Questions tagged [shrinking-money-supply]

Concerned with questions about the decreasing size of the total money supply in Bitcoin and altcoins through lost wallets and private keys.

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How do we know that Bitcoin supply is actually capped at 21 million?

Everyone says that the Bitcoin supply is capped at 21 million. But how did everybody come to this number? In Nakamoto's paper, I could not find this number. Can someone explain where it is or how we ...
TFT's user avatar
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If hashrate falls for other main chains, will we be brave enough to enforce higher fees?

If in low inflation future users refuse to voluntarily pay high fees and reward is too low and for some reason network computing power (A.K.A. hash rate) falls, can we then expect consensus would try ...
Mercedes's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
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Does Bitcoin mining reward halving have documentation? Or is it just in the code?

I can't seem to find actual documentation about the reward halving process. This is not addressed in Bitcoin's Whitepaper, although Satoshi Nakamoto briefly mentions the decrease of the reward, but ...
Fred's user avatar
  • 133
1 vote
1 answer
55 views

How does bitcoin impact the real economy? [closed]

I have a question in my head since a while. What if Elon Musk sells all his companies (spacex, Tesla, ...) and puts all the money in bitcoin and then loses the keys. What is going to happen to the ...
dmx's user avatar
  • 111
22 votes
3 answers
6k views

How does lost BTC affect the market in the long run?

I bought some bitcoins in 2012 and forgot about it. Now years later I discovered that the company who maintained the wallet went bankrupt and their website no longer works. I therefore have lost ...
Michael Seltenreich's user avatar
5 votes
3 answers
1k views

Curious about lost bitcoin

The Merkle reported a user lost 17BTC in a fire that destroyed his private keys and backups. Are those BTC (out of the fixed 21x10^6) lost forever? I assume they are and assume there are many lost ...
Dr.Plastics's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
208 views

If bitcoin have a 21 milion limit...what happens with the lost bitcoins? [duplicate]

After reach the 21 million limit, and every year there is some coins that are lost... won't this make the value of the bitcoin go up?
user54369's user avatar
0 votes
2 answers
390 views

Lost/forgotten/locked Bitcoins

There are currently ~16 million bitcoins in circulation at this moment. There will only ever be 21 million coins. What about all the coins that have been locked in wallets due to loss of keys, owners ...
Dr.Von's user avatar
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1 answer
284 views

If I lose my wallet and private key does that effectively remove bitcoin from the market forever? [duplicate]

If I lose my wallet and private key does that effectively remove bitcoin from the market forever? I understand that if I lose my wallet and have no record of my private key then I won't be able to re-...
dibs's user avatar
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1 vote
0 answers
65 views

The 21,000,000 BTC Limit Issue [duplicate]

I love the concept of Bitcoin, however I have noticed a few weaknesses to the system that not may folks talk about. One of the issues is the 21,000,000 limit. After "X" amount of time, a certain ...
user32352's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
117 views

What happens to the overall value of Bitcoin when a huge amount of coin is lost?

My question is 2 part: 1. How does somebody know that a set of bitcoins is lost? Merely declaring that I've lost my private key and hence bitcoin makes the coins lost? 2. What impact(and why?) would ...
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After 21 million bitcoins [duplicate]

After 21 million bitcoins miners will be paid certain transaction fees but I need your guidance for clarifying following confusions:- Currently solving a block gives you 25 bitcoins but what is the ...
Ray.Rai's user avatar
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1 vote
2 answers
357 views

Where can I find a chart of the daily supply?

there is the blockchain.info one for total supply but that very low resolution. I really was a graph of the actual new bitcoin mined on the market on a daily basis because it seems like a strangely ...
barrymac's user avatar
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6 votes
6 answers
2k views

Will "all" bitcoins ultimately vanish? (be unusable)

During this CCC conference from 2011, starting from 00:18:55, the presenter suggests that as bitcoins can be lost (lost private key, dead owner, sending to an "eater" address that nobody ...
Totor's user avatar
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2 votes
2 answers
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Is it possible to definitely lose bitcoins? [duplicate]

The maximum number of Bitcoin is 21 000 000. However this number of Bitcoin may never exist. Supposing someone have 5 BTC in their wallet. In order to protect them, they encrypted it and then forgot ...
Zag zag..'s user avatar
  • 163
12 votes
3 answers
26k views

What happens when the 21 million cap is reached? [duplicate]

I've just recently gotten into bitcoin, but I'm a bit confused about this 21 million bitcoin cap. From what I've read, computers on the bitcoin network validate transactions, which confirms the ...
Timothy Deng's user avatar
2 votes
3 answers
3k views

What happens if Bitcoins are lost

Since there are a finite number of Bitcoins that can be created, I am wondering what happens if some of the coins are lost. My questions are three fold: How do you define a "lost" coin? For example ...
Bmonger's user avatar
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3 votes
4 answers
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Does Bitcoin account for deleted bitcoins over time?

I'm sure that this question has been asked before, but I just can't seem to find it. If there is a limit of 21 million coins to be mined, then what happens if Bitcoin wallets get deleted? Will there ...
Ci3's user avatar
  • 141
3 votes
1 answer
2k views

How Many Bitcoins Are Missing? [duplicate]

Recently my HDD went, losing all of my data. I make backups frequently and luckily only lost 0.02BTC. I tried everything to recover them, but no luck. As I stated it was small amount that wasn't a ...
Ben P. Dorsi-Todaro's user avatar
-1 votes
2 answers
89 views

How long does it take to gives again into circulation after loss Bitcoins [duplicate]

How long does it take to gives again into circulation after loss Bitcoins ?
Tomáš Murňák's user avatar
9 votes
2 answers
934 views

Bitcoin disappearence rate

I was wondering if there are public available researches about the "disappear" rate of Bitcoins (wallet data lost, person died, forgotten eWallet access, ...). This could be generated by checking "...
Wizche's user avatar
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1 answer
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Accounting for currency destroyed in lost wallets? [duplicate]

Bitcoin will eventually be capped at 21,000,000 Bitcoins, but what happens to all the wallets that are lost? I'm sure thousands of BTC are already as good as destroyed. Even if there weren't millions ...
tkbx's user avatar
  • 241
0 votes
4 answers
405 views

Is there a mechanism to handle stale bitcoins? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Why doesn't Bitcoin return lost coins back into the block reward? What could be the consequences of many bitcoins being lost out of circulation if people lose their wallets?...
shoeless joe's user avatar
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15 votes
3 answers
2k views

What could be the consequences of many bitcoins being lost out of circulation if people lose their wallets?

If for some reason many people lose their wallet files then many bitcoins are effectively taken out of circulation. Seen as it's not possible to tell as far as i know if bitcoins are actually ...
barrymac's user avatar
  • 1,605
31 votes
6 answers
4k views

Why doesn't Bitcoin return lost coins back into the block reward?

The idea of putting back lost Bitcoins back onto block rewards seems like a great idea. I acknowledge that there were quite a handful of early adopters who were generating blocks daily, but had no ...
Tom Williams's user avatar
26 votes
5 answers
23k views

What happens to my bitcoins if lose my wallet file e.g. I suffer data loss and my computer is unrecoverable?

You run bitcoin as a service on your local computer. What happens if this computer is compromised? A corrupt/failed hard drive or theft leads to the machine being lost and unrecoverable, and my ...
Charles Goodwin's user avatar
53 votes
14 answers
10k views

Will deflation destroy Bitcoin?

With the limited total quantity of bitcoins, and people losing their wallets constantly decreasing that number, won't rampant deflation destroy Bitcoin?
eMansipater's user avatar
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