[ExI] dang, forgot

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Fri, 15 Jan 2021 at 07:28, spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
> OK so this guy lost a quarter of a billion dollars because he forgot his
> BitCoin password:
>
>
>
>
> https://heraldsheets.com/former-ripple-cto-stefan-thomas-cannot-access-his-bitcoin-wallet-containing-7002-btc-worth-231-milion/
>
>
>
> This brings up an interesting question.  The value of currency is
> inherently controlled by supply and demand.  We see what is happening to
> demand: plenty of people want some of that, for perfectly understandable
> reasons.  Now we know that 7000 bitcoins are permanently out of circulation
> forever.  That looks to me like it would increase every other bitcoin’s
> value because the demand didn’t change, only the supply did.
>
>
>
> Surely there are plenty of others who have a bitcoin purse behind a
> password they can’t recall.  And plenty of bitcoin holders who mined a few
> of these back in the day, then pretty much forgot all about them, treating
> it like a game, and now can’t recover them or don’t know what happened to
> them.  We mighta treated all the bitcoins as if they had the potential to
> go into circulation when really an unknown fraction of them might have been
> lost by something as simple as people not telling anyone their password
> (understandable) then dying unexpectedly.
>
>
>
> Alternative: a prole with a few thousand bitcoins could go on the news and
> tell everyone that he forgot his password, quarter of a billion BC
> presumably lost, price goes up, he sells short, miraculously remembers his
> password, sells his BCs, covers his short, makes a buttload.
>
>
>
> That trick might work only once, but as far as I know, no one has done it.
>

It wouldn't work because there is a total supply of about 18 million
bitcoins (with an ultimate maximum of 21 million) and no-one controls more
than about 1 million, which are in the wallet of their creator, Satoshi
Nakamoto. Losing a few thousand wouldn't make much difference to the price.
However, if the coins started to move from the Satoshi Nakamoto wallet,
that might crash the price, because there would be a fear that these coins,
which have never moved since their creation, might flood the market.

-- 
Stathis Papaioannou
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