Quote from: noobtrader on December 29, 2014, 05:14:25 PM

Quote from: aliro38 on December 29, 2014, 05:03:55 PM

Quote from: Wandererfromthenorth on December 29, 2014, 03:53:35 PM

What if I told you that the real monetary inflation for BTC is actually even higher than most people think?
That's because a lot of BTCs from the early days are totally lost (so nobody owns the private keys anymore, it's like they never existed).

2 million BTCs (minimum) are very probably lost:

http://onbitcoin.com/2013/12/07/bitcoin-spoilage-2-million-bitcoin-likely-lost-old-hard-drives/

The supply of BTC in circulation is actually smaller than believed, that means that the inflation is actually higher.

Hmmm....
So, is it theoretically possible to reconstruct those lost wallets and to get ahold of coins?
Sorry if it sounds so noob-ish (my excuse is I am a noob by all applicable criteria

) but I can not imagine many holding-water hypotheses for explaining the craziness of mining race. An attempt to crack the wallets (and I assume that for doing the trick a large pool would be needed too) would explain the completely irrational hash-rate increase.
Also, power companies selling their electricity at 3-5x (for now; it used to be a lot higher, maybe 10-15x) market price would explain the hash-rate increase.
And also, another explanation would be the old 'ponzi' etc etc. but I'm not buying that kind.

Please, I'm really interested to get a knowledgeable answer and I'll try to do my best following any references, if provided. I'm asking because for a long time the hashrate is having wild variations, often over 50% in 12-36h and it seems to me that it can not be pure coincidence or statistical variance but rather that someone big is maybe trying something important...
Many thanks!

if you want to reconstruct wallet then you should go for the rich list
http://bitcoinrichlist.com/top100

not some unknown smallish lost coin and even if its possible.

I know that, many thanks! But those are, on one hand, heavily protected wallets and, on the other hand, imagine the consequences if you were to steal one...
I'm asking if it's possible to divert from time to time some hashrate from a large mining pool and to silently crack old lost wallets (very easy passwords, most probably) and so to get 50 easy btc at a time. Clean and repeat, at the expense of pool members... And those would come as free 'bonus' to the actual reward of 25btc..
Have a look at hashrate variation here: http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-lin-2k.png
Where does it go approx. 200Th/s?!! Who does it in such a short time and most important why? (It's not so easy to underclock/overclock a mining farm neither to power it on and off) And why does it seem to repeat so frequently and it looks so much like a pattern?!