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If he didn't have a backup plan in place to be accessible by his estate, then yes, the coins are dead. The coins dying with him are actually the best case scen
by anonporridge 5y ago
If he didn't have a backup plan in place to be accessible by his estate, then yes, the coins are dead.
The coins dying with him are actually the best case scenario for all other holders.
"Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone." - Satoshi Nakamoto
- senectus1 5y agonot really sustainable though is it?
- Alex3917 5y agoCompletely sustainable, because coins are very highly sub-dividable.
- bpodgursky 5y agoThe currency is deflationary but you don't have any fundamental issues until you have issues subdividing the currency, but given that the protocol supports dividing down to 0.00000001 BTC that's not a significant issue (and I'm sure the community would patch that long before it became a problem).
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- meowkit 5y agoBitcoins can be split down to 8 decimal places. Given the current loss/mining rate its totally possible for BTC to become difficult to operate, but its also possible for the mining cap to be removed or for coins to be split further.
- lostmsu 5y ago8 decimal places are already bordering insufficient: there are real world currencies whose unit costs less than 1 satoshi. See https://www.fiatmarketcap.com/ https://www.fiatmarketcap.com/
- anonporridge 5y agoYeah, but in how many of those currencies are people actually using base units for transactions? I'd wager they're all trading notes denominated with thousands or millions of units for a loaf of bread, like the Zimbabwe trillion dollar note, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7832601.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7832601.stm Also, there is already a trick on the lightning network to trade sub satoshis without requiring a hardfork, probabilistic payments, https://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.857/2017/project/7.pdf https://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.857/2017/project/7.pdf
- tacticus 5y agoSame as the rest of the coiner nonsense
- anonporridge 5y agoWhy not? The currency is digital. If the current smallest unit is worth too much, then we can just increase the decimal places. Bitcoin is not like gold where its limited supply makes it infeasible as a currency for a large number of people because the size of the coins for everyday purchases would be too small to physically handle (hence the concurrent use of less value dense silver).
- taywrobel 5y agoI don’t see why unchecked and uncontrollable deflation of a “currency” wouldn’t be sustainable.
- dheera 5y agoEven if they didn't, the rest of the world could probably peacefully agree to a hard fork in which those coins stop existing. One of the disadvantages of crypto, I suppose, is that people could gang up and hard fork against any arbitrary billionaire even if they were alive.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sneak 5y agoThat's how existing countries and currencies already work, too.
- wmf 5y agoI'm pretty sure that's less likely in crypto than in real life.
- cmelbye 5y agoWhy would anyone do that? The stolen coins would become worthless as the other 49% of the network flee to a platform that doesn't come with the risk of arbitrary theft.
- rawtxapp 5y agoIf we know anything about Bitcoin is that hardforking it doesn't work and you end up with coins that are worth a couple percentage in value compared to the original chain.
- anonporridge 5y ago> One of the disadvantages of crypto, I suppose, is that people could gang up and hard fork against any arbitrary billionaire even if they were alive. This isn't unique to crypto. People have literally been ganging up against powerful individuals since pre history. Hell, it's common in the animal world. Young male lions often gang up to oust the old alpha and take over his pride. And beyond that, our current legal system can go after any arbitrary person much more easily than it would be for the entire world to consent to hard forking to target a single individual.
- 5y ago
- mynameishere 5y agoSome libertarian crank (I forget who) said that the best charity a person could do is to cash out their fortune and burn the paper dollars. This is a deflationary event and does just what you mention--gives everybody a little gift. Somehow a cynical suggestion like that is considered serious now. Because it is high-tech I guess.
- anonporridge 5y agoNa, that's stupid with cash because we can arbitrarily print more of it. Any cash burning event would be of marginal collective contribution. It actually matters with bitcoin because of the hard supply cap. Every lost coin shrinks the pie.
- bradleyjg 5y ago“We” can arbitrarily print more Bitcoin or dollars. In either case you just need consensus among the correct group of people.
- cyanydeez 5y agoinfact "we" can just seitch to any other infinite coins cause again, theres barely anything but grandfsther clauses tying bitcoin to any realworld value
- anonporridge 5y agoTechnically true, but the big difference is that if someone hard forks bitcoin to start printing more, holders will see their coins fork with the chains. You'll have both the old, hard money and the new diluted money, and the market will decide which one is more valuable. This doesn't happen with fiat. Which one would you choose?
- jayd16 5y agoIt doesn't matter with any currency. You don't price things by how many dollars exist. You price things at what people will pay. If the billions weren't being spent, its about the same as if they're never spent. Printing money and giving it away causes inflation because people can use it to buy things but having money printed but locked away does nothing. If this money was locked up then its not much of a change.
- enkid 5y agoUnless this alerts people to the risk of losing a private key and they decide owning Bitcoin isn't a great place to store wealth.
- anonporridge 5y agoUnless they then do the most minimal amount of research and realize that unlike any other store of wealth, they can redundantly back it up in multiple locations. You can even split up your key in an M of N format so that a) no single compromised location causes loss, and b) some number of storage locations can be lost without losing your key. Can you do that with gold? Land? Art? Cash? Bonds? Stocks? All of these rely on either securing a single location where the wealth is stored and moving to another place is either expensive, risky, or necessarily impossible (land/buildings), and/or they rely on trusting some custodian to preserve your claim on that wealth.
- enkid 5y agoI'm not saying it's not possible to back up the key, I'm saying if a billion dollars disappear overnight because one person was stupid, we don't know the way people would react to that. May be they would value Bitcoin more or maybe they would value it less. It's not apparent less supply equals more demand in this specific case.
- anonporridge 5y agoYou're presenting this like it's a secret thing that lost private keys are irrecoverable. It's not a secret. Immutability is one of the key features and regularly advertised part of the system. So much so that when that irreconcilability is violated (e.g. rolling back the DAO hack in Ethereum) it's seen as a negative. There might be some morons who didn't do any research before investing, but they won't be a huge loss if they sell out and stay out.
- GaylordTuring 5y ago> There might be some morons who didn't do any research before investing, but they won't be a huge loss if they sell out and stay out. I think you're underestimating the size of this group.
- jayd16 5y agoIf everyone's net worth goes up, it's about the same as no change at all.
- Scaevolus 5y agoEvery _bitcoin holder_, it's not like a country experiencing deflation.
- jayd16 5y agoHow so? Prices aren't set by the amount of BTC in the wild. A currency has no inherent demand. No btc holder can offer any more btc for goods than before.
- GaylordTuring 5y agoPrices are set by the order books, including how many that are willing to sell and to what price. If a large amount of coins are removed from the market, and the buying pressure stays the same, that will lead to higher prices.
- jayd16 5y agoIf they weren't being sold then, again, the amount available to buy is unchanged.