Todd you might want to double check that information. If you lose your wallet it's gone there's no getting it back. There are clients that let you use deterministic keys, however those keys are only as secure as your password. Also it is not a feature of the opensource bitcoin client, just some of the other clients like electrum.
Bitcoin uses ECDSA to generate public/private keypairs. If your seed is random, your key is random. Your private key is private and yours alone, it is designed to be not recoverable. Satoshi envisioned attrition as a feature not a flaw. It makes the circulating currency more valuable if some coins eventually drop out. However I personally think he missed the greed aspect. Remember even though the keyspace may be 2^256-1 for any single key this size of this space is also divided by 2 for each key you are looking for. Once there are 2^32 keys in circulation I believe it becomes viable to run a brute force algorithm on a large enough bot net in an attempt to recover those keys so long as the price is over $100USD. The problem is that once this process starts, people will start seeing ancient keys resurrected realize that there is a significant flaw (their keys are no more secure than the lost keys), and this will cause people to lose confidence in the currency. Since Bitcoin like any currency trades pretty much exclusively on confidence, it stands to reason that this will devalue the currency when it occurs. On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 9:04 PM, Todd Millecam <[email protected]> wrote: > No rumblings about attrition that I know of. There is a central database > that keeps track of where bitcoins are at. It's not strictly required for > bitcoins to work at all. It is possible, because of that and the network, > that if you lose your wallet, then you could recover it through > that--assuming you know your password/credentials to unlock it. > And, yes, a bit coin can be divided up to six decimal points (so one > millionth of a bitcoin is the smallest tradable unit, called a satoshi, I > think) > > > > On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 6:27 PM, Daniel Callister < > [email protected]> wrote: > > > Are there any rumblings about how bitcoins as a form of exchange will > deal > > with currency attrition? What I mean is - if bitcoins are hoarded by > > individuals or wallets are lost, that will decrease the overall currency > in > > circulation. Are bitcoins able to be divided into smaller increments? > Also, > > thanks for the input on ASIC processors. I may have to look into bitcoin > > mining again. > > > > Michael Torrie <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > >On 05/29/2013 11:26 AM, Levi Pearson wrote: > > >> Inflation and deflation speak about *prices*, not directly about > > >> currency value. If the value of your currency goes up, then as a > > >> result prices in terms of that currency will drop, thus deflation. If > > >> the value of your currency goes down, prices go up, and there you have > > >> inflation. > > > > > >Speaking of economics, I know that a few pluggers are diehard > > >libertarians. What do libertarian-mind people think of bitcoin? In > > >some respects it's more like a gold standard in that there is a finite > > >amount of bitcoins that can ever exist. On the other hand it is just as > > >fictional as fiat currency. > > > > > >/* > > >PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net > > >Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug > > >Don't fear the penguin. > > >*/ > > > > /* > > PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net > > Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug > > Don't fear the penguin. > > */ > > > > > > -- > Todd Millecam > > /* > PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net > Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug > Don't fear the penguin. > */ > /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
