I have no idea if it's a solvable problem but this is a ridiculous issue with bitcoin when you think of it as a serious currency: not only that its supply is artificially limited, a large number of early coins are either in possession of its owner (who we are not even sure will ever show up) or are lost in accidents like these.

It's not an issue at all - Bitcoin is in theory infinitely divisible. In practice, it's divisible to 10^-8 parts, each of which (a "satoshi") is worth 3/500th of a cent at USD6000 per BTC.

This also happens with fiat currency in the form of lost or destroyed cash. The final supply of bitcoins is limited but bitcoins can still be created using fractional reserve banking no different then our current banking system.

Your claim about fractional reserve banking creating more Bitcoins is wrong. The banking system doesn't create central bank money it creates a claim to it.

Fractional reserve banking oesn't create coins or notes, it creates credit (or bank money). These credit (IOUs) are liabilities of the bank that are denominated in central bank money (central bank liabilities). When a bank makes a loan this does not in any way affect the central banks balance sheet -there are no changes in the liability side of its balance sheet.

When the loan is withdrawn, this still won't cause a change in the liabilities of the central bank. Other than what bank owns what liability at the central bank. (But even this isn't necessary. It depends on what type of payment the customer made with the loan and what payment system it was cleared through: if it went through a gross settlement system or a multilateral net system,etc.).

The supply of central bank money is dependent on how central banks implement monetary policy. Everywhere in the world (and what has probably always been the case) central banks will supply as much of central bank money as is demanded from the banking system.

Fractional reserve banking will when the bank credit is denominated in Bitcoin doesn't create more Bitcoin, it just creates more claims in Bitcoin. The supply of Bitcoin is independent from this.

true - however what has been happening in the last 20 years with paper fiat is not how fiat is "supposed" to work - though granted, it seems that EVERY paper fiat eventually leads to increased inflation/hyper-inflation. With Bitcoin, that is impossible. This allows the whole bitcoins, as well as the individual sitoshis to increase in value - much like the dollar of 1900 (it has since lost 99% of its purchasing power due to all the increased printing, loss of the gold standard, etc...

while I don't think it will ever fully replace fiat currencies, it will - and already is - acting as a secondary money/value exchange, so there is NO downside to getting in. None.

> so there is NO downside to getting in. None.

Well except the part about possibly losing everything you put in...

so not much different than the stock market or ANY speculative investment, right?

I wonder, is BTC liquid enough that you could actually get your $600k if you suddenly were able to recover them? I haven't dabbled in crypto coins, so I have no idea how the exchanges really operate in practice.

Absolutely. The 24hr trading volume on gdax.com (connected to Coinbase) is 15,524 BTC (~$93,144,000) and that's just the BTC/USD market on a single exchange.

And gdax only accounts for 4.25% of the volume. Bitfinex has the largest volume, and does about $352,758,000 in 24 hours.

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/volume/24-hour/

$600k? easily

that would depend on your country's individual currency movement regulations as well as the different policies of the various exchanges.

for instance, coinbase only allows for a certain set amount of money in/out per week - and its actually quite low comparatively. $15-25k i think? maybe someone has seen more?

If you’re willing to pass over all sorts of personal information, it’s pretty easy to get much higher lots, on several exchanges.

you betcha