Bitcoin Forum

If some people has lots of bitcoin in their offline wallets and they die or lose memory.

Then those coins will be out of circulation right? Or is there any way to recover them?

They'll be out of circulation and are lost forever. Maybe you could try to brute force your way into them, but it's unlikely the lost coins will see the light of day with Bitcoin's security. Either way, it's one of the cons of decentralization. You're in charge of security and safe keeping and you yourself are the only one accountable.

Why would you worry about that? The less bitcoins in circulation the higher the price. < based on a reduction in supply > This is why most people are saying the <1 000 000> Satoshi coins should stay out of circulation, because it will have a huge impact on the supply, if it was dumped on the market.

A lot of bitcoins are lost every year and this just increase the scarcity of the coins. ^smile^

no private key, no bitcoin.

yes, if the private keys related to any sum of bitcoin is lost due to anything like hardware failure, human mistakes, death,... they will be lost. and there are no way to recover those coins except to try and recover the private keys for example to try recovering your hardware or see if the deceased has any will.
however the amount is not that much to raise any concerns.

That is not a problem but a strength of the coin.
It matters not because in the future it can be decided to simply divide every bitcoin to 20 decimal or more so it will simply increase the value of every bitcoin.

They will be out in the circulation until someone created a software that runs in a super fast computer that can brute force hack their private keys. And right now it's extremely improbable, the security of the blockchain is way to hard to hack. So if you'd​ lost your keys, you will not recover it. This is the common mistakes of early birds in bitcoins, they taught that thousands of bitcoin is just a waste so they just threw their keys out. Now it is worth millions of dollars but they can't recover them.

Yes, that has already happened and it will keep happening but the good news is that those who keep their bitcoins and don’t forget their keys will have more value. If there is the same demand or more and there are less btc, price goes up.

There will be no problem for the use of bitcoin tough, because even if, like 15 million bitcoins get lost, satoshis will be used. Bitcoins could be subdivided even more so there would be enough bitcoin currency to be used by millions and millions of people around the world.

They'll be out of circulation. Maybe you could try to brute force your way into them, but it's unlikely the lost coins will see the light of day with Bitcoin's security. Either way, it's one of the cons of decentralization.

Its like you're in real life and you die with your wallet. And no one touched your pockets or anything. You'll have your money out of circulation and that there woould nobody be able to get them for you. If there is a way the user might hve to expressly detail it somewhere so that another can have access on it.

They'll be out of circulation. Only way to retrieve them is private keys. Unless anyone has it, nobody can do anything with those Bitcoins and will remain as it is. This have happened to many people who bought their Bitcoins in 2009-2010 and didn't expect much from it and now have forgotten their private keys. I have a friend who had a similar experience. He has almost 100 BTC in a wallet and now he has forgotten his wallet keys. This might not be a problem right now. But a backlog might be created this way after like 50-100 years from now if Bitcoin existed.

To get access to Bitcoins you need to know corresponding private keys, and usually they are stored in special wallet files or printed on paper wallet. So it really depends on how that person was storing them - the easiest case if there is a paper wallet or a flash drive with unencrypted wallet file or a piece of paper with a wallet seed written on it. All this allows to easily recover bitcoins. But usually wallet file in encrypted, so you would have to crack it, which will depend on how strong the password was. But in the future (20-30 years from now), the AES cypher might be easily broken, so recovering bitcoins from wallet files will become viable. But aside from that, there's no methods to recover bitcoins, because there's no central authority to appeal to. And also, it's not a problem, because bitcoin can be split into 100 000 000 units, so there's no shortage of money supply.

If bitcoin can create more decimals then why they do forking?

Yes of course it will disappear, no ways to recover and not be counted, but it will not give a big effect for bitcoin circulation unless all bitcoin users around the world lose their memories  :D - could not it all happen ? - I hope it will never happen.

Well, I think that's why everyone wants to know exactly how much are lost. I think that, psychologically, when the market considers the price, we are considering a supply of 21 million coins. We all know that can't be the true supply, given all the lost coins, especially from the early days. But nobody really knows just how much BTC is being hoarded vs. BTC that simply will never move--ever.

Are Satoshi's coins "lost?" It could make a difference of, what, a few % of the entire supply? Pretty huge difference if a single BTC might be worth millions someday.

The problem of the owner's death is even noticed in official bitcoin website. Pretty sure someone will make a service to help with that.
Untill that time every lost coin just add price to the other ones.

actually it is nothing like in real life at all!
in real life if you die and have money in your pocket anybody can take it and use it, that money won't go out of circulation. it just goes into another pocket very simple.
and besides, in real life when you are talking about money (or cash) it means the centralize thing without any cap. the government can and will print more of it anytime they want. but with bitcoin you won't get anything more than the same 21 million that was planned on day 1.

all activities must have the risk of putting bitcoin in an offline wallet, if the use of death or loss of memory ascertained bitcoin owned will disappear from market circulation, and that also makes bitcoin increasingly rare existence and cause bitcoin prices are increasingly high as well because the more rare .

There will likely be lots out of circulation and likely never used again. Imagine if you could uncover them though, you could retire instantly ha.

There is so many incidents like this, one losing the key or the only way to gain access for their wallet and you can see some in blockchain who has so much bitcoin then suddenly stop and there is no any transaction that follows. They even search for it some wallet that has so much bitcoin then will sell it for money, even though it cannot be access unless you has something to remember.

It has already been suggested that hacking bitcoin is not possible for next few decades but if it is then bitcoin price will be very high. Some will surely get rich.

Bitcoin that they have will be stored and no one can open or access it without any access like private keys. It's like we keep a treasure and hidden away, then the treasure is ultimately not found by anyone. That bitcoin, bitcoin can only be accessed in a certain way and the owner has full access to the bitcoin it has.

Since all wallets take high security especially block chain, So its hard to break password. They'll be out of circulation and may lost forever. We should take a password hints in order to remind it. Private keys have very strong security but they should not be shared with anyone.

I do believe in the quotes that When People died everything is worthless. Well, people always earn money and save money for the future without knowing that life has its limit. People spend their lives to seek money, to become rich and become happy while living on earth but they don't realize that life is short and they are not prepared on the time that they will be die. So, even though they spend a lot of time and effort in seeking bitcoin and their wallet are quite millionaire well all of that are going to be wasted when they are not going to make plans while they living.

Yes it will be out of circulation if somebody having good number of bitcoin and want to keep for long term it’s better to make some document about that and keep it as property document so that atleast their family get benifit.

If there would be a way to detect amount of "out of circulation" bitcoins, then I'd like to know how many actual coins are still in loop.

There was a news about a murder at my country this week. Someone has been killed and apparently they tried to steal his bitcoins. News source says the attempt was unsuccessful. I wonder how they were able to retrieve result of steal attempt.

If policemen asked them whether they were able to steal, they would simply say "no". But in reality, they could have access to private keys, if victim has printed them somewhere in his location.

Well I am just a little bit curious myself too. What if we are already at that point where, supply is decreasing, demand increasing and price also increase. What will happen if only few people hold most of the bitcoin for themselves? Would it not affect the price too because there will be less people that will acquire those? Will there be no way to create more?
That was a very interesting news. That is the cons of bitcoin, security is low.

I don’t believe it’s possible to retrieve a bitcoin without the owner. But, I believe if the bitcoin is stored online in an exchangers platform, then it might be quite possible for the exchanger to move the Bitcoin from the current account to a different one.

I’m not really sure of that. By the way, even hackers can bypass some security systems (not recommending such).

hmmm it depends if someone knows how to access someone's lost coins due to death or just like you are saying lost of memory, but I don't think if it will be back to circulation if no one knows, it will be forever there since offline wallets are very secured and no access through online.

Althought this mght look like an disadvantage for the bitcoin users, it's not really. There are too parts of it, if you lost them, then you lost them forever because there is no retrieving process for them. You look out for what's yours. In the other end, it might actually have a positive effect on BTC value, that could make it higher, because less BTC in circulation, and if there is a big demand, the value will surely go up!

There is no way to recover them, unless there was a way to brute force the entire private key of the address containing these funds(next to impossible, many times more impossible than hacking into a bank account).

This is why even though bitcoin is technically inflationary, the supply of bitcoin will actually drop once block rewards become less than the amount of bitcoin just lost through losing the recovery seed or private keys.

And this is why it's so important to always keep backups of your recovery phrase/keys. You don't want to be in that situation, trust me.

This happened in the past when bitcoin has no value yet and the owners neglected their private keys or hard disk was destroyed. They never recovered their bitcoins. Thus, there will be less bitcoins to own or circulate that may push the price further up.

the coins will be gone more like forever.

They're gone, and I would be surprised if anyone finds them. With physical assets like gold it would be easier to find.
For Bitcoin, someone who lived with the deceased could find the private keys, but if the person don't know what Bitcoin really is, and how it works, chances are high that this person would throw it away.

At the end of the day, less coins in the market make Bitcoin more scarce, and help the price.

Definitely right, that bitcoin would be out of the circulation and there ia no way to recover it. Your bitcoin is at your own hand, thus it might not be controlled by anyone. The situation is just the same once you burn a paper cash. It will no longer be recovered anymore and it is considered invaluable. The good thing is, once large volume od bitcoin get out of the circulation the bitcoin value will rise. And absolutely an advantage to us, and thats what we hope the pumping and that situation may cause it to happen.

yes, lost, like you throw your money into the toilet. My opinion is no one can restore the wallet for now, even using brute force way with the most advanced super computer. the less the amount of Bitcoin but the fixed demand or (should always be) increased then the Bitcoin value will affected.

You are right, there would be no circulation on that one.Recovering those coins is not possible which we can consider that those coins are lost forever or stationary this is why if we do have bitcoin incase we die we should secure out and grant them into your loved ones once you passed out.

Actually if a person dies, the Bitcoin wallet would be with him on his grave because no one can ever use your Bitcoin unless you're the owner or you have the private key to access it. I have read an article that there's a person who are claiming that he has 30k Bitcoins but he can't retrieve his private key so pity for him. If ever we loose our private key then it's the end of our Bitcoin wallet. This will definitely a strong proof that Bitcoin can never be accessed by someone else except by the owner. People will then has the full trust for the security of Bitcoin. And another point, the less Bitcoin that circulates - the higher the value is. If only gold and diamonds can be picked anywhere would you think it has a value?

This is true. Greater scarcity and greater demand equal a higher price. The problem isn't a lack of supply but rather the willingness of the mainstream to use bitcoin instead of fiat currency. It has been estimated that perhaps 3 million bitcoins have been irretrievably lost.

The less the supply of a coin the higher the price of it. We all know the supply and demand system and I think it is more good if we see a limited total supply of bitcoin as the demand will go higher than the expected. although those lost coin is such a big regret for the owner.

access to the bitcoin wallet is very private and surely there won’t be a single person know about it, so if someone who has the access and the person is dead it will be difficult for others to have access to the bitcoin wallet so if you have a very personal thing then you should make a testaments for the next generation of your family

Yes, this is actually one of the interesting features of bitcoin. As far as I know if a wallet file is permanently deleted/overwritten and there are no remaining copies, or if the physical media (hard drive, flash drive, etc.) that the file resides on is damaged beyond repair there is no way to recover those BTC. Obviously this an unfavorable event for whoever owned the BTC but is actually a good thing for all other BTC owners who still have access to their private keys because it means fewer BTC in circulation overall. With all other factors being equal, fewer BTC in circulation will mean a higher value per BTC.

yes definitely the bitcoin is lost forever if the private key or password of deceased person isn't passed to someone or forgot to pass it. that's why we should be prepared them in case of amnesia oe worst death they could move the bitcoins so they can use it. well incase of wallet.dat corruption well we have nothing to do just cry..

This is why private keys should be keep because once it will lost it will lost forever. This is the importance of our private details to kept it. Because there is no other way to recover them.

If these happens our bitcoin will going to be lost forever that its why we need to keep records of our private keys and passwords in very trusted place , then we need to also to inform our very trusted persons like our parents and wife so that in case of emergencies we still could retrieve our bitcoins for emergency use or for recovery of the wealth.

If they forgot or lost all the informations about that wallet, the bitcoins will remain there forever. I dont think there is anyone that can break into a totally blocked wallet with bo info about it. Maybe only the Nasa best hackers but even for they its hard. Maybe for us that is a good thing because if the total supply is lower than the price is higher.

It's  Good thing for bitcoin to be scarce. It will only drive the price higher  ND hence create more millionaires.

Well over the last 6 years I have "lost" 24 bitcoins so I've done my part to contribute to the scarcity  :-\

-B-

Bitcoins are not disappearing if someone doesnt use anymore his wallet or he forgot the private key from it.
Those bitcoins are still going to be in circulations but they are just not going to be used. They will remain in the wallet for an infinite time. Think if you create a wallet and keep your bitcoins for 50 years without using it. You think they will disappear? No, you can still use it after 50 years if you can acces your wallet

That's right, it must have a will and testament for the next generation which is your kids who will access those accounts. It's so important for us to share confidential information to our trusted family member so that the privacy will be open for them and it served as their future wealth as we don't live any longer in this world. This personal thing should be preserved until such time your childrens will become more matured in years.

testament is very important
we can share some information in it about the number of bitcoins that have, the name of the wallet, the user and the accompanying password that accompany it
this is very important because we will not know what will happen to us,
and if we have made this happen of course we have guaranteed the future of our family and including our heirs,
better still we should tell how we work with bitcoin

You are right, bitcoin will be out of circulation. Scarcity is one of the reason why bitcoin is so high. 21 million supply minus coin out of circulation plus high demand means price rocket. Unfortunately there is no way to recover it, you need billions of dollars just to try to hack into the system and  there is no guarantee that you can penetrate the system.

The amount of bitcoin in circulation at this time is very limited, as time goes by the number of bitcoin will continue to decrease one of them because if some people have lots of bitcoin in their offline wallets and they die or lose memory. As a virtual currency, bitcoins are encapsulated in the form of digital files or known as wallet files. But wallet files stored on hard disk electronic equipment are very vulnerable to damage. In addition, viruses that attack the hard disk can also make stored bitcoins just disappear.

The digital wallet can also be hacked and stolen through malware. and the more painful is if we lose the bitcoin because of those, certainly the bitcoin will never come back to us.

What will it look like when all bitcoins have been mined? Skyrocket in value?

What about the miners? Now they only have transactions to verify and no new coins to mint. I am curious as to how this will effect the entire ecosystem.

That will still be considered in circulation I guess but definitely not the case in the actual world because it is already forgotten. If the owner who died did not write a will or even some sort of note for his or her family member to become aware of the treasure, then the bitcoins will forever leave this world with him. I don't think it can still be recovered.

If, for various reasons, access to the wallet with bitcoin is lost, this bitcoin forever goes out of circulation and is lost to people. This is the nature of the digital currency, and this must be reconciled as inevitably. When 21 million bitcoins will reach, some of them will be permanently lost due to the termination of access to them. However, this will only increase the cost of the remaining bitcoins.

Private key should be kept and shared access to your loved ones.  Not just keeping it and not letting others to know, because it will be lost if no one from your family knows about that privatekey.  So to be able to secure that other will get your bitcoin, when unexpected things happen, share tell them about your privatekey and where you kept them.  Else, it will be considered as forever lost Bitcoin.

That depends on where is your private key and seed words, this is why it has been recommended many times in the forum that you should keep a copy of your seed words and private key, if you only lose your memory you will be able to access your coins that way but if you die you need to leave instructions to your family members about how to retrieve those coins.

Yes, it is true some people think bitcoin for a very long term that is mostly out of circulation, and wants to try to get a good profit for future use also and great profit is there.

They will be lost forever, unfortunately and fortunately. Unfortunately because it would be a disappointment to lose some Bitcoin isn't it and fortunately because it will add to the scarcity of Bitcoin in the market that would make the price increase. There is no way to recover these Bitcoins unless there is someone that can crack or know your private key.

in my opinion if the offline wallet provides an option of course the coins can be taken, but currently not available ,, it will help stabilize the price of the coin, I hope the future bitcoin options will be very beneficial for its users .. for example the choice of heir if the user dies

Yes if owner of bitcoin dies without leaving any record to claim the bitcoin he/she own those bitcoin will be hang in the system and no one can have the chance to retrieve it. The bitcoin will then be considered lost coin and because there are limited number of bitcoin circulating in the market if it will happen to large owner of bitcoin it may cause bitcoin to die.

Most likely they get out of circulation, I doubt that it is possible to recover this information, which is why despite there are 21million BTCs there are less in circulation for the loss of these wallets.

That would be the obvious case here. If someone has some Bitcoins and forget or die, his funds will be lost forever, saying that he is the only one who has access to it. But if someone he knows his private key for his wallet, then that someone can get the funds and continue to use it and be included again in circulation. But there is no one can access the lost funds, it will be lost forever.

People who invested when you could get like 50 for a few bucks often drop or lose their hard drives. One guy threw it away and it had millions worth of bitcoin on it XD.

If such thing happens, then it will be lost forever. No one can recover these lost assets since they are encrypted will password and private key that the only one who knows it is the sole owner of that wallet. If anyone related to the owner knows the private key of the wallet and/or his password then it may be recovered and be included in the circulation or some random hacker crack the wallet. Except from these, there is no other way to recover the lost Bitcoins

That would be really bad thing to know about. The coins will be gone forever but also it affect much to the bitcoin economy as long as it is not million bitcoin lost altogether. I mean just calculate if you have 12 million in circulation and one million just goes off the record then eventually that will affect the bitcoin health and dropping the value for it. Or the after effect might just turn out to be good because supply will decrease and the demand will be grown much faster leading to the higher rates per bitcoin. As we are one million coin less which means we are xyz prices more than the previous quota of bitcoin. Hope you understand what I'm saying, that's completely possible to happen.

This is exactly as satoshi saw this topic himself, he said that if someone lost his coins we must see this as a small contribution to the value of our coins, to some this is a problem and they have tried to propose ideas to recover that bitcoin but I think that is a mistake since most of the solutions proposed go against what bitcoin is about and as such should not be implemented.

Why are you worry about it? Every single missing satoshi, in the end, will make coins owned by other people more expensive.
That is something Satoshi thought about and even said that - we need to treat lost coins as a donation to the cause.
Don't worry about it and just hope that more and more people will lose access to their bitcoin stash ;)

Those bitcoins will be lost forever in the market, if that person forgets the login password or lost the recovery seed phrase to restore the offline wallet, that is one of the reason bitcoin values might increases a lot more in the future, as the number of bitcoins remaining will get smaller but the demand of it in the market still remains high.

Yes if they were to lose the keys then they would be gone forever generally that would in increase the value of what coins are in circulation. I think it would be hard to know exactly how many have been lost over the years.

Yes, if someone lost his bitcoins, or if he stored them on an offline wallet and he can not access to it anymore, then those bitcoins will be die forever too, but nobody can recover them, not even Satoshi, anyone.
That is why a lot of people were talking about what could happen to your wallet if you die, and the same would happen, your bitcoins will be lost forever.

This is not exactly correct, if a person dies and no one is able to recover the coins then those coins are lost, but there is no way the rest of the community can tell those coins are lost, those coins are simply not going to move, maybe in a hundred years if those coins have not moved then we could be able to tell those coins are lost, besides address collision may allow a person to create the private key of an address with BTC on it, so even if that is unlikely there are ways to get that bitcoin back.

If access to the bitcoin stored in the purse will be lost, it will forever remain in its virtual world and for people will be lost forever. This, of course, is sad, but according to the laws of the market it will increase its value.

Of course nobody can collect it and it'll disappear but it'll be different if they gave every information about their Bitcoin to his family before they die or kept it safe in somewhere that his wife or children could find out. Beside there are some people used coldstorage wallet and then they lost it of course there were no way to recover their Bitcoin that mean they had to accept that they lost it all :))

It is not lost. It will stay where it is now. And it will not recover. Depending on whether or not the owner has been handed over or given it to people he or she trusts before he or she dies or loses memory. So let's practice to save and tell our secrets to our trusted people so that if something bad happens to us, we will be able to control our hidden treasures.

But that is precisely the issue, if someone dies of a long disease that person has the chance to reveal his private keys to his family members, but if someone dies in an accident that person does not have that chance, now someone may decide to reveal its private keys to his family but you must remember something that has been said many times, if you are not the only one that posses your private keys you do not own any bitcoin.

if it loses the currency lock in bitcoin it could happen but it's hard for us
then our beliefs must know to the nearest person when something will happen to us badly
then store bitcoin well