This is about knowing how many units there are in circulation, to add transparency in the market.
lol
transparency of the market
just look at the buys and sells order books.. you cant get more transparent
one BIG thing you are missing the point of is this:
even though there are 16.9mill coins produced. guess what.. it does not matter if 10 coins or 1 million coins are lost.
market movement is not about the 16.89999mill coins that are active or the 15.9m coins that are active
market movements are based on the 0.001btc to 5btc on an order line.
yep exchanges are not hoarding all 16.9m coins. and prices are not based on entire circulation. its based on a small subset amount of coins that are actually visible on exchanges.
so moving coins from hoarders to mining pools wont make a blinding bit of difference to the market transparency. its just giving mining pools a free 0.1% bonus while making savers 0.1% poorer