$500 million of bitcoin in a landfill
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“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” ~Winston S. Churchill
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@axtremus said in $500 million of bitcoin in a landfill:
@mik said in $500 million of bitcoin in a landfill:
There's nothing behind it - its only worth what people decide its worth.
“Fiat currency.”
Fiat currency works as long as you governments that secure the common good. You don't even have that with cryptos.
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@klaus said in $500 million of bitcoin in a landfill:
I read estimates that about 1% of Bitcoin will be lost every year.
I wonder what effect that reduction of the available Bitcoin will have on its utility as a currency.
One mistake people often seem to make is that this is deflation, with all its negatives consequences, but deflation, as used today, measures how prices develop and not the total amount of money.
There seems to be quite a bit of disagreement among economists about the implications of crypto currency burning.
As more people buy into the system (assuming it keeps gaining traction) - the purchasing power of each satoshi/bitcoin keeps going up. So, in real terms the exchange rate between goods and other currency (USD) should keep tipping towards bitcoin.
Bitcoin becomes something akin to a hard asset, like prime real estate - they won't be making any more of it, and assuming civilization keeps moving towards higher wealth levels things should continually get cheaper in bitcoin denominated terms.
To your specific question - about the effect of lost or dormant bitcoins. The price is going to be set partly by the volume of active trading and transactions. That seems like a tougher question to answer - most coins are not actively traded today anyways. Bitcoin doesn't have anywhere near the velocity of cash.
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He made half a billion doing absolutely nothing useful, and then lost it doing absolutely nothing useful.
What a world.
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8 89th referenced this topic on
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T taiwan_girl referenced this topic on
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Howells' lawyers, who are working pro bono,
I would guess that he has offer to them some sort of % if the bitcoins are ever found.
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DON’T let them eat cake.
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@jon-nyc said in $500 million of bitcoin in a landfill:
I can’t help but think the main reason the town leaders won’t give him access is pure jealousy.
Then you must believe that they would let him look for a priceless family photo album. (No, that’s not a straw man, that is logical inference.)
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Bitcoin being what it is, what actually happens when someone discovers the hard drive is that the money gained from the sale of those coins comes out of the value of every other existing bit coin. So if you hold BTC, you are hoping these coins stay out of the supply. Not that it would make a big difference.
Education is extremely important.
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@Horace said in $500 million of bitcoin in a landfill:
Bitcoin being what it is, what actually happens when someone discovers the hard drive is that the money gained from the sale of those coins comes out of the value of every other existing bit coin. So if you hold BTC, you are hoping these coins stay out of the supply. Not that it would make a big difference.
Just looked it up, and BTC has a 2 trillion dollar market cap. So this haul would represent 1/2000th of the supply, but actually more than that because lots of bitcoin are known missing and never to be found. Not sure what % that currently is. Edit: 30% is the estimate for irretrievably lost bitcoin. Imagine how many people have a permanent hole in their soul because of the bitcoin they once had, but neglected and discarded, when it was trading for a few dollars.
