[SODaniel]

I agree that it's not a 'currency killer' in the short run BUT if we speculate that BTC reaches mainstream popularity and a total market value in the 100-1000s of BILLION USD the fact that an 'unknown' amount is in circulation makes for a very strange variable.

All of a sudden my old 1BTC wallet on my crashed laptop hard drive may be worth 100s of days of mining network wide, and even the speculation that a 'previously unknown' wallet containing 100BTC (there are a LOT of those sitting on old phones and hard drives already I promise) would have possibly disastrous effect on currency value etc.

All I am saying is that there are a LOT of factors to consider and BTC loss over time is a major one.

My argument being: A finite supply of a currency is one of the factors people REALLY need to think about when it comes to BTC. And I guess I am saying that it's a real problem vs. a currency with increasing difficulty and a non-finite supply.

[stevenrace]

But isn't even knowing some constraints about the money supply better than not knowing anything at all?

For instance, the M3 supply of USD isn't even tracked by central banks (not since 2006).