Thread

1. seymon · 1789644245 · focus · HN ↗

   I hope they still have the private key.

   1. osigurdson · 1789648222 · focus · HN ↗

      It is an interesting fact about Bitcoin in general. There are 21M tokens in total AND some percentage are lost every year. Run this simulation long enough and there will be very few active Bitcoins remaining.

      1. jackb4040 · 1789651244 · focus · HN ↗

         Worth pointing out that the monetary policy of bitcoin is not written in stone; all you need to change it is a majority of hashpower. The current chain of bitcoin mainnet includes hard forks, like this one due to miners&#x27; manual intervention over a software bug that was exploited: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.bitcoin.it&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Common_Vulnerabilities_and_Exposures#CVE-2010-5139" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.bitcoin.it&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Common_Vulnerabilities_and_Exposu...

         1. notpushkin · 1789656701 · focus · HN ↗

            &gt; all you need to change it is a majority of hashpower

            Or rather the majority of actual users. Hard forks occur because people install and use the updated clients. If 90% of the miners decide to mine on the “bad” chain, but 90% of users switch to the “good” one instead, the “good” would likely still win out in terms of market cap and recognition (and the miners would naturally have to follow).

            1. osigurdson · 1789736345 · focus · HN ↗

               Agree. Bitcoin is more of a social concept &#x2F; weighted democracy than an algorithm. If the participants decide that a new &#x2F; incompatible hashing algo is needed (e.g. post quantum), it will be forked and everyone will use that.

               The odd part is, the governance model is not defined. At the end of the day, some person or group has to decide what the new &quot;real&quot; Bitcoin is and the average holder just has to go along with it.

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