Quote from: wdBTCtrader on December 13, 2012, 02:18:03 AM

Quote from: Jutarul on December 13, 2012, 01:15:59 AM

To be precise, in the real world, nothing really gets destroyed - just disassembled - maybe into atoms.

LOL - talk about going to the nth degree.

but seriously, I was looking at the heist thread...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83794.0

and several of the heists claim the coins were either destroyed or effectively destroyed. I can understand the latter because they can be made inaccessible, but how about the former? How can Bitcoins be destroyed?

They appear to be the same thing... just a lost private key.
I would say the only way they can be really destroyed would be any coins generated during a split in the block chain would be destroyed when one of the chains gets dropped.