Quote from: Dr Bloggood on February 05, 2014, 03:02:32 PM

Quote from: go1111111 on February 05, 2014, 06:34:14 AM

Quote from: AltorXP on February 05, 2014, 12:22:46 AM

Quote from: thethingis on February 05, 2014, 12:04:06 AM

Quote from: go1111111 on February 03, 2014, 09:39:18 AM

Incorrect. It''s simple to add more granularity to Bitcoin. Once the total supply of coins is down to 2.1 million, then we can just add another decimal place and we're back to 21 million units.

Is this true? Like a stock split at 10:1 where everyone suddenly has 10x as many bitcoins? Or as in making the smallest unit 0.1 satoshi?

Dividing the satoshi doesn't change anything I've said.. it just makes the lost coins 10x larger in satoshi magnitude as well. Eventually all of them will not be in control of anyone, and the currency will be dead. Don't get me wrong, this is still a long way off, but there's nothing that can be done to recover lost coins. Inflation is probably the only thing that can counter the lost coins, but that's not bitcoin anymore.

Or, there could be 18.9 millions units left to mine, basically resetting the number of coins mined

Simply adding more decimal places is a perfect solution, because it preserves the relative wealth of everyone, while completely fixing the "running out of granularity" problem. Adding more units to mine is basically theft from existing bitcoin holders.

thethingis: Running out of coins only makes sense in terms of running out of atomic units. If 5% of coins are lost ever year, and more decimal places are added to Bitcoin whenever the total number of units drops below some value, then we will never run out of coins. Try to work through some examples and you'll see why you should not worry about this.

Yes, thethingis, this is really no issue to worry about.

You should be glad about every BTC taken out of the game, because it gives your BTC a little bit more value.

Why 21 milion bitcoin wre meant to be in use? If the number is so important why cant we replace the lost coins?