Bitcoin Forum

Does anyone know approximately how many Bitcoins are lost each year?

Not sure if the 800K from MTGOX are "lost" or just stolen. But that got me thinking. With only 21 million coins to ever come into existence and there won't ever be new BTC's created (at least for now) I'm curious as to when the supply of Bitcoins might just disappear entirely and the approximate number per year would help. 

Anyone?

mtgox have generate virtual BTC that it doesn't exist on network.
bitcoin network don't loose nothing.

My understanding is that Mt Gox coins are not "lost" - they are simply stolen. Their strategy document - de facto confirmed by Mark K.

But it is an interesting question how many people loose their private keys. The rumor has it it happened quite often in early days. But I'am afraid it is impossible to get any data on that.

those from gox are not lost, but coins are often actually lost in small amounts(eventually high amounts)...at some point it will get serious.

there should be a feature to re-issue coins from addresses that remain 10 years or so untouched.

someone is already working to find a way to get the coins back from any address and he is offering 1000BTC bounty


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=427753.0

enjoy


P.S. that thread is not a lotto game! Don't go there and post numbers like crazy!

Lost coins could probably be modeled by exponential decay that asymptotically approaches zero. Again this is irrelevant because divisibility can be patched.

bad to know that, you can lose all your money on a patch

Thanks everyone.

Not if you don't do anything foolish.

If you have 1.00000000 Bitcoins and they add another 8 decimal place then you still have exactly the same as before 1.0000000000000000

1.00 = 1.00000000 = 1.00000000000000000000000 its all the same number, just more precise

I've always wondered if they could implement something like if coins are inactive for lets say 10 years they are recycled back into the system, and if you are holding all you'd have to do is remember to move your coins from one of your wallets to the other every decade and you'd be fine. Just a different idea, maybe an alt coin will use the idea at some point.

Every once in a while this idea comes up again, and many times the conclusion is that it is not really a problem.
Like Holliday (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=10706) posted it can be solved by switching units and/or increase precision.

Yes. Good idea.

You should make an altcoin where coins disappear if not moved for 10 years and then see how many people you can convince they should use it instead of Bitcoin.

It would be a good learning experience for you.

Is the assumption here is that millions of people will eventually fall victim to their own negligence, forgetfulness or stupidity?

Or are you trying to get some data on the percentage of bitcoins lost per year.

I can summarize the later in one word. Negligible.

Far less then the amount mined, unless Gox actually lost half a million REAL Bitcoins.