Bitcoin Forum

This thought has always troubled me...


There is only going to be a total of 21 , 000 , 000
Or 21 Million BTC right?

So what happens to the abandoned Bitcoin wallets
that have an amount in them?

What happens to the amount inside?
Will they be locked in there forever or will they be
somehow transferred into a new block for miners
to mine back again?

Please clear this up for me...

They're lost forever, a gift to everyone who holds Bitcoins.

Define what is an "abandoned wallet" and explain how you reach the conclusion it's abandoned.

Nothing troubling about it.  Bitcoins is intentionally designed to work this way.

Actually "A Bitcoin" is a bit like saying "A 10 million dollar bill" since "a bitcoin" can be split up into 10 , 000 , 000 "Satoshi".  This means that there is never going to be more than 2 , 100 , 000 , 000 , 000 , 000
or 2.1 quadrillion Satoshi.

Assuming that the private key is truly "lost/ababndoned" and not printed out or stored on a hard drive somewhere that someone will discover,
yes this is exactly what will happen. One possible exception to this would be if somebody someday finds a weakness in the ECDSA algorithm.  If that happens, then people will be able to use that weakness to "steal" the bitcoins from those lost adresses.

Absolutey not.

Is it clear?

Ok. thank you Danny.

Clears up a lot indeed :P