2 ms·
Lost Money? Unrecovered Bitcoins
It seems to me that bitcoins will slowly "rot".
It is my experience that anything digital gradually dies. I have lost accounts due to location changes, website changes, lost passwords, etc. I've lost files when machines die.
Bitcoins require you to know the secret key. I suspect that these secret keys will eventually be lost due to hardware, software, and human deaths. That means that a percentage of bitcoins will never be used again. The percentage can only grow over time.
- tromp 5y agoA growing percentage of lost Bitcoin is not necessarily a problem. Even when 99.9% of Bitcoin is lost, there will be 21 Million milliBitcoin remaining. One issue might be that a mBTC only divides into 10^5 satoshi, but changing the rules to further subdivide the smallest unit, e.g. into millisatoshi, should be straightforward, and restores the original model.