Concerned with questions about the decreasing size of the total money supply in Bitcoin and altcoins through lost wallets and private keys.
Questions tagged [shrinking-money-supply]
27 questions
53
votes
14 answers
Will deflation destroy Bitcoin?
With the limited total quantity of bitcoins, and people losing their wallets constantly decreasing that number, won't rampant deflation destroy Bitcoin?
eMansipater
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31
votes
6 answers
Why doesn't Bitcoin return lost coins back into the block reward?
The idea of putting back lost Bitcoins back onto block rewards seems like a great idea.
I acknowledge that there were quite a handful of early adopters who were generating blocks daily, but had no idea what they were doing. Time passes, they forget…
Tom Williams
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26
votes
5 answers
What happens to my bitcoins if lose my wallet file e.g. I suffer data loss and my computer is unrecoverable?
You run bitcoin as a service on your local computer. What happens if this computer is compromised? A corrupt/failed hard drive or theft leads to the machine being lost and unrecoverable, and my bitcoin details (addresses etc) are gone. Do my…
Charles Goodwin
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23
votes
3 answers
How does lost BTC affect the market in the long run?
I bought some bitcoins in 2012 and forgot about it. Now years later I discovered that the company who maintained the wallet went bankrupt and their website no longer works.
I therefore have lost access to my bitcoins forever.
I assume my story is…
Michael Seltenreich
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15
votes
3 answers
What could be the consequences of many bitcoins being lost out of circulation if people lose their wallets?
If for some reason many people lose their wallet files then many bitcoins are effectively taken out of circulation.
Seen as it's not possible to tell as far as i know if bitcoins are actually disabled in this way, so to speak, I'm wondering what…
barrymac
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12
votes
3 answers
What happens when the 21 million cap is reached?
I've just recently gotten into bitcoin, but I'm a bit confused about this 21 million bitcoin cap. From what I've read, computers on the bitcoin network validate transactions, which confirms the transfer of bitcoins between addresses. As a reward,…
Timothy Deng
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9
votes
2 answers
Bitcoin disappearence rate
I was wondering if there are public available researches about the "disappear" rate of Bitcoins (wallet data lost, person died, forgotten eWallet access, ...).
This could be generated by checking "idle" public addresses with unspent money. Or by…
Wizche
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6
votes
6 answers
Will "all" bitcoins ultimately vanish? (be unusable)
During this CCC conference from 2011, starting from 00:18:55, the presenter suggests that as bitcoins can be lost (lost private key, dead owner, sending to an "eater" address that nobody possesses, etc.), and as the total amount of bitcoins has a…
Totor
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5
votes
3 answers
Curious about lost bitcoin
The Merkle reported a user lost 17BTC in a fire that destroyed his private keys and backups. Are those BTC (out of the fixed 21x10^6) lost forever? I assume they are and assume there are many lost bitcoin over time that actually decreases the total…
Dr.Plastics
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3
votes
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Does Bitcoin account for deleted bitcoins over time?
I'm sure that this question has been asked before, but I just can't seem to find it.
If there is a limit of 21 million coins to be mined, then what happens if Bitcoin wallets get deleted? Will there still be some percentage of mining that occurs to…
Ci3
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3
votes
1 answer
How Many Bitcoins Are Missing?
Recently my HDD went, losing all of my data. I make backups frequently and luckily only lost 0.02BTC. I tried everything to recover them, but no luck. As I stated it was small amount that wasn't a much for me to pull my hair out. Just bang my head…
Ben P. Dorsi-Todaro
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3
votes
1 answer
Does Bitcoin mining reward halving have documentation? Or is it just in the code?
I can't seem to find actual documentation about the reward halving process.
This is not addressed in Bitcoin's Whitepaper, although Satoshi Nakamoto briefly mentions the decrease of the reward, but never explicitly talks about the amount of the…
Fred
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2
votes
1 answer
What happens to the overall value of Bitcoin when a huge amount of coin is lost?
My question is 2 part:
1. How does somebody know that a set of bitcoins is lost? Merely declaring that I've lost my private key and hence bitcoin makes the coins lost?
2. What impact(and why?) would be on the price of bitcoin if I lose a huge amount…
Neo
2
votes
2 answers
Is it possible to definitely lose bitcoins?
The maximum number of Bitcoin is 21 000 000.
However this number of Bitcoin may never exist.
Supposing someone have 5 BTC in their wallet. In order to protect them, they encrypted it and then forgot the passphrase, or die (sorry, this example is…
Zag zag..
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2
votes
3 answers
What happens if Bitcoins are lost
Since there are a finite number of Bitcoins that can be created, I am wondering what happens if some of the coins are lost. My questions are three fold:
How do you define a "lost" coin? For example if a bank note that was in my pocket is not there…
Bmonger
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