
Bitcoin is eating itself - passenger
https://hackernoon.com/bitcoin-is-eating-itself-bda69493c938
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ahartman00
On a related note, I wonder how much value is orphaned due to lost keys. If
people forget their passwords, they can forget their keys/passphrases. Myself,
I just had a hard drive failure. Of course, I have backups, but how many non
tech savvy people are diligent about backups?

Considering the total amount of bitcoins is limited by design, this will
eventually be a problem. I really dont think bitcoin is a viable currency for
mainstream use.

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rjbwork
I had about 100 bitcoins mined in the extreme early days and weeks, but I
wasn't really a believer and just did it to see what it was about, and never
thought it would be worth money per se.

Wish I had kept the details, but it's nearing a decade ago, and that harddrive
is long gone, unfortunately.

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narribbi
I still have them! ;-)

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beaconstudios
I'm no bitcoin expert, but would it not be possible to cash out the below-fee-
value coins by making a multiple-input transaction consisting of many wallets
with <0.0004btc held, paying it all to one wallet, selling the contents of
that wallet and returning the sale price back to the wallet holders?

Obviously that's pointless at the current fee level (<$1) but if the fee grows
high enough, or if there's a way to reach these wallet holders en-masse and
convince them of the value this would provide to the network (or get them to
short btc in advance of a large sell-off of the gathered coins).
Notwithstanding the legality/morality of any of this, it's not my field.

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wcoenen
Each input of the transaction requires a signature, which makes the
transaction larger and therefore increases the required fee. Here is a random
example from a recent block of such a transaction with many inputs, it pays
about $52 in fees:

[https://blockchain.info/tx/ef29f862f3ceee10ed3e1f04585e18cc2...](https://blockchain.info/tx/ef29f862f3ceee10ed3e1f04585e18cc28a7915e2e62419e714549a4185fbdc5)

So it is more accurate to think of the cost as a fee _per byte_ instead of a
fee per transaction. And there's a minimum amount of bytes that's needed to
consume any hitherto unspent transaction output.

Interestingly, if bitcoins were to support Schnorr signatures, then the
signatures could be combined and then your idea would work. Though this would
not be able to salvage the existing unspent transaction outputs that are
already secured with ECDSA signatures.

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erikpukinskis
How can you say they are worthless, if all it would take is one miner to
include all of those unsigned transactions in a block for them to have worth
again?

It's one thing to say miners aren't incentivized to include them today. It's
another thing to say no miner will ever have an incentive on any day in the
future.

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torbjorn
How many millions around the world are lost in the form of dropped pennies no
one will ever bother to pick up? Is cash eating itself?

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bantunes
Do you think that's a fair comment on the article?

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bdcravens
Hang around in a place like r/bitcoin, and you'll find that criticism is often
met with redirection toward fiat rather than having a legitimate discussion
about how to address shortcomings.

~~~
narribbi
Shortcomings should be addressed by forking bitcoin into yet another altcoin
and demonstrate the proposed improvement over there. We now have 700+
alternative "altcoins" in circulation, most of them demonstrating pretty much
nothing at all. Real breakthroughs are once in a blue moon, while all kinds of
useless criticisms are plentiful. In that sense, we do not want to have a
"legitimate discussion" but to observe legitimate altcoins embodying
improvements, while they are performing in the real world.

