Post
Topic
Board Economics
Re: Is the number of available bitcoins decreasing?
by
jaysabi
on 04/05/2016, 03:08:00 UTC
Yes it is.

People always forget their passwords, send their money to the wrong address, get their computer broken etc etc...

The available number of bitcoins are decreasing every day.
I dont agree.... saying that bitcoins are decreasing is the same as saying number of lost bitcoins is higher then generated bitcoins. and its probably not.

Wait, wait. I dont think we are on the same page here.

Available bitcoins are the one's being mined now right? Right this moment. Yes it is decreasing. I have read that there is a limit to the maximum mined bitcoin so if there is a limit? then it will be depleted right?

Not exactly. There are 25 bitcoins created every 10 minutes. In a couple months, that will drop to 12.5 new bitcoins every 10 minutes. Then in four-ish years, it will drop to 6.25 new bitcoins every ten minutes, and so on every four years or so.

As you can see, it will take a very, very long time before the number of coins being "lost" ever surpasses new Bitcoin creation. We are nowhere near it now, and we won't be for the foreseeable future.