Ok, I see your point. I was just thinking about the number of bitcoins tied
up in wallets in which people lost the keys, but I suppose this isn't so
much of a problem if it's well known that the bitcoins are all tied up. It
would be impossible to distinguish between bitcoins people have lost access
to, and bitcoins that people have just left in the same wallet for a long
time.

On Tue, 22 Aug 2017, 3:45 pm Chris Riley <criley@gmail.com> wrote:

> This seems to be drifting off into alt-coin discussion.  The idea that we
> can change the rules and steal coins at a later date because they are
> "stale" or someone is "hoarding" is antithetical to one of the points of
> bitcoin in that you can no longer control your own money ("be your own
> bank") because someone can at a later date take your coins for some reason
> that is outside your control and solely based on some rationalization by a
> third party.  Once the rule is established that there are valid reasons why
> someone should not have control of their own bitcoins, what other reasons
> will then be determined to be valid?
>
> I can imagine Hal Finney being revived (he was cryo-preserved at Alcor if
> you aren't aware) after 100 or 200 years expecting his coins to be there
> only to find out that his coins were deemed "stale" so were "reclaimed" (in
> the current doublespeak - e.g. stolen or confiscated).  Or perhaps he
> locked some for his children and they are found to be "stale" before they
> are available.  He said in March 2013, "I think they're safe enough" stored
> in a paper wallet.  Perhaps any remaining coins are no longer "safe enough."
>
> Again, this seems (a) more about an alt-coin/bitcoin fork or (b) better in
> bitcoin-discuss at best vs bitcoin-dev. I've seen it discussed many times
> since 2010 and still do not agree with the rational that embracing allowing
> someone to steal someone else's coins for any reason is a useful change to
> bitcoin.
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 4:19 AM, Matthew Beton via bitcoin-dev <
> bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>
>> Okay so I quite like this idea. If we start removing at height 630000 or
>> 840000 (gives us 4-8 years to develop this solution), it stays nice and
>> neat with the halving interval. We can look at this like so:
>>
>> B - the current block number
>> P - how many blocks behind current the coin burning block is. (630000,
>> 840000, or otherwise.)
>>
>> Every time we mine a new block, we go to block (B-P), and check for stale
>> coins. These coins get burnt up and pooled into block B's miner fees. This
>> keeps the mining rewards up in the long term, people are less likely to
>> stop mining due to too low fees. It also encourages people to keep moving
>> their money around the enconomy instead of just hording and leaving it.
>>
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>>
>