91–100 of 125 posts
In other words, suppose, hypothetically, that after all Bitcoins have been mined, I bought them all, stored them on a hard drive (with no backup, obviously), and then destroyed that hard drive (let's say I threw it into a black hole). Does Bitcoin still exist?
Eventually over time, once all the bitcoins are mined and out and about in the world. They'll get lost for various reasons. Is there a way to recover these lost bitcoins and return them to circulation or is the artificial scarcity of bitcoins going to turn into real scarcity and drive up prices even more?
A digital currency could be designed with this in mind, but it would seemingly require an official ownership registry or something equally effective on identification (if you can't prove loss, you can't return them to circulation).
Much like with physical currencies, or gold, the reduction of outstanding supply increases the value for everyone else holding. There's no across-the-board right argument to whether that's a good thing or not.
So, this raises an interesting question for me. Since the total supply of Bitcoins is limited by design, doesn't every forgotten or lost Bitcoin reduce the total supply? In other words, suppose, hypothetically, that after all Bitcoins have been mined, I bought them all, stored them on a hard drive (with no backup, obviously), and then destroyed that hard drive (let's say I threw it into a black hole). Does Bitcoin st…
At least this is what economics would seem to dictate. You can send tiny partitions of bitcoin, so it's really easy to send a millionth of a bitcoin, where if $40t disappeared from the USD, you can't give 1/1,000,000 of a dollar (not that you would anyhow, since you can't irreversibly dispose money--you just print more)
Eventually over time, once all the bitcoins are mined and out and about in the world. They'll get lost for various reasons. Is there a way to recover these lost bitcoins and return them to circulation or is the artificial scarcity of bitcoins going to turn into real scarcity and drive up prices even more?
So, this raises an interesting question for me. Since the total supply of Bitcoins is limited by design, doesn't every forgotten or lost Bitcoin reduce the total supply? In other words, suppose, hypothetically, that after all Bitcoins have been mined, I bought them all, stored them on a hard drive (with no backup, obviously), and then destroyed that hard drive (let's say I threw it into a black hole). Does Bitcoin st…
Yes. The lost currency is essentially removed from the pool. The result is deflation--because there is less supply, the currency is worth more. Goods cost the same, so the bitcoin value for a certain product/service drops. At least this is what economics would seem to dictate. You can send tiny partitions of bitcoin, so it's really easy to send a millionth of a bitcoin, where if $40t disappeared from the USD, you can…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Collecting the donations changes everything. It seems like going to "the internet" with a sob story and a paypal account (or bitcoin wallet in this case) has been getting pretty popular recently, or at least has been getting more attention. I absolutely cannot understand why anybody would ever throw money at some unverified sob story...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6806056 I do; and I do it because I'm not completely cynical about the general public. I actually think most people are telling the truth. I could be very wrong, but nothing in my life has indicated as such. I have no idea what that indication would look like, but my default is to believe people unless I have a reason not to.
If I hear about somebody's house burning down on the local news, I might chip in a few dollars so that they can get their kids new clothes or whatever. I hear the same story, on reddit, 4chan, HN, whatever, from the alleged victim, and they are coming to me with this story and a collection jar? I'm sorry, I am going to require at least some local news confirmation, and it seems like even that isn't good enough with some of these scams.
And don't even get me started on how in most of these cases the jump from "here is my sob story" to "and that is why I need money" is completely missing. The connection there is clear when a house burns down, but "I threw something out, then later learned it was worth a lot"? "I am a server who was insulted/was not tipped"? Uhuh. If I see a donation cup, and no connection between "sob story"->"now I need lots of money", I don't think that there is any rational conclusion besides "it's a scam".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. The lost currency is essentially removed from the pool. The result is deflation--because there is less supply, the currency is worth more. Goods cost the same, so the bitcoin value for a certain product/service drops. At least this is what economics would seem to dictate. You can send tiny partitions of bitcoin, so it's really easy to send a millionth of a bitcoin, where if $40t disappeared from the USD, you can…
So what about my second question? If I bought all the Bitcoins and deleted them, does that destroy the currency entirely?
I've not even started the search for them properly as I know how gutted I will feel if I definitely can't find them. At the end of the day, it's only money and there's always time to make more. Time is the one thing of which we have a finite amount!
Howells ran a program on his laptop for a week to generate his stash CPU based bitcoin mining, probably solo without a pool, 7000+ coins. Ha. Those were the days.
Something about hindsight being 20/20.....
Many of us wrote it off.
I dug up a year old hard drive to get back 0.05 BTC the other day :-)
Howells ran a program on his laptop for a week to generate his stash CPU based bitcoin mining, probably solo without a pool, 7000+ coins. Ha. Those were the days.
So this guy made up more than 1/7 of the entire bitcoin network?
There were less than 6 people besides him that had as powerful of computers?