Quote from: pawel7777 on January 26, 2015, 01:51:01 PM

Quote from: nextgencoin on January 26, 2015, 01:20:08 PM

Stating the obvious but it's not that BItcon can't be divided up, what I'm saying is overall supply will decline due to deaths and loss, more significantly than we think. I wouldn't think its crazy to say we might lose 1-3% in this way annually, that figure is plucked from my butt but still I'm betting it's significant.

My point is this gives Bitcoin a natural price increase all other factors equal.

The real problem with the coins burnt/lost is the uncertainty of whether the coins lost are really lost or just temporarily inactive.

Imagine what happens when 10,50,100 years from now there are only ~BTC100k bitcoins in circulation (not a problem as it can be infinitely divided), and then you manage to recover the priv key to the wallet (say your deceased grandpa's) containing BTC50k, which everyone considered "lost coins".

The very first moment you would make any withdrawal from that wallet, you will cause a massive panic and crash the market.

I'm not that much worried about the lost coins (due to death etc), I'm sure there will be a lot of solutions in the near future. But I'm slightly concerned about ideas such as Proof-of-Burn used in OpenBazaar:

https://blog.openbazaar.org/proof-of-burn-and-reputation-pledges/

Many are still missing my point. It's a good thing. I mean there is no way coins won't be lost over time so it's hardwired in that Bitcoins overall supply will decrease. It's accepted with fiat that a lot of coins and notes are lost, destroyed etc but are replaced even if the money supply is not increased, but Bitcoin is a one way street, it will be interesting if Bitcoin did get a much more global acceptance what would happen. It doesn't matter if we end up with one Bitcoin and its divided up into billions the point is you can't slice a pizza more times and get more pizza which is what is being expressed by some here (face palm). Like I said using compound interest as a model even a few percent lost or destroyed each year is very significant to the supply. And it will grow even more significant as mining becomes harder and less fruitful.

Looking at a cliqued idea that an ounce of Gold or whatever it is would buy a decent suit 100 years ago and today an ounce would buy the same today. With Bitcoin 1 BTC even if the 'value' didnt increase would buy 100 suits Just for example in theory when before it bought 1. In that sense Bitcoin is super fuel injected Gold, the perfect store of capital.