Bitcoin Forum

Let me explain.  Bitcoins are constantly being created (mined) but bitcoins are constantly being lost also.  The number of bitcoins created per year is decreasing (by design) and we could assume that the number of bitcoins lost keeps increasing every year.  If this is true, then at some point the total number of bitcoins available (not lost) would decease because more are being lost than being created.  If it hasn't started happening yet, it will sometime in the future.

The number of freshly created Bitcoins will decrease because of the block halving. In Juli this year the second block halving will kick in and lower the block rewards to 12.5 BTC. Can you explain what exactly you mean with Bitcoins being "lost"?

People send (voluntarily or by mistake) coins to addresses nobody controls. (https://blockchain.info/address/1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE)
Or have stored their coins in an address which the private key has been lost.  

Who owns that address or created?
It looks awesome.

You can send bitcoins to any address. It doesn't have to be created.
In fact, all addresses already exist.

When you own an address, the only thing that is different is that you control the private key.

Nobody controls the private key of 1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE

You can create (or control like said above) your own vanity address with vanitygen, you should look into it, I think it would interest you.

Im intetested at that vanitygen but i dont know where to find it. :'(

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25804.0
It basically generates private keys until the public address matches what you want.

Yes that is true.  But my point is basically that at some point, more coins will be lost than created. 

No wonder. There are a lot of wallets with lost passwords that have many bitcoins in them. Those coins are lost forever.

So in the market, that's one of the major problem why bitcoin rate decreases? there is no cycle when it is frozen in someone's wallet address that lost it's private key/ password for their wallet address accounts. Is there a report if how much bitcoin got lost per year?

There is no way to know for sure how many bitcoins are lost when people lose their private keys because they just aren't going to post that anywhere.  Some could be lost when someone dies and no one know they had a bitcoin wallet so those are lost and no one even knows they are lost.

Yeah, it's practically impossible to get exact statistics on how many coins are lost forever, but this article gives out a pretty good estimate based on the number of Bitcoins that lay dormant for at least a year and a half.

It's a pretty interesting read:

https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/rise-of-the-zombie-bitcoins (https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/rise-of-the-zombie-bitcoins)

Yes. Given that majority of the early adopters gave up on Bitcoin after several hacking incident or market crash, they would have deleted their private keys. This can also happen due to a hard drive failure and the user having no backups. This isn't a huge problem with Bitcoin. The number of decimals can be increased to compensate for the lower market supply.

It is impossible to determine whether a coin is truly lost or just the owner using the address as a cold storage till sometime later. It wouldn't be practical for the network to automatically recover those lost coins.

I don't think the number of bitcoins lost per year will keep increasing. This is a function of bitcoin's price. As bitcoins become more valuable, people will take more care of their private keys and bitcoins in general.

As of current, the number of available Bitcoins are likely increasing as opposed to decreasing, due to the 25 coins being generated every 10 minutes, if I remember correctly.

There are some incidents when people lost massive amounts of Bitcoin for one reason or another, however the rate of loss currently does not outpace the rate of creation.

Once all 21m coins are mined, then there will be amounts of Bitcoin being lost.

i doubt that the number of coins lost per years or per day is so high that it exceeds the number of coins that are created

basically you're telling me that there are more than 3600 coins lost per day, which is absurd and not real at all

also they are seen as a gift, for the value of remaining coins...

Its not that of losing. A large number of bitcoins have got accumulated in certain people.
So the Bitcoins in circulation looks to be decreasing.

According to now bitcoin blocks are making nearly 32000 bitcoin, in block halving It will get reduce into half. So It all about the bitcoin which is gonna in future is only get decrease in half the range not which is already created.

Although you may have a point, it's not going to always keep on people losing their BTCitcoins due to some human errors and for sure in the future, more functionality could save this problem and help users retain their earned BTCitcoins somehow. But again, there are so many useless and untouched BTCitcoins too and it's a waste unfortunately and does have an indirect effect on it's value, I suppose.

As long as you can easily buy btc on exchanges don't worry.
But when you see price rising with great demand maybe, but not!
BTC consists of how many satoshis?
In future you don't need to buy whole btc at all you can buy 100k satoshis and this can be 100$ for example.
Even if total number of coins falling to 5 millions.

i have a logic for this,as i know bitcoin can be lost forever,i mean one bitcoin not gonna death,even that happen,just some bitcoins who will death,and everyday bitcoin born,i mean bitcoin mined,and this is make bitcoins amount grow and decrease.

The number of bitcoins is limited, now he have 25 btc more avaiable every (on average) 10 minuts, on halving we will have 12,5 bitcoins mined every 10 minuts. But we can't know how many btc were lost (users that lost private keys). Its something that we can't control.

yes it is decreasing as people are losing their private keys with bitcoins by accidentally deleting them and so on

Bitcoin losses are surely a fraction of what they were in the early days. Back then they were incredibly plentiful and borderline worthless. A bit ironic really that the highest supply was at a time when no one valued them.

I'm sure a decent number are lost but people will be far more careful. I remember reading about a guy who couldn't find anyone to sell to him on the otc channel. Someone gave him 2000 coins out of pity.

Bitcoins will be more and more, look at BTC China mining farms. May be someone save a lot of BTC, because wait for price increase.  ;)

Yeah right now nobody loses significant amounts of btc. Though I have no doubt that people still lose some satoshis from time to time.

Maybe in a few centuries we'll have to raise a little bit the bitcoin cap just to compensate the btc losses ^^

Yes there would be no way to recover the lost coins, plus some may not be lost but just being held.  I think it's obvious that the total number of bitcoins will decrease over time because of the lost or zombie bitcoins.

Yeah decreased over time, but this amount is insignificant compared to the total number of bitcoins :)

It will reduce more after halving so expect for the price increase.. This is good for others that they want to increase the value of the bitcoin but more stocks are lost.. Some users they forgot using bitcoin from their wallet so few bitcoins are stuck on any wallet.. thats why i think that bitcoin are lost.

considering that many coins are lost and everyday some more bits are lost it may be that in the future the cheer number of bitcoins in circulation become fewer and fewer.

Yeah that's what I was getting at.  In fact once all bitcoins are mined (21 million), there will be a permanent net loss every time someone loses a satoshi.

The net loss could happen every day, depends on how much BTC are lost/destroyed.
The mining of new BTC will become less every 4 years, until the capacity of 21 million is reached.

It could happen that someone loses 10000 BTC at once. This is going to have impact.
But I doubt it is all good. Every lost BTC hurts, as they are needed to keep the transctions flowing.
The less BTC, the less income from transactions.
Nope, loosing them is a bad idea.
And probably one reason why BTC wont survive the future.
A much better approach are DogeCoins.
The inflation will become less and less over time,
and if the capitalization is going to incrase steadily,
this will be the currency of the future...

now it is not decreasing i think because the bitcoins are capped at 21 million, even though people lose bitcoins they still dont disappear and stay in the wallet

The lost bitcoins stay in a wallet but are not recoverable, so basically they are permanently out of circulation.  Even though they are always there, they are not available to use any more.  So the number of "available" bitcoins will start to decrease at some time.

yes im pretty sure there are tons of bitcoins being lost every day. i saw this thread on this forum once where people actually tried to keep track of all the reported losses. and it was a really big number

i dont think so,i just thing bitcoins amount keep increasing because many people mining bitcoins,and bitcoin burial not so many as bitcoin mined.

Now a days not much people are into mining because of increased bitcoin as well electricity price and reduced profit for miners. Due to this many has ended mining. This might cause decrease in bitcoin in the coming years.

The number of bitcoin is limited. Every day, there are loss of certain coins. So the total number will decrease eventually.

I don't see how all those lost coins can influence on bitcoin?
They are as same as in cold wallet ,they're not in circulation.
We have lots ( Enough ) coins in circulation i think.

With rising demand only price can rise. Supply will increase but slower.
This will cause more price rise and more distribution.

Well, when you send btc to an address for the first time, you should send a very little amount (0.0001btc). If you recieve it, then you can send safely to that address. If not, you may have missed tipping the numbers (ctrl+c, ctrl+v helps a lot).
This way I never have lost any bitcoins.
But i've lost with mtgox, even if I think Karpeles still have them, so they aren't "lost" for the entire market.

Yes but always check again your address after you paste.
I heard a lot about viruses who's attacking "clipboard'.

Actually, you can be sure that more coins are created than lost, because if 25 bitcoins were lost each 10 minutes, the supply would not increase and the price would skyrocket.

And it is not a problem at all. It is great because if you 'lost' some coins then all other coins will go up in value a little. It will be like donation to every bitcoin user.
Bitcoin alone ise divisible to 0.00000001, so there being less bitcoins remaining is not a problem for the currency itself as potentially you can create whole ecosystem with only 1 btc.

It's quite possible that this is true and you do have a point here.
But the more demand there is for bitcoin, since there is limited supply the value of bitcoin can only go up this way.

Well it influences the bitcoin price because less coins that can be used means higher prices ;)

Yes price rise is only influenced by rising demand.
How many btc are available at the moment are irrelevant i think,
(suplay is still very good, we have big mining farms )
In future this can be be more interesting but beyond 2020+
(When mining became more expensive).

It is relevant: if there is less bitcoin in the world, that means the value of the world's assets are to be divided between less coins. Then a coin worths more. Logical.

i dont know dude.
and how convinced are you? and what makes you say so. whether there is a theory that can explain it? ???

Well really it is only the supply for people who do not want to use them and just hold them. Price is really just relevant on demand and Bitcoin has the decimal points to be used up to a very small value.

That seems about right. It's the same thing like with precious metals.

I don't understand price have nothing to do with how many coin are missing at the moment ( It's doesn't matter if they are lost or they are in cold wallet).
probably 90% of all coins are in wallets out off exchanges..
Price is manipulated by whales on exchange.
MIners sell and you have constant supply.
The missing coins are irrelevant, real thing that is matter those other coins in wallets.
And if number of coins on exchanges decreasing main cause is people are deciding to store them in wallet so they causing "shortage".
This will more influence in future when mining become "useless" after few more halvings..

This is still POW and you have constant supply,
only if sudden numbers of withdrawals to cold wallets exceeding new coins made by mining..
And this trend continue to rise. Only then.. ;)
This can trigger scarcity but no..Not yet maybe in future. ::)

If most people hold the bitcoin and do not sell in the exchanges, the bitcoin price will rise and not fall.

I dont know exactly how many mined coins were lost until up this year or point.

So its really hard to say, but just remember the 210,000,000 count.

Thats still a grip load of coins even if a good sum got lost. The actual holder of people holding bitcoin is hard too, since the whole buying and selling..

It should be 21,000,000 coins in total. I think we may have lost several million already.

you're right, I've never thought this way of losing bitcoin before. I thought bitcoin doesn't have possibility of losing. but this is true, really. there are some cases of this.

I think roughly 2 million coins have been lost during some of the early days of Bitcoin, I think the loss rate is far lower now and it'll be a little while before there will be another substantial loss again.

People are realising that Bitcoin is actually really valuable, and they're taking steps to protect it.

Yup holding is best one guess instead of investing in bitcoins feature. It's much better to hold the bitcoin till halving atleast.

This are the ones that are lost. Computers that mined long ago where they get a lot of bitcoins in a low price. like 10,000 bitcoins for just how many dollars. Those computers that cannot be opened now have some bitcoins in there which are the lost ones. It is like a locked treasure box with golds from a sunken ship. It needs to be opened again with a key to go back to the circulation.

Can these be opened again?  I didn't think a wallet could be opened if the private key is lost or unknown?

Can't the total number of bitcoins somehow be increased? 21 million is not that much when you think of it.

There are 21 million bitcoins. There are 21 billion milli bitcoin. You can add many decimal point in the unit.

No there is no decreasing, the halving will make it harder to gain bitcoins by mining because they are halving the block size but other than that there is nothing losing.
It can be decreasing of course but this is due the people that are losing their wallet or forgot they have one or because of the people that died and had bitcoins.

Yes this is what I was getting at.  People lose their wallets (private key) so those are lost and can never be recovered.

Yeah and if there is a big amount of bitcoins there and it will be frozen and lost forever and no one can able to retrieve it back. I think this is one of the reason why bitcoin's value sometimes decreasing, guys what are they using in measurements of increasing the bitcoins value?

Bitcoin can be split up into much smaller denominations than just "1 bitcoin" so even if there are dead coins then the denomination will just shrink

And some computers froze or forgotten. I remember that guy where he said he opened his computer again from storage and saw a whooping 11k bitcoin. I dont if it is real. But if it is real then he is rich now.

Definitely, since there could be deleted cold storage wallets or the private keys for a wallet has gone missing.

I think in 100 years, there will be no more than 20 million coins left in circulation. Some will be lost.

can you explain to me,why are bitcoin being lost?
i believe bitcoins amount decreasing because some old bitcoins dead,it why many bitcoin burial,someone already post burial bitcoin site.

Number of btc is increasing every day but input of bitcoin will decrease becouse of halvng halving is whan mining difficoulty icreasing It can be hard time but before could be price pump

Passwords lost, hardware destroyed, sent to wrong address, virus wipes memory, etc. etc. There are a lot of ways to lose your Bitcoin.

In reference to OP- yes, I do think the number of available Bitcoins is decreasing, but not in the sense you imply. I don't think more Bitcoins are being destroyed than created, but I do think more Bitcoins are being hoarded than created. A large, large portion of Bitcoins out there are being hodl'd- these Bitcoins see a velocity of 0, and for all intents and purposes, are unavailable to the community and economy.

The number of coins being lost and out of the circulation is high too, If you consider how many coins where lost or there private keys lost and that number is increasing with the use as well.

The maximum number of bitcoin is fixed and the number of coins is halved every few years so there is a stable degree, I don't think it will lose or decrease in number since it's already designed before.

that is not bitcoin burial, it was bitcoin obituaries. it is how many times bitcoin was called dead it is an FUD attempt not related to this at all.

bitcoin lost forever means losing the private keys to a bitcoin address with bitcoin in it. since nobody can access it without private keys it means they are lost or out of the circulation. it is similar to burning a $100 bill for example

Number of bitcoins is not decreasing, the circulation of bitcoin might have got reduced due to holding of large number of bitcoin by users.

This is true,there are a lot of people that has been holding their coins and it will continue for several months until the halving comes.

Even if the number of bitcoins is not decreasing now, it seems like it will have to be in the future when there are very few being created.  There will always be coins that get lost due to lost private keys, people dying and no one knows the private keys, crashed hard drives, sent to wrong address, etc.

Bitcoin price is increasing without much fluctuations. The decrease in the available bitcoin is just due to the accumulation did by very few users.

It will be good if the number of bitcoin is decreasing as it will also affect the price of bitcoin as the supply is getting less then the price will go up.

i don't think the amount of bitcoin that is lose is that much portion of the whole available supply that can really affect price.

it'll happen; once all the 21 million coins are mined, whatever coin that's already lost will never be replaced.
the number starts to drop and will always drop.

but thats irrelevant, the price will adjust to the number of coins circulating, i guess  ???
if at some point some of those lost coins happen to reappear, in large enough numbers, that could upset the value, temporarily, i guess  ???

Price is always determined by what active supply and active demand is for the coins being traded, which is far smaller than the amount that is accessible, which is smaller than the total amount in existence. As coins are lost, it decreases the accessible supply, which can affect active supply and affect price that way. It's rather a moot point as long as we're still in a highly inflationary period though.

I may not be sure of this. But if the number of available bitcoins decreasing then this would probably because of its highest demand on the market. If people are mostly buying bitcoin and just holding it up for a price increase then that the reason we have shortage of it..

of course the number of total available bitcoins is decreasing with time as people lose their private keys or just send it to unusable addresses

i think that it isnt a bad thing because if more people lose their bitcoins we get a chance to become more rich because the value of the currency rises

Well with the staked message causing me problems to make it before,i had lost 0,03btc to electrum wallet soo i had contributed to the lost coins ,and sure all years besides new coins being mined,there still bitcoins being lost over the time.

I think any lost coins at this point are going to be very negligible. We're going to be in a period of fairly high inflation for years and it will more than dwarf any accidentally lost coins.

If the bitcoin has decreased then it might be just due to the usage of lots of wallet. So when users forgot those wallets it will make the bitcoin stagnant without use.

This happens. I have seen some friends using number of wallets and at times of requirement, they forget about it. This makes those bitcoins valueless.

The number of available bitcoin is not decreasing but the number of bitcoins per day will be decreased after each halving which we hope will impact the price getting higher.

this is about the lost coins not the created amount.
it means losing the wallet or private keys to a bitcoin address with balance because of HDD format, malware,... since nobody can access them ever again they are out of the circulation and are considered lost.
but the amount is nothing compared to the total, so there is nothing to worry about here

So what actually happens when some of the coins are lost in the circulation when the mining of bitcoin has been depleted?
Will there be a program to create the lost coins from all the years past?.

no there is no reason to do so, because those coin that are lost actually help the other gain more value, so it's a bonus on the overall value

We are not worrying here, we are just discussing the number of lost bitcoin will be increased every time as it can't decrease, once gone can't cover the loss.

The lost coins of bitcoin can really profit us right now because with the lost coin there are few in the circulation and it help the price high.

We can't stop the trend of lost coins, but yeah you are right, as stated above from amph more lost coins means that the value of other coins should be increased.

I completely agree with you . I dont think any user who have more than or atleast 1 btc would forget their wallet . If its less than that , then it is negligibly small . so no need to worry about that

I think the price of bitcoin has not risen over the last few months. It is still fluctuating around $420.

Don't know what mean bitcoin "lost". Is it disapeared or what?
I think number of available bitcoins is increasing casue bitcoins are non stop generating by miners.

You mean this?.......   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1097562.msg11694806#msg11694806
   

No, decrease in no. of bitcoins can not happen.
They will always keep on increasing because people will keep on mining bitcoins and their supply will keep on increasing

I think there actually would be a reason to do so, there just is no means to do so from a technical standpoint unless you can break the cypher protecting the whole Bitcoin system. And if you can do that, you have bigger problems than recovering lost coins.

Do you understand this is fundamentally wrong? Bitcoins will not be mined forever. They are capped at 21 million possible coins.

Exactly, the number of Bitcoins is limited. But what will actually happen when we exhaust the mining and rich the limit? Will the price go to the sky or will this be the end of Bitcoin era?

That is not possible. It is set a certain number and that can't change, no matter what.
There are just people who hold or horde a mass amount of coins so it just seems like there are less available but believe me, there are not.
There will be the same amount of coins from the first day they were available for acquisition as will be the last coin is obtained by that one lucky individual  ;D

it actually is decreasing as some people might lose their private keys thus destroy their bitcoins in that wallet

What's going to happen to the price, I don't think anyone can say. The last fraction of a Bitcoin won't be mined until around the year 2200 (last estimate I saw). Of course, by then, the cap of 21 million could be lifted or Bitcoin could be worthless.

But if everything stays the same, the one thing we could count on with the most certainty is that the transaction fees would have to rise dramatically to offset the decrease in block rewards, but this is also true log before we mint the last Bitcoin, as the block rewards will become insignificant long before the last fraction of a coin is mined, and the transaction fees will have to rise to keep the miners mining and the network functioning.

Please note that 21 million is not impossible to change. It is technically possible to scrap the cap, although at this time there is every indication to believe that would urreparably damage Bitcoin, so isn't likely. But that assessment can change over the next 100+ years that bitcoins will be created, assuming the network stays viable the whole time. (With the pace of technological change and innovation, I don't consider that a safe bet by any stretch of the imagination.)

In the next 100+ years there will another technology to replace bitcoin as innovation always overcomes what we currently call so advanced now.
So, as of now I can not see anyone wanting to scrap the cap, even if they could as that would go against what all believe in now: To keep bitcoin and the blockchain going as long as we can without a slow down in it's progress.

Yes i agree with you, i think the number of available bitcoin is always increasing because we have miners here for finding bitcoin. And if decrease  it because bitcoin that left permanent in a wallet that people forget about it.

that's a tiny amount compared to the past, the lost coins nowadays are a tiny fraction, not worth considering

unless someone is doing it on purpose by burning his bitcoin into some un-retrievable address

It is not hard to imagine that every day BTCs are  lost forever because many circumstances. But it is a fact that does not negatively impact because although most "can lost" the remaining can always divide still more to ensure a continuous flow using the 8 decimals or even more in the future .

I think there are going to be a lot of situations where someone dies and no one knows the private keys to their bitcoins or they don't even know that that he had any bitcoins.  There are also people that will lose the private keys, etc.

Well, we don't know if the amount is small or big. But i'm sure one of them must be have many bitcoins lost, it's like a same news about losing his PC that have many bitcoins on it.

It only matters to me that bitcoins are being lost because less bitcoin in the market means the higher price it can get, or so i think. Let's face it, it is like gold, it is limited and can be lost that's why gold is so precious and high priced. So is bitcoin, it is limited to only 21M bitcoins and some are being lose. So, someday demands will get high and prices will have to rise too.

I think it's too early to say how big of an impact on the Bitcoin price the 'lost' coins will have later on but if we adhere to the principle of high demand and low supply the price should be rising in the future regardless of the external speculation that has been going on. It's only a theory though so don't quote me on that  ;)

yes., the number of bitcoins generated per block is set to decrease geometrically, with a 50% reduction every 210,000 blocks, or approximately four years... the year 2016 will see twofold reduction in mining rewards for a block found...

I think so too. According to some people that I heard mining from the past it is really hard to mine a coin. So I dont think a million or 2 is lost  There are still a lot of coins out there and there are much to be mined.

At times the idle coins ion every users wallet has been calculated as a lost coin. This make the users feel as, the available bitcoins were decreasing continuously.

But even idle coins in future will be sold or traded. I don't even know what mean lost coin. It's can't be only if people will start forgeting about bitcoins that they already earned.

When coins are truly lost, then it's forever and they can't be found again.  At some point the number of mined coins will be very small and there will be more lost per year than mined per year.

Read this thread in order to get a clue how many Bitcoins are actually "lost". Lost means there is no control of the private key anymore and therefore the Bitcoins can not be accessed anymore. Maybe theie will be a private key creation by incident sometime in the future which exactly belongs to an account which holds Bitcoins. But this is very unlikely.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1097562.0

quote author=richardsNY link=topic=1370707.msg13943651#msg13943651 date=1455924092]
The number of freshly created Bitcoins will decrease because of the block halving. In Juli this year the second block halving will kick in and lower the block rewards to 12.5 BTC. Can you explain what exactly you mean with Bitcoins being "lost"?
[/quote]

No one differentiates between "lost" coins and "idle" coins. All that matters to the Bitcoin price is the number of coins for sale and the number of coins being bought at any given time (supply and demand). Whether the coins are lost or idle, they are similarly not part of the coins that are for sale (not part of supply) and are similarly not having an effect on the price.

There is a huge difference between "idle" and "lost" coins. Most of my coins are idle. They do not form part of the supply. However, if the price of bitcoins crosses $2,000 all my bitcoins will enter the market. Lost coins will not enter the market, irrespective of the price of bitcoin.

To be honest everything will be on the table if it reaches $1k lol. I know most of us will settle the 1st 1k dream lol.

I think this will be the huge sell off point for most before your price comes.

The first $1k dream realised two and half years ago. But that was not sustainable. I think this time, the $1k is sustainable.

Last time it crossed $1000 but not sustained for a long time. In the same way this time the price might reach around $800 which too will not sustain for a long time.

Yeah with a sudden high price in bitcoin it will not last long as what happen in the past,we will just see about 500-600 in bitcoin price.

The # available shouldnt just soley go based on price though.

If 1 whale were to buy in a bulk order, that doesnt mean anything. Its the tecnical # of block reward you should look at more then anything else.

it is normal because in that time all owner of bitcoin will sell there bitcoin and that will make a high drop for bitcoin price. if they wait for the price to get even higher and sell will be beter but all people are waiting for this long time ago.
like me if the price will hit 800$ i will sell all my bitoin.

For the purpose of determining price, there is no difference between lost and idle coins. Your coins being idle has the exact same effect as them being lost, and that is that they are not factoring in the current price. The market has no ability to differentiate between lost and idle coins, and has no ability to factor in idle coins becoming part of active supply. It only reacts when they do, which is after the fact. So for the purpose of price, there is no difference between lost and idle coins.

The lost coin will reduce the current supply. The idle coin will be counted towards to the total available coins.

what excatly definition of "lost bitcoin"? i have bitcoin in my wallet,and if i not open it until several years,it mean same with wallet who lost the password,
is my bitcoin lost forever?

Yeah but if you die without letting anyone know the password of the wallet, the coins are lost forever.

Thats pretty given.

But what will be intresting is despite the lost coins with the 21 mill hard code, will the remaining coins available give off a higher value regardless.

I think it is still at the state of an idle coin. Passwords can still be recovered as long as that certain computer can still be revived. If you are using own wallet, but if it is online I guess that coin is still alive and if you dont want to get it anymore that certain website will own it.

There is a difference between available supply and market supply. Available supply is what is possible to be accessed (i.e. Not lost) while available supply is what is actively seeking a buyer. Available supply does not impact price, only market supply does.

I think the number of available bitcoins is increasing, because there are many miners out there. And if bitcoins decreasing i think it will affect the price of bitcoins.

Bitcoin will never deacreasing cause of miners it's ture. But a lot of people are holding bitcoins and it's a problem what nobody can solve. Everyone want more money.

it is actually decreasing if peoplle lose their bitcoins by losing their private keys or sending it to addresses that dont actually have any owners thus the total number of bitcoins is decreasing in my opinion

though i doubt that it is a bad thing that does not allow people to use their bitcoins in a proper way, i think its even better because it makes the price grow as there are less bitcoins to sell

Not only people hold bitcoins others also burning bitcoins by sending to a burn address and there is also people sending to the genesis address or others assumed as satoshis address.

It's more likely Bitcoin becomes obsolete before the above scenario ever has a chance to happen. Even when the reward is a paltry .09 btc per block, that's roughly 13 new bitcoins produced per day, and we're still some 30 years away from that point.

Yes I agree with this, miners are not responsible for the decrease of bitcoin. People were very eager to collect coins and save it for halving, this is the reason for decrease of coins.

For now and for most of the coming years, the total number of lost bitcoins are less than the number of bitcoins produced in a day I think, maybe in a week, but not more. So we can say that the total supply is still increasing, but (not a lot) less faster.

As far as I know the maximum bitcoin will not increase. There is just a number to be maxed out and will stop there. And I think it will take long to fully drain it all and bitcoin halving will happen so it will be much longer.

It's also possible (I would even call it likely) that in the future, Bitcoin's economics prove unsustainable as transaction fees required to propagate the network would become so high to keep miners around in the face of declining block rewards that the 21 million coin cap is eventually scrapped. That is, of course, assuming Bitcoin stays viable long enough to reach that point.

There are many new & large BTC mining farms, so I think BTC market will expand. Look at photos from China BTC mining farms, who else can do this ? China have cheap electricity, therefore it will be Nr.1 bitcoin mining country.  ;)

I think the OP is pointing out that some people misplace their private keys and so those bitcoins are lost and can never be accessed again.  Those are lost or zombie bitcoins and that total will increase.  So the question is whether the lost/zombie bitcoins are growing faster than the mined bitcoins.

Yes, that is what OP is talking about, but no, this is not going to be a credible concern in the next (at least) 30 years.

There are many people who lose their bitcoins by losing their private key and decreasing bitcoins is not bad for people who own bitcoin but trends does not show this.

correct,losing private key mean losing our bitcoin,and people rare to lose their private key,its mean this is not make bitcoin decrease so high,its rare to happen,its why bitcoin keep on their high amount.

Another bad thing and risk for bitcoin owner is the risk of losing coins for people who invested on online wallets!

I dont think its the # decreasing.. its more like the block rewards are decreasing lol.

Which makes people hoard like theres no tomorrow type of mindset.

This is the disadvantage (and STRENGTH!!) of such a highly extremely secure private keys we have.

Whenever a coin is lost, it is equivalent to having it's value distributed evenly to other circulating coins. Similarly, if a coin is ever found/recovered, it will regain it's value from other coins.

Maybe this is one of the reasons Satoshi is keeping 1M coins to himself...?

If those coins come into the market, 2 things will happen.

The supply will increase tremendously, the market could crash due to that.
Satoshi's identity will be revealed. The community would know who to turn to. The optimism related to that would probably result in a bull run.

if that's correct, the number of bitcoin produced decreases every 210,000 it means someday the price of bitcoin will soar higher than we've ever seen.

That's not true, the lost bitcoins won't make any impact on the price of the bitcoin. The technology never consider those lost coins into the count. Only the production for the entire system is already a fixed one.

People talking about bitcoins that idle on wallets of people who wont use it. But bitcoins mining everyday and we have a good stock of bitcoins now so no need to panic :)

There is no need to panic since there are many bitcoin out in the market and we are still not half way of the bitcoin that is needed to be collected.

Yes, there are many miners but I do not know that if many of people lose their bitcoin as a result of damage of their offline wallet or events such as dying or losing online wallet account, password, what happens to available bitcoin?

for sure there are bitcoins being lost every day. idk if the amount being lost is greater than the amount being mined. imo i dont think it is.
but in the future the overall number of bitcoins is only going to go down which is why many people invest in bitcoin.

Roughly 3600 btc mined every day, so no, the amount of lost coins every day isn't even close to comparable to the number of newly created coins.

And then there are/will be those who die before having passed on their wallets/private keys to their surviving family members/heirs. Imagine having any significant amount of bitcoins stored anywhere and then unexpectedly dying in a car accident and no way for your family or whoever you would have wanted to have you bitcoins to gain access to them.

Make sure your loved ones will be able to access your bitcoins in the event you pass away.

I think that "lost coins" are only dust in actual btc environment....
Ok in a long terms there are many and many people that are going to lost priv key, access to online account, wrong address etc...
But as a total of 1% of total coins we can lost or more? Well this sums is worthless even....

And do you think that what percentage of current will be added to bitcoin environment and changes total balance of bitcoin.

While it's true that bitcoins lost everyday is less compared to newly mined ones, it is still something. If you look at the total value of total bitcoins lost already, it's already a staggering $700+ million worth of bitcoins (according to my research, that is). That's really something.

Yeah very true as many as miners the quantity of bitcoin is decreasing year by year and thats a very bad news for miners because the difficulty of it will be higher and small profit will be gain for mining and for this halving coming specalution of less volume of bitcoin and it will decreased again but the price will up maybe 700$-1000$.

Exactly! And even if the number of the lost coins were greater so what? How this can be a bad thing or something that put Bitcoin in danger? I think even if half of the coins existed were lost Bitcoin would still function normally as it is now.

Yeah it runs based on the technology without considering the mined coins. At the same the circulation of bitcoin is surely affected or reduced. This will have some impact over the bitcoin price.

I think the percentage of circulation will increase in the future. That is because more people will use it.

I wasn't aware of this. So what you are saying is that eventually mining for it will be pointless? It will decrease to a point that it will take a year to mine just 1 bitcoin.

most people won't lose their bitcoin, i doubt the amount of bitcoin lost is anywhere near the amount of bitcoin mined. And for the next couple of decades it will remain that way.

And even if the number of bitcoins diminishes as long as the demand increase it is fine. The value of bitcoin will grow and that is our target. To have a very high price bitcoin and enjoy it.

Id say at very best we are going to be limited to at most 20 million bitcoins if satochis really are lost. Even if his arent there have been a good few lost along the way and more will be lost still. As others have said, its good for everyone else as it should push price up due to demand.

None of the user loses their hardly earned bitcoin in any critical situation. As every user has several wallet some might have got accumulated in some wallet which has been used rarely.

I think the number of bitcoin is increasing because there is a miner that mine bitcoin so it is increasing, but other says it decreasing, by forgotting their password in their bitcoin wallet, but i think that coin is not called decrease i think we can get them back by requesting in the site that your wallet is hacked or you forgot your pass you can get your btc again.

I beg to disagree that someday, the number of bitcoins lost will be more than the number of bitcoins mined as there is a continuous increase in both. The number of bitcoins lost per day is dust compared to the number of bitcoins mined. However if you are saying that the "lost" bitcoins are those that are accumulated and being held into an unused wallet, I wouldn't consider those "lost" just yet as it still exists, only that it doesn't undergo any transaction.

No one can get bitcoins back if you have a paper wallet and lose the private key or you die and no one knows the private key.  So some bitcoins are lost forever.  Also people make mistakes by sending bitcoins to the wrong address that no one owns.  Those are also permanently lost.  I'm sure that in the early years when bitcoins weren't worth much, there were a lot that were lost.

That is true. With that very low count of coins I guess it will be better if its price is higher. The much rare of it the much value or price right? Then when it is all depleted then circulation of coins will come.

There's no need to fear that the total supply will ever get expanded because:

1) It would instantly crash the price so there's no incentive to do so
2) It will never be a problem to run Bitcoin no matter how little Bitcoin's are available

SO in other words, Bitcoin will only appreciate with time, no real risks of holding long term, at least definitely not related to the total supply ever being modified because it makes no sense to do so.

So when will we reach that point where there are more bitcoins being lost than are being mined?  I know it's hard to estimate that, but that could be a turning point in the value of bitcoin where we could see the price increase more.

It will be possible in 20 - 30 years i think cause everyone now trying to mine and a lot of people spending bitcoins, we have cycle so nowdays more bitcoins mines than lost.

I don't think bitcoin price drops due to the lost bitcoin on the event of mining. During the process of mining a very small percentage gets lost which doesn't have any effect on price.

it will happen when the mined bitcoin will be so low in number that would not affect the value in any case already, so i would not bother with it

and anyway compared tot he current amount in circulation is still a tiny fraction

Yeah I also think like that, the amount that lost is in fraction it wont be disrupt or affect bitcoin existence or bitcoin price for now, so it still safe and stable to used bitcoin

I think the number of available is increasing but when happening bitcoin halving it decreases because they hide many bitcoin amount so it decreasing because they hide it, and hold it

That is right. I hide many bitcoins, it is not on the market. So it will not increase the supply and suppress the price.

Technically though those coins are not really "lost", they are still in the system but are simply unreachable. I wonder if there are people out there researching ways to tap into these forgotten stashes/addresses. For those well versed in Bitcoin code, are there any scenarios at all where this could be even remotely possible?

Imagine if many people hold bitcoin , ofcourse bitcoin total amount will be decrease.
Also big company starting use bitcoin will affect on bitcoin value so it will increase market demand !

All that matters to the Bitcoin price is the number of coins for sale and the number of coins being bought at any given time (supply and demand).

Could people be hoarding?

Is that even possible with bitcoin? And how?

I keep wondering what will happen to bitcoins when all the 21m coins have been mined. Does that mean the gradual end of bitcoin trading, or will another program emerge that will generate new coins? I keep wondering... :-\

Quantity of bitcoins is decreasing due to some bitcoin holders are hiding it and waiting for the price increase of bitcoin.

There should be some kind of law that prohibits the hoarding of bitcoin. This is dangerous to economic balance!

I guess there is but I'm not sure about that I forgot if there is a particular law about that.
Yes, that is dangerous to the economic balance as other bitcoin wallet address with bitcoins forgets their private key and it will be lost forever.

Bitcoins are def decreasing, i know myself that i have lost a few bits before. and i am sure there are many like me. :'(

Yes, at some point, only fractions of a Bitcoin will be produced with every block. I wouldn't say mining is pointless. It's necessary to maintain the network. When block coins drop, mining fees will necessarily have to increase to keep people mining. In this sense, it is likely that fees will eventually be so expensive as to make Bitcoin unviable.

Totally disagree. At the point where bitcoins are not be mined sufficiently to offset the cost of propagating the network, mining fees will have to rise dramatically to offset the loss of block coin generation income. In order to keep a decentralized network, the fee increase could be such that the only way to keep Bitcoin viable is to increase the cap on total coins, otherwise the mining fee would be so high as to fldrive people away from using Bitcoin all together because it's just too expensive. Either way, your conclusion that there will never be a problem is not accurate at all. Bitcoin's Board can't even effectively decide how to manage the minor problem of the needed block size increase. It gives me very little faith they can be trusted to handle an even more dangerous issue such as this.

Bitcoin is all about decentralization and freedom. There would be nothing more antithetical to Bitcoin than a law that prohibits saving.

Yes it is.

People always forget their passwords, send their money to the wrong address, get their computer broken etc etc...

The available number of bitcoins are decreasing every day.

It is a fact that the more time passed the more bitcoin are lost, but the number of bitcoin in total is not decreasing because many blocks are mined everyday which is greater than the lost bitcoins(sending to wrong address, lost private key etc..)

Besides, there are so many bitcoins out there that losing however many we have right now wouldn't make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. Especially considering how having a lower overall supply would in fact just drive the price upward, so it's a win-win scenario.

i dont know,people mine bitcoin,transact it and using bitcoin daily,bitcoin just move from address to other address,just some bitcoins dead by losing private keys,its rare to happen.

I dont agree.... saying that bitcoins are decreasing is the same as saying number of lost bitcoins is higher then generated bitcoins. and its probably not.

Wait, wait. I dont think we are on the same page here.

Available bitcoins are the one's being mined now right? Right this moment. Yes it is decreasing. I have read that there is a limit to the maximum mined bitcoin so if there is a limit? then it will be depleted right?

Not exactly. There are 25 bitcoins created every 10 minutes. In a couple months, that will drop to 12.5 new bitcoins every 10 minutes. Then in four-ish years, it will drop to 6.25 new bitcoins every ten minutes, and so on every four years or so.

As you can see, it will take a very, very long time before the number of coins being "lost" ever surpasses new Bitcoin creation. We are nowhere near it now, and we won't be for the foreseeable future.

When the bitcoin becomes more valuable, people will take care of their bitcoin properly. So the lost coins will be fewer.

It can be possible because people are just holding on to there Bitcoins and not spend them this causes some problems because money has to go round. But people are creating Bitcoins by mining them. But I believe that more bitcoins are lost then created.

So while i read this you mean we all have to mine more bitcoins or they will all be gone.
But if everyone mines their coins there will be a limit and no one can mine any more or doesn't work like that?

You sure about that i thought more people used to mine these year because it´s
barely for free. You only need to invest in a pc. don´t know if your information is correct because there isn´t a limit for coins?

But after halving number of bitcoin will increase so fast cause everybody will try to sell it when price is high. If you want to buy bitcoins better to do it now.

yes its might causing bitcoin amount decreasing,and also losing private key is some of many cause of decrease,but i wondering how much bitcoin have lost or died?anyone can tell me about that?

After the days of halving bitcoin price will go higher as the circulation of bitcoin increases. But if the price goes high every one starts selling all the bitcoin hold. This would surely give additional circulation.

Even with more coins in circulation, the question is are more being lost than are being mined.  I think that is the thing that is the point of the question.  The coins mined is decreasing but people are still losing coin because of mistakes.

there are many bitcoin out in the market and we are still not half way of the bitcoin that is needed to be collected.

You dont know what you are talking about, the halving will reduce the speed  of circulation, not heighten it, do ou know what the halving is?

Well with bitcoin being worth such it keeps being a stupid way to loose them,i my self has lost some 0,03 because i download a wallet provider and i didnt record the keys to acess the wallet ,my pc had a huge problem,and the files just gone,result i had the adress but i couldnt use the money on it.Soo we now should take care our bitcoins and save or store all information required to recover the wallet as well to make backup to avoid any future problem.And yes mining making the number decrease as some stupids moments some of us make or had made with our coins.

wrong, we are already at 15-16M so more than half way, to the full supply, which is roughly 21M

For the first halving, the supply of bitcoin is already 50% of the total supply. After this halving, there are only 25% new coins left.

Full supply isn't roughly 21 million. It's exactly 21 million.

That's true it is exactly 21 million and I have read a post that most people that accumulate the most bitcoins are Chinese.
And they are the miners that mining it most.

They may be mining much of it, but I don't know about accumulating it. Miners have to constantly sell in order to pay the expenses of mining.

no it's not, it's almost 21M, exactly 20999999.97690000

Keep in mind despite half way being there already to the hard code.

Bitcoins are always constantly being bought and sold daily, so you shouldnt worry too much about running out. Unless there was a huge directory of the majority coins counted that are held in cold storage only then I`d be looking into it as a shortage supply situation.

How are the coins decreasing and how to people keep count of this. Maybe it is because of the fact that people are holding on to there Bitcoins for the future and not spend them.
This way the Bitcoins do not move enough.

I think the distrubition and available bitcoins today are 15,500,000 bitcoins on the economy is now circulating.
I just got that information at this link : https://blockchain.info/charts/total-bitcoins

The actual number in circulation will be smaller than that 15.5 millioni coins. Most of in the cold storage.

You are quite right on the sense that lots of bitcoin are getting lost because people forget their email combination of online wallet and don't put their backups in secure place. Some bitcoin are also burned on early days of creation and its like we will never see those 1million around bitcoin that satoshi is supposed to have. So there will be big gap between available bitcoin and spendable bitcoin at any time which is actually increasing day by day.

Yes, it is important to remember that the number of coins "circulating" is greatly smaller than the number that exist, and the number actively traded is even smaller than the number circulating. And most importantly, it is he number trading that determine the price. If all the coins that existed were actively being traded back and forth to fiat, btc price would be substantially lower than it is now.

There can be only 21 million bitcoins. Even if you lose bitcoins, the number of available bitcoins isn't decreasing because the lost bitcoins are still there, they just can't be found.

I think the point of the post is that if those lost bitcoins can't be found then they are really gone.  Yes technically they exist but are completely useless so they are not available anymore.

Yeah it is possible that the available Bitcoins are decreasing because people are just holding on to there coins so there are not many to spend. If Bitcoin decides to make more then the value will go down.

how could it be? I mean a wallet can't create itself, right? So what happen with the nobody-crontrol wallet?

A wallet is just a list of addresses and the associated private keys. So if you lose the key to an address, btc can still be sent to it, but never retrieved. It is in a sense "lost" forever.

I think it is not decreasing, people are saying it is decreasing because many of us are holding it.
So tendency, lesser bitcoins are now circulating in the market because most of it are stored in wallet addresses.

I will keep that in mind. I hope some here read this too. It wil run out, Yes, but the movement of it should never end. Yes we can keep all the bitcoin we want now. But in the future there should be this community that will let each of us to use it for its movement. Never to keep so much.

It is possible that the number of available Bitcoins are decreasing because so many peope are just holding on to there coins for the future. This means that there are less coins that people can actually spend.

This is not the same as lost coins. By "decreasing," OP means coins that are lost and not recoverable. Coins that are not in circulation are not lost.