This has been proposed before and isn’t bitcoin but some alt coin. Taking people’s bitcoins after a certain period of time isn’t ethical. Not to mention it breaks some protocols such as proof of burn etc. If the past discussions are any guide it is (thankfully) a nonstarter.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 15, 2025, at 2:26 PM, 'Donald Dienst' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List <bitcoindev@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Dear Bitcoin developers,

I would like to propose a new BIP titled "Proof-of-Activity Reclamation (PoAR)," which aims to address the long-term economic effects of lost and abandoned UTXOs.

This proposal introduces a fully automated and rule-based mechanism to gradually recycle coins that have been provably inactive for over 20 years. These coins are returned to the undistributed pool and slowly reintroduced via future block rewards—extending miner incentives while respecting the 21 million BTC cap.

You can view the full proposal here:
https://gist.github.com/Brandchatz/56c39d289db9e56190c13922850815b8

I welcome your thoughts, suggestions, and critiques.

Best regards,
Donald Dienst
dddienst@protonmail.com
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Bitcoin Development Mailing List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to bitcoindev+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/bitcoindev/a186c724-eef7-4964-9aba-85ae9cce2249n%40googlegroups.com.