Quote from: HandcraftedBreads on Today at 05:19:01 PM

Wouldn't it be better if lost coins were reintroduced into the network after a fixed span of inactivity?

I suppose the first thing one would say no for, would be by virtue of bitcoin's acclaimed deflationary property. This said, I believe it is much more important, especially in the longest term, that bitcoin keeps its property of conservation of energy, that is, having a fixed quantity of money ever available. By losing coins, instead, and by having them unrecoverable, we have not a fixed quantity of money, rather a decreasing one, which is why we call bitcoin deflationary.

What would happen if we would make so that coins with 109 years of inactivity would be reintroduced into the network?

I see this having some positive effects:
- decreased impact of hereditary monopoly
- incentive to let the currency flow
- canceled the future necessity to increase the number of decimals for 1 BTC (very-long term perspective: too many coins have been lost, thus the necessity to further subdivide a coin)

109 years? Even if I consider the time period from 2009 until the first 109 years you would have seen so much of deflation in the price that it'll be sky rocketing until a point where using bitcoin would have already become difficult due high transaction fees. On the other hand if you reduce the span of 109 years you stand at a risk of snatching someone's valuables merely based on the fact that they did not do any activity. I don't think both these solutions are optimal.