Quote from: whitslack on December 28, 2012, 04:14:42 PM

Quote from: DannyHamilton on December 28, 2012, 11:26:47 AM

I suppose it depends on whether you count "lost coins" as a reduction in supply against the generation of new coins, and how high the rate of lost coins is in any given year.

. . . will be able to brute-force a private key to reclaim the "lost" bitcoins . . .

You are mistaken.

It might be possible that weaknesses/flaws are eventually found in SHA256, ECDSA, and RIPEMD-160 which would break the cryptography used by bitcoin, but without discovering flaws it will never be possible to brute-force a private key until computers are no longer made of matter, and no longer use energy to operate.

As far as I know, the SHA256 algorithm is not vulnerable to quantum computing, but I suppose that if someone happened to reuse an address and then lost the coins so that their public key is known, in that special situation if quantum computing ever reaches significant enough abilities, it might be able to crack a private key. But we are talking about an analogy closer to gold that has been pushed below the crust of the earth at a tectonic subduction zone than sitting on the bottom of the ocean.