> that anyone at anytime can know exactly how many, say, Bitcoin or Ethereum do actually exists.
Isn’t there a distinction between issued/minted currency and the amount in circulation? With Bitcoin and physical cash you know how many coins are minted and notes issued etc.
But how much of that is in circulation? Does lost physical currency still qualify as in circulation? What about Bitcoin wallets long lost by their owners (such as the British man who keeps wanting a rubbish dump to search for a HDD he threw out years ago, or the person who forgot his password and has 2 attempts left until the wallet self destructs). I don’t think either currency can accurately track the amount in circulation.
The blockchain provides a complete record of the movement of bitcoins. So for a given address, you can see how long value has been there, and the addresses that participated in the send transaction, and so on. You can't from there figure out how many coins are still available for circulation, but you can see how much has moved (or hasn't moved) over any period of time (last day, last week, last year, etc). From there you can define circulation statistics, like 'value that hasn't moved in 3 years' or whatever.
For paper money, the fraction that gets destroyed is probably small enough to not matter.
>physical cash you know how many coins are minted and notes issued etc.
but with coins/cash the actual circulation can exceed what the government claims to have issued, through counterfeits or malfeasance (ie. the government under-reporting the issuance).
Isn’t there a distinction between issued/minted currency and the amount in circulation? With Bitcoin and physical cash you know how many coins are minted and notes issued etc.
But how much of that is in circulation? Does lost physical currency still qualify as in circulation? What about Bitcoin wallets long lost by their owners (such as the British man who keeps wanting a rubbish dump to search for a HDD he threw out years ago, or the person who forgot his password and has 2 attempts left until the wallet self destructs). I don’t think either currency can accurately track the amount in circulation.