[abbasaamer]

> For example, what happens when a piece of bread is worth less than 1 satoshi

That does not seem to be an imminent danger. The price of Bitcoin would have to increase literally 1.4 million times for a satoshi to be worth a penny.

> To make matters worse, if a whole bunch of flames goes up in flames more can be printed to replace it. If Bitcoin goes missing[1], it's gone for good.

Isn't that the same with paper cash? If by a "whole bunch" you mean enough to cause a worldwide issue, then there are solutions to that. Maybe not great solutions, but there are some. Worst case, a hard fork. That's essentially what led to Ethereum vs Ethereum Classic, isn't it?

[paxys]

If you mail a torn banknote to the Treasury they will send you a brand new one. There is no recourse if a hard drive or electronic wallet containing a bunch of Bitcoin is destroyed, for example.

You can say "tough luck", sure, but the end result is that the amount of money circulating in the economy will be decreasing every day.

And how does a fork solve anything? You can't just say, hey throw away all your existing Bitcoin, we're starting from scratch and using this new one now.

[abbasaamer]

> If you mail a torn banknote to the Treasury they will send you a brand new one.

Torn, yes. Lost/destroyed, no. I don't think the torn analogy represents the scenario being discussed.

> And how does a fork solve anything? You can't just say, hey throw away all your existing Bitcoin, we're starting from scratch and using this new one now.

That's exactly what Ethereum did. The old one was essentially "thrown away" and became known as Ethereum Classic. A small group of people stuck with the old one, but it's not the main one we think of when we say "Ethereum" these days.

[paxys]

> Torn, yes. Lost/destroyed, no

They still will, if there is a way to verify it (e.g. stuff in a bank vault).

[celticninja]

The UK mint will replace burnt money if you send them the ashes.