Author: Teweldemedhin Aberra 2017-12-12 01:10:38
Published on: 2017-12-12T01:10:38+00:00
In a Bitcoin-dev discussion, Teweldemedhin Aberra proposed a solution to the problem of lost Bitcoins in circulation: implementing a Dead Man's Switch that causes dormant Bitcoin addresses to automatically expire. Aberra estimates that about 4 million out of the 16.4 million Bitcoins ever mined are lost forever due to human error resulting in private key loss. The Dead Man's Switch would cause the Bitcoins assigned to dormant addresses to expire after a fixed length of time (such as ten years) and then be excluded from miner's rewards calculations. Luke Dashjr suggested an alternative solution to increase the divisibility of Bitcoins with a flag extending the range of relative lock-times so several years could be used instead of only one year. This soft fork would require integer values larger than 64 bits.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T23:03:08.240527+00:00