You know, this brings up a really interesting point about bitcoin that I'd never thought of before. As far as I remember, the number of bitcoins that can be generated is finite, as the mining algorithm becomes more complex until it is impossible to solve. It makes sense in theory; you don't want bitcoins to be generated forever because they would constantly be depreciating in value.

But, on the other side of the coin (heh), bitcoins can be permanently lost. Again, as far as I know, once a Bitcoin has been lost on a physical drive, it can never be recovered. which would mean, that at some point not only will the number of bitcoins in the world stop increasing, it will actually begin to decrease, because there will always be accidents where people lose hard drives, forget passwords, etc.

So doesn't that mean that bitcoin won't exist forever? Unless they divide them into smaller and smaller pieces, which I think also has a limit, at some point the number of bitcoins will decrease until there aren't enough left.