1. Dave says:

   September 10, 2011 at 4:54 pm

   Recovering lost bitcoins is not an issue and actually dangerous. Here’s an example that explains what I mean. Let’s say over 50% are actually “lost” and another 20% is locked away for safe keeping as an investment, and the remaining 30% are transacted on a daily basis.

   With the “lost” bitcoins out of circulation, the remaining 50% will be valued higher by the market. This is the way a free market economy works. Having less bitcoins is not an issue because a single bitcoin is divisible by 7 (or 9?) decimal places. It doesn’t make a big difference if the theoretical limit is 21 million or 10 million. What matters is that bitcoin’s value is reflected correctly in the market price. So what if a lollipop costs 5 BTC or 10 BTC. The value of the lollipop at that moment in time still has the same value.

   Re-mining “lost” bitcoins is dangerous because who determines which ones were lost and which ones have been socked away as savings for junior’s college education? Let’s say I forget to transact by dormant bitcoins after 3 years (as hypothetically suggested), will they automatically disappear from my wallet without my authorization? Then who gets them? That’s stealing. Putting an arbitrary date or time limit is authoritarian. It undermines the whole philosophy of bitcoin.

   And there should be no concern about making it worthwhile for miners to mine bitcoin. It will always be worthwhile. Satoshi’s algorithm ensures it. Steven is correct, there is no fixed limit. The 21 million is an asymptotic limit that can get close but will never be reached. By that time, one BTC may be worth $1 million. So mining and getting 25 BTC as a reward will be worth it. That’s the beauty of Satoshi’s algorithm. It’s genius.

   BTW, love the show. Keep up the awesome work at OnlyOneTV. You guys rock!!

   Dave

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2. Keefe says:

   September 14, 2011 at 11:06 am

   I think we may soon be able to script transaction outputs to have a timeout, though it will probably have to be measured in blocks instead of actual time. So each person will be able to choose for themself what will happen if they lose a key to some of their BTC. One could set an address to be spendable by some other specific key after say 50000 blocks, a key which may be kept in a safe, or a key some other person has, say a friend or charity. Or it could even be scripted to become available to whoever mines the next block, which would be comparable to the proposal to expire and re-mine old coins. But my point is it should be up to each person to decide how they want to deal with the problem of lost keys, and such monetary policy shouldn’t be decided by the system, especially not if it means changing core policies of a live currency.

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3. Keith says:

   October 8, 2011 at 4:36 pm

   I love your show. It is a great asset.
   I hate the idea of remining BTC. These programmers have shown a fundamental lack of understanding of the issue. They keep talking about 21,000,000 BTC. But that is meaningless. Each BTC is divisible to 8 decimal points. So the 21M BTC will be divisible into 2.1 Quadrillion “Pieces of Bit”. And each of these 2.1 Quadrillion POB can have any value. If it is $1 per POB, then Bictoins will be worth $100,000,000 each, $2.1 Quadrillion total value, and everything will work just fine.

   And if 1 million BTC are missing, then we only have 2 Quadrillion POB, and each one might be worth $1.05 in the above example. The “market” has saved the day by adjusting the price w/o confiscating anyone’s money.

   What is the need that these people want to solve by confiscating people’s Bitcoins? Why is 2 Quadrillion POB not large enough?

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