friendly).
* Improvement in blockchain download / new node bootstrap process/speed.
* Developing 51% attack detection/mitigation/recovery systems.
* (about 10,000 other things)

 "Worrying" (trolling) about not enough discrete units if Bitcoin becomes millions of times more popular in some future decade is just pointless.

Excellent, then I assume the next chain fork will include more decimal points. Or is that going to be put off the next (inevitably failing) chain fork?

Not chain fork, but rather "potential chain fork". BIP16/17 was a potential chain fork that wasn't a real fork, because it was well managed. The process will get easier, not harder, as we practice more and more potential forks along the years, for reasons far more important than decimal points.

All those 1B of users that you mentioned won't be running full clients anyway. Even today there's no reason to run a full client today if you just want to pass some BTC around.

Give up the thread ... please, "including more decimal points" won't happen in the near-medium future.