Hello 
I understand that BTC has a hard limit of 21 million Bitcoin, and there's roughly 18m BTC's that have been released so far. I also understand Satoshi Nakamoto owns at least 1 million BTC that is assumed to be gone forever, and there are many other wallets with massive amounts of btc that have seen no movement whatsoever in 5+ years, leading to the possibility that those coins have been lost forever as well.
I understand that BTC can be "burned" by being sent to an address with no known private keys, and without access to private keys, any btc will be lost forever. I've read stories of people who have thrown away hard drives with btc, sent them to a wrong address by mistake, sent them to nakamoto's wallet as a tribute, etc. I even read one article that suggests 20% of btc has already been lost forever.
This leaves me with a very hypothetical question, what if all btc is burned (or lost)? After all 21m btc has been released, the number can only go down, right? I understand it would take an extreeeemeeely long time, but could humans run out of btc after enough burning? What will continued btc burning do to the economy over time? Is this something that Satoshi Nakamoto considered?
I understand that BTC has a hard limit of 21 million Bitcoin, and there's roughly 18m BTC's that have been released so far. I also understand Satoshi Nakamoto owns at least 1 million BTC that is assumed to be gone forever, and there are many other wallets with massive amounts of btc that have seen no movement whatsoever in 5+ years, leading to the possibility that those coins have been lost forever as well.
I understand that BTC can be "burned" by being sent to an address with no known private keys, and without access to private keys, any btc will be lost forever. I've read stories of people who have thrown away hard drives with btc, sent them to a wrong address by mistake, sent them to nakamoto's wallet as a tribute, etc. I even read one article that suggests 20% of btc has already been lost forever.
This leaves me with a very hypothetical question, what if all btc is burned (or lost)? After all 21m btc has been released, the number can only go down, right? I understand it would take an extreeeemeeely long time, but could humans run out of btc after enough burning? What will continued btc burning do to the economy over time? Is this something that Satoshi Nakamoto considered?
Even I too read some articles like that where they collectively found almost 4 million bitcoins were completely lost including Satoshi's but remaining 17 millions are there and I don't think people will lose BTC like what happened in 2010 cause when it worth few dollars now its in millions so I hope people won't lose it like that anymore. And I don't consider BTC sent by a mistake as burnt as well.