Bitcoin Forum

Considering a bitcoin owner of large amount, and he died w/o sharing his user/pw, Are those coins can be considered as deadcoin since those coins will not circulate anymore in the Network?

When that happens, many of the users here called that a lost coin and this coin will never circulate again, The bitcoin supply will truly lessen and if the supply is less, then surely the price of bitcoin will surge.

You are right but it can return into circulation when someone can accidentally access it but it very unlikely. In the future, I am sure there will be a way to recover those lost coins so I won't call it as being gone in the circulation forever. If someone were to own large amounts of Bitcoin though, it is impossible for him to just die without leaving a clue for his family in order for them to  access his wallet.

Yes it is true since the bitcoin or any of the cryptocurrencies that a person hold when he dies will not circulate or go around the world. It is like thee bills and coins in the reality. With hoarding of those currencies, the economy of a territory or country can be affected. It should be exchange or maybe given to anyone so that it can go around the flow of the cryptocurrency and will not affect other people that invest in bitcoin or any of the cryptocurrencies that a dead person hold.

Agree, but recoverability of such coins would vastly depend on how knowledgeable the family is. If they aren't aware of what Bitcoin is and of the holdings the deceased person - then the risk of them throwing away any pieces of paper with passwords on it (or erasing usb devices etc) is much higher.

There's also popular opinion that it's best not to share information of you holding significant amount of cryptos even with close family - for the safety reasons or in case of divorce.

Yes that has happened already and its said that almost three million coins have been lost due to such reason which has lessened the total availability of bitcoins from 21 million to just 17 million bitcoins along with one million bitcoins of satoshi which too remains unused.

In this case, bitcoin, to which access is lost, remain in encrypted form in the block-chain block-chain. Such bitcoins, to which access has already been lost, according to some sources, there are about six million. They will stay there until someone selects the key to them. This can be done by quantum computers that can soon appear in the bypass and which will be able to decode codes of any complexity. At the same time, this will mean a threat to the security of the entire crypto currency.

Actually quite a lot of people believe Satoshi is dead which would explain him never having touched his coins. If the very creator of bitcoin did not pass on his wallet details then I'm sure many others will do the same. There are probably many of us in our 20s here who have not considered such an event and passed on our information to loved ones.

I don't think these coins will ever be added back in to circulation. It's just part and parcel when dealing with any currency.

Yes, if the owner of bitcoins die and he doesn't share his wallet private key to anyone all of his coins are gone forever and it is impossible to get them back. It is less likely to happen that because I dont think someone who owns a lot of bitcoin would let them to disappear. Even if the owner dies without knowing that he could die sometimes soon I think he saved the private key somwhere on the paper or on his cellphone, the problem is to find and recognize it.

You cannot say with certainty that any coins have been definitely lost (other than in cases like "bitcoin eater (https://blockchain.info/address/1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE)" address and similar). You can only make assumptions (based on inactivity etc) and make estimations.

ps can you share the source of that 3 mil estimate?

On the side note: I reckon that there must be quite significant, cumulative amount of bitcoins simply abandoned by people deleting old wallets with fractions of BTC in them, worth almost nothing at the time in fiat terms.

There have been ideas to solve this problem with a dead man switch mechanism.

https://blog.eogn.com/2016/12/06/blockchain-based-crypto-will-fulfills-last-wishes/

It never happened because as you can read in the comments it's too easy to be exploited. 

In my own understanding, if someone lost his private key or if a owner of a bitcoin dies without leaving his private key to someone, the coins that he have will be in limbo or just in the wallet. This may result also in the decrease of bitcoin in the market and it may even pump up the price considering the decline of supply. So better to have your family members know your private so that if anything happens to you someone can take over of your property.

When someone dies without anyone knowing his private keys, those bitcoins are practically gone as no one can access it. This things can be avoided by storing the keys on an external hardware like a flashdrive or better yet, print it out in paper.

That is the risk of bitcoin, although the amount of bitcoin in the world will amount to 21 million, but in fact it will be circulated after bitcoin out in the mine will not reach the amount of 21 million, because there is bitcoin that may lose the owner forgot paswod or even the owner died without any his heir.

Not really. Because we'll have no idea whether that person is dead or not. The only time you can be absolutely certain supply is lessened is when coins are sent to a publicly known burn address.

Yes of course. When your bitcoin stays in wallets or even exchanges and noone even knows he had it or even if his family does know but did not know where he hides his private keys or username and passwords especially he did not save it in his computer or cellular phone, the bitcoin just sits there until someone figures out a way to get it. There's no way of circulating becauase you need to access the account to sell the coin. So make sure you put your keys in your will so your spouse or children can take advantage of your hard earned money.

I don't think so, why I say like that? bitcoin is bigest and famously cryptocurrency in the world, certainly they will bequeath their asset to their heirs, and we don't know who they are. If bitcoin no have heirs, so bitcoin will be die too if owner die, and people feel scared to invest their money to bitcoin when hear that bad news, and I think by bequeath bitcoin this will be still keep the bitcoin glory, and bitcoin still safe to invest and people will not scared to invest. People can dead, but cryptocurrency can't dead! Thank you

i am not sure that we can technically be sure that the coins in the known burn addresses are unspendable!
but the only 100% sure that i know of which leads to making some coins really unspendable is to put it in a OP_Retrun output. because it is possible to set an amount for it and it is 0 wherever you look but it can be non zero and it will effectively "burn".

It's unlikely that anyone with a substantial amount of coins will die without sharing their wallets/encryption with their heirs. We already have an example of someone passing their coins to their family - Hal Finney.

I think the server/owner of the wallet can overwrite it if the said wallet becomes stale for too long. But if he is using an offline wallet that could be considered a loss coin already.

I agree, maybe the coin will remain in the wallet for a long time, as long as no one accesses it. until then someone else can open it. but true this is the unlikely thing, the only one able to access is the developer of the wallet.

For every Satoshis lost due to the death of an owner that refused/forgot to share private key with loved one, Bitcoin supply will reduce.
It is not only large owners of Bitcoin that should consider a way to share their key in case they die suddenly, every Satoshi owner should also do that to save the circulating supply of Bitcoin.

This will result to less supply. It is very unlikely for other people to breakthrough the deceased person's stuffs  unless he or she was able to pass his private keys to someone. The decrease in supply will cause a drastic leap in bitcoin's price. Law of demand and supply.

I wouldn't bet against it in the future. Something similar to vault/lock up hunting could happen with laptops. I'm sure countless people keep passwords etc on their laptops and if you could access their wallets as a result that could be big money in the future.

       I think if that coins remains on the owners wallet and nobody can claim maybe it will considered as deadcoins. Because it doesn't contribute anything in the market. It lessen the supply of bitcoin that can bring the bitcoin price to increase if the demand is higher.

In fact, in the years the number of the "lost bitcoins" is rising. Every time someone loses the password of their wallets, some coins get lost forever. Every time someone would die without first handing his private keys to someone else, some coins get lost forever. So the supply of AVAILABLE bitcoins is relatively diminishing, even though in absolute terms the quantity of newly mined Bitcoins is probably much higher than the quantity of the lost ones.

For those interested, here's a good read on the subject of lost coins:

http://fortune.com/2017/11/25/lost-bitcoins/

High estimate amounts to 3.8m lost bitcoins, low estimate: 2.8m.

Analysis was done by Chainalysis, unfortunately their don't share their methodology, so you can only take it at face value.