Re:The Evolving Economics of Bitcoin, Gold and Fiat Currencies
by Retric on Wednesday November 01, 2017 @12:34PM
(#15602939)
It's easy to lose private keys which is a far more common issue than you might think.
> Future advances/exploits of Elliptic curve cryptography should make those coins recoverable.
It's possible for that to be true without also completely destroying bitcoin. But, it's not particularly likely.
It is however highly unlikely that all 21 million bitcoins will end up in that drain.
Bitcoin can also be sent to an address of which there is no known private key. Future advances/exploits of Elliptic curve cryptography should make those coins recoverable.
In the end, users will probably not even know each other's public keys for everyday spending of bitcoin. They will only check the public keys for large purchases such as houses, cars, etc.