Bitcoin Forum

NEWS BITCOIN - The Amount of Bitcoin Is Scarcer Than We Think

There will be only 21 million Bitcoins, and more than two-thirds of those have been distributed to the public. However most people don’t take into consideration that many of those Bitcoins have either been lost or purposely discarded.

For instance, in November of 2013, the media had reported on a man who had lost 7,500 bitcoins in a landfill. James Howells is one of many who have lost thousands of Bitcoins by accident.

In May of 2016, Bitcoin.com reported on a man who lost US$67,000 worth of Bitcoin while upgrading his computer. The fact is many people have misplaced Bitcoins due to accidents and user error. Mistakes like this have caused significant amounts of the cryptocurrency to be lost forever. Whether it’s computer errors, lost paper wallets or forgotten brain wallets, a non-trivial amount of Bitcoin is gone forever.

READ MORE >>> https://news.bitcoin.com/amount-bitcoin-scarcer-think/ (https://news.bitcoin.com/amount-bitcoin-scarcer-think/)

" There are some economists who believe this system could lead to a deflationary spiral. The argument is that an economic cycle involving deflation adds to market depressions and a possible currency collapse."

So going Bitcoin, we are f$%%ed .... and going the Fiat route with inflation spiralling out of control, we are f#$%ed too. What these guys

failed to mention was that Bitcoin could be increased by subdividing it even more. There are only 21 000 000 bitcoins, but how many

Satoshis are there.... more than enough for everyone on this planet.  ;)

I have seen more people getting worried about the number of coins, but they clearly don't realize that in reality there are more than enough coins for everyone as Bitcoin is easily divisible into smaller pieces. These articles are made by people thinking to understand what Bitcoin is, and what it can do, while in reality they don't understand it.

At some point, the total number of bitcoins available will decrease (if that hasn't happened already). The number of bitcoins mined every day is decreasing by design but the number of bitcoins being lost is most likely increasing. At some point there will be a net loss of bitcoins every day. This could be a good thing if it makes the value increase.

Funny but I agree.  Most articles are self thought, biased and hastily done without researching. They are more focused on the impact of their structure to the one reading it (they prefer readers to panic) rather than the fact and logic behind what they are posting.  Though OP is right that most Bitcoins that are lost either by unretrievable / unrepairable HDD crashes, lost wallets are gone forever.  So if we think that in the future when all BTC is mined there will be 21m Bitcoin in circulation, maybe we need to think again ^^,. It is smaller than what we think.

It is true we will never run out of 0.000000000025 BTC, but who really wants to get paid in such small amounts?
Someday there will be a mania based on people wanting to own "at least one whole Bitcoin", and we will see huge price increases.

1 million to Satoshi, and another 1 million combined for all other stuff. We are looking at 2 million BTC that are never moving. So we will have less than 19 million bitcoins in circulation, probably only half of that is in "public" circulation in the exchanges, the rest are in cold storage or something.

there are many "lost" coins
whenever anyone loses his private key his bitcoins are effectively lost,taken out of circulation and most likely never accessible again
I think it could amount to up to 10-20% of the total number
add the coins that rarely or never move and it could be some massive figure
nothing to worry about,though as the market would react supply/demand style pricewise and there is no risk to run out of coins because of denomination
21mil*100mil=ALOT

To add to the coins which are lost, there are coins which are 'burnt' or thrown into digital wishing wells.
The only effect that losing coins has, is to increase the value of other coins in circulation.

I agree that this  lost coins will add more value to the remaining coins.  Due to the law of supply and demand, having demand pressure greater than sell pressure simply means the coin will be bought in higher price value.  But  even with only 19 million which is subdivided into 100 million satoshi per 1 BTC.  I think we have enough satoshi for all the people in the world.

I was happy to get into BTC years ago.  I am sure every enthusiast has wondered about the lost coin question?

Dream/Fantasy thought:

If I went to sleep and woke up in the morning with every single lost coin in my BTC wallet, just how many would I have?  Truth is we will never have that answer, but it sure is something to wonder and dream about isn't it?  LOL!!

May I know how you calculated that? Either way, if there are really 19 million coins that may find its way to the public circulation, then it's more than enough for people to own a decent amount of that.

The thing is that people calculate like this; There are 7 billion people in the world, and if you then spread 19 million coins through all these people, then they can't hold 1BTC. Dohhhh.... First important thing to realize is that all people in the world will never dive into Bitcoin. It will be a massive challenge to even reach 1% of that at some point in the future.

Another important thing is that the higher the price goes, the lower the amounts are that people can afford. And exactly this, is already happening. In that regard, there will be more coins available for people in the coming years. And this is basically something that will continue to happen till the price at some point can't go higher anymore because it reached its full peak.

Lost coins will be recovered in 10 years by quantum computers.

From your calculation, of the about 9.5 million Btc in circulation, any portion of it that are lost, would no doubt inflate the price of bitcoin because of the scarcity that is sure to entail. I think lost of coin ought to be a real cause for worry because bitcoin being a digital money, is so easy to lose and given that it is near impossible to recover lost coins, we may end up walking on tight ropes.

does that mean recovering private keys? if that's possible then they're gonna be recovering something completely and utterly worthless.

I didn't calculate. I just made a wild guess. Maybe it's an "educated" guess. Whatever, it is still a guess.

Instead of counting people, count the M1 supply of worldwide money. Or at least the money supply of some small country. That's what may happen to bitcoin. Current market cap is $10 Billion USD. US M1 is 3 Trillion. (or 3000 Billion.)

A $30 Billion market cap is not unrealistic. I just can't predict when that will happen. Maybe in 2017, or 2018. Or 2020.

Sometime in the next several years, Bitcoin will switch to quantum-resistant alternatives of SHA-256, RIPMD-160, and ECC. Then you simply have to move your bitcoins from the old addresses to the new addresses. Moved coins will be ok, but the rest (including lost coins) will be vulnerable.

Those lost coins will get moved to new addresses which are quantum-resistant. So ... only the coins from genesis block will remain unspendable.

what makes you think that quantum computers will be used to solve bitcoin blockchain hashes :)
if we progress enough to introduce quantum computing,humanity should transcend to a whole different level
I don't see it happen next 10 years

The coins that are not moved within a specified limit of time should be sent back into the mainstream. Their owners probably have lost the keys.

This is good for all holders, burnt coins and lost coins only make our bitcoin more valuable. It would be interesting but I am sure impossible to know the amount of coins in existence.

This is the stupidest article wtf? Ok so out of what 15million bitcoins let's say 1 or 2million are missing. That's still 1,300,000,000,000,000 Satoshis. If each of those is worth a tenth of a cent ($1,300,000,000,000 market cap = $100,000 per btc) We can always break a bitcoin down to 16 decimals. But anyways at that point we'll be too busy on our yachts to worry about this petty crap.

Not a big deal to be seen here. Price will simply increase and then 0,1BTC will be worth 1BTC of today.

seriously?
how would you feel if your lovely shinies stored for future use suddenly decided to change their allegiance without any reason
just because someone somewhere thought it might be good to set the "lost" coins free?
I'd be pissed

As soon as you find out that Bitcoin has a new quantum-resistant alternative of whatever cryptographic primitives we are using, consider sending your existing coins to new addresses, before someone else does.

Just keep up to date on core development, you'd only have to look maybe once a month if you're too busy to look every couple of weeks. And even if you don't look at your wallet for a couple of years, your coins in cold storage that were never spent would probably be safe.

If that was able to be accomplished it should scare the #@$@ out of you.  BTC has to be MATH controlled or its doomsday to our system.  The notion of saying "move your coins by XX date or we'll do it for you" is horrifying at best.  I don't see how this could be mathematically accomplished, and that would mean a large Gov could come along with "super math" and take control.  I am hoping Satoshi's advanced math holds up for the duration.

We load coins into artwork.  Most of it will not move, and some of the smaller amounts are probably forgotten about.  It may not be much, but it is probably in the $3k-5k over the last couple of years.