[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.