Bitcoin Forum

Right now Bitcoin market cap is about $316,001,197,150 for a bitcoin price of $17,029.88, doing the math ( not my forte ) that means they are taking into account 18 556 650 coins in existence.
It´s fairly known that way more than 10% of all bitcoins is forever lost.
So my questions:
Is there a more reliable market cap calculation out there? 
How does this affect evaluation,  for example when comparing bitcoin to gold.
What would be the best method of knowing how many coins still exist?

1st time post... so maybe a bit of a newbie kinda questionnaire.
stay cool good people of the internet  8)
 

No all mined coins x price = market cap.



Think gold do we count the gold in sunken treasure ships?
Do we count the gold in the ground?
Do we count the gold in the astroid belt?
Do we count the gold hidden in undiscovered burial grounds?




Bitcoin is more accurate as we know edit known exactly how many coins exist.

BTW every lost coin can be recovered if agreed upon by consensus.

Pretend there are 2 million lost coins.

We could agree  that a wallet/address not touched for 50 years goes back into the pool of 21 million coins.


look at block 17. it sits still since 2009

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/000000003ff1d0d70147acfbef5d6a87460ff5bcfce807c2d5b6f0a66bfdf809


https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1LPBetDzQ3cYwqQepg4teFwR7FnR1TkMCM

no withdrawal so in 2059 it gets zeroed out and goes back to the 21,000,000

btw this fixes the idea that we run out of coins. in the years 2050-2100

So with a proper vote dead addresses with so called lost coins are not so lost.

year ----- btc

2024 =  3.0625
2028 =  1.53125
2032 =  0.765625
2036 =  0.3828125
2040 =  0.19140625
2044 =  0.095703125
2048 =  0.0478515625
2052 =  0.02392578125
2056 =  0.011962890625
2060 =  0.0059814453125    so add  coins back from abandoned accounts in 2059

eventually no abandoned or lost coins occurs, but we never go over 21 million.

We actually don't know how much coins are lost. Also, they might not really be lost. We can be certain that there will never be more than 21 million BTC as that is a core characteristic of BTC. However I could see events that would put lost coins back into circulation, like philipma1957 is suggesting for example.

according to CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin market capitalists make up 67% of all crypto market capitalists. a crypto analyst on twitter said:

"If Alt Action resembles 2016, - then Alt lows on a strong ALT-BTC pair are likely to enter or are close to entering. I emphasize a strong word here as our samples from 2016 all end top performers - even USD lows are more likely to be. already entered ". @Stillman_

in other words, many analysts hope that Bitcoin will soon reach its previous high. from $ 17,100 to $ 20,000.

10% is about 1.8million of the current supply lost forever. I wonder how they determine the 10%. Probably by considering coins that have remained unmoved for a long period of time?

I think this is simply determined by the number of bitcoins mined so far

There's just no real calculation happening there to take into account all the lost bitcoin. I mean, how we calculate if we don't even know which coin is lost in the first place.
The current market cap in my opinion is just a reflection of how the market supposed to value if all the mined btc aren't lost and that's it.
Can't really do something when we literally can't do something about all those bitcoin that lost.

Who says that? Some companies that on completely unfounded assumptions, present data that cannot be verified in any way. If BTC has not been moved from an address for x years does it mean it has been lost? There are a lot of lies and deceptions when it comes to BTC, don't believe everything you read on the internet.



If you believe that 10% is really lost, you deduct that amount from the total amount currently in circulation and you will get a new market cap - but in the end these are just numbers, because the only real BTC is the one you control ;)

See I don't know if the numbers are correct but these forever lost coins can be taken as long term HODL , which does mean that they are actually beneficial for the holders and traders.

They provide a certain stability in this market.
Thus I do think that even if they don't take it into account, it's not a big deal.

Plus I totally agree with the fact that , "present data cannot be verified" since this is a matter which is more personal and thus many of those people might even forget to report or might have passed away. Therefore the wallets cannot evaluate if the person did loose those coins or are they holding it for long term basis???

Yep and much like banks do with long inactive accounts BTC can agree to unlock addresses that have not made a withdrawal in 50-75-100 years.

Therefore the “lost” coins are not lost at all.

Thats the correct answer to the op’s question.

The long term untouched addresses can be emptied if an agreement is reached to do so.

It would be interesting to see if they do this and say in 2059 we will empty All untouched addresses from the year 2009.

There are many untouched addresses from 2009.

No one really knows exactly how many coins are really lost and the 10% figure is just an estimation, second bitcoins are never lost forever, there are three options that could lead those coins back to the market, one is that the coins were not truly lost and the person remembers where he had his seed or his private keys.

The second method is as stated before a decision could be made about coins that have not moved for decades and decide those coins are lost and could be mined again, but I doubt this will ever happen as it would be incredibly polemic, and the third way is that by sheer luck someone could generate the very same address again and get access to those lost coins.

AFAIK, there is no reliable way to determine which bitcoins are lost. And if I'm to add, market capitalization is not really a vital metric which one should break sweat over. It's just figures which can be easily manipulated and does not determine the strength of a currency.
I regularly see some users use it as a means of determining which coin to invest in (checking ranking on tracking sites), this is quite a poor means of  assessing a good project.

It doesn't really affect it. The supply of gold is also estimated as there is no way to account for every ounce of gold that has been mined.

As mentioned considering coins which has not moved over a very long time frame (about 50-100 years) may be the best means, although not fully reliable as coins can be recovered if the private key is stored somewhere and can be discovered, even if the initial holder cannot access it anymore.

The fault of your logic is, we will never exactly know how many bitcoins are lost forever.

Few months ago some of those "forever lost" coins from from their wallets.

By what you guys said it could then go 2 ways :
Follow Satoshi idea about lost bitcoins being almost a donation for the rest (like 10% lost so the remaining bitcoin owners would have an 11% gain ( in the total bitcoin stake whatever that is ))
Vote to have the lost bitcoins returned to the bitcoin pool (where i imagine the gains would be for miners, or maybe end up being a way for paying for the maintenance of the bitcoin network?!?)

thanks for the great contributions all

But in my mind I'm thinking since a coin is mined, it is already accounted for in blockchain which is also part of the total supply that reflects in bitcoin market cap. Therefore I think in me whether lost or not should be in account already.

It's simple:

• Price is a function of supply and demand.
• Lost coins directly reduce available BTC supply, therefore they increase the price of BTC.
• Market cap is a function of price, therefore market cap already accounts for lost coins indirectly.

So there's no reason to calculate anything else. The number of lost coins can't actually be known. We can only know how they generally affect price and market cap.

It doesn't of course!

This type of thing is on individuals.

and can only ever be an estimate

That said how much must be burned by now? wow no way to prove it ever!

There are no such lost forever bitcoins it is only not doing any movement nor inactive in the circulation for a long period of time which can be retrieved and get back to the pool once agreed by all.

The market cap does not fix it may change from time to time depending on the price of bitcoin. It can be computed that is by multiplying the current price or on your preferred specific time to the total number of bitcoins that have already been mined including the lost forever coins.

Though the market cap can be changing the number of bitcoins that can be mined is predetermined to 21 million only and that will never change forever.

Are you a person who thinks one day someone will crack all those lonley loose coins?

The metric market capitalization does not take into account the current lost coins, because that in itself is another metric that is yet to have some definite terms on what to consider 'lost', as there are addresses that contain coins from even 10 years ago that could possibly be 'active' in a sense that its owner still have its private keys. There is no one way of knowing just how much lost coins are there, really, and there isn't an exact math equation for that, too, if that's what you're looking for.

Well for me, we can do an actual calculation of bitcoins that should be in the market by knowing the number of coins that were already mined, -- and to know the exact market cap is by multiplying it by the current price. Everyone is correct here when they say that the lost bitcoins can still be recovered once agreed by all to bring it back into the pool but we cannot be certain on how many is the lost bitcoin must be recovered and ^[10%] is also speculation if the basis for the lost coin is no movement for a period of time. The market cap may still change since bitcoin's value is volatile but the total number of bitcoins that can be mined will never change and that is 21 million bitcoins.

Pointless cos there's no way to know what's lost and what isn't.

We'd likely be shocked at how many old coins are still accessible and similarly shocked at how many recent ones have been thrown away.

Quantum computing may possibly release all those lost coins which would make for a fruity moment or two.

I mean, they still would include that into the market cap since the supply of bitcoin is locked and limited. Though the manner of finding these lost coins might be too substandard. Because they just make a rough estimate from it and from there will remove the 10% which easily becomes the lost coins.

There are many ways to get lost money back it will usually depend on the supply of currencies if the bitcoin market cap is lost forever it is possible to get bitcoin back by converting it into a fiat currency fiat does not lose anything in the use of currency. Its market cap is not closed forever therefore possible to break bitcoin into currency and use  for cash once hacked it is lost forever conversion to currency, it is possible to keep the account safe even if the value is slightly reduced.

This is a very complex topic. First of all, we can't label any wallet as being "lost". There is always a chance that the private keys will be recovered sometime in the future. So I don't agree with the suggestion that the "lost" coins should be excluded from the market cap calculation. The current methodology for market cap takes in to account the coins that are in free-float, as well as those which are not so.

How you actually considered those Bitcoins are lost? Those coins stays in the wallet for very long time doesn't mean it was lost even if it lost still it has its role in the price and Market cap values so no one is faking the values and importantly total marketcap is not really an useful stats.

I'm still of the opinion that the community will eventually wise up and burn coins held in insecure addresses. Nobody is particularly concerned right now so people can afford to get on their high horse about not "stealing" outputs, but when the quantum threat is real, those political ideals will give way to practicality.

I remember contemplating how to fix Zcash and the inability to effectively audit its supply. I liked the idea of a consensus rule that required outputs to be moved once every epoch (could be years) or otherwise be burned. This would audit the supply and ensure no secret inflation had occurred. Obviously not something I expect to see implemented in Bitcoin, but it would be cool and would solve this problem.

That resonated the most with me as the best answer so far.

in other words the old adage applies here,

1 bitcoin still equals 1 bitcoin!

No one knows and no one will ever know how many coins are actually lost. A lost coin means that no one knows its private key, but how can you prove that you don't know something, especially if you used to know it? The only coin that are 100% lost are the one's sent to so-called "burner addresses", but they are only a small fraction of all coins. From time to time coins that weren't touched for 8 or even 10 years become active, so just because it wasn't touched for long time, does not mean it was lost.

I am not old, I just have my mind with me. ;D 1 bitcoin is 1 bitcoin and the total cap of it 21 will be fore sure. Even if someone willingly send it to wrong address still the coin exist in the wrong address forever.

I doubt that there is a more accurate measure per se. Market cap obviously takes into account all coins, regardless of whether they are lost or not.

The seemingly obvious thing to do is to subtract an estimate of lost coins from the circulating supply of BTC. However, that would prove to be completely unreliable. There is virtually no way to distinguish simply dormant coins of long term holders from actually lost coins on a consistent basis.

And even if there was, there could always be the chance that lost coins can be recovered in the future. This is more likely now with BTC prices increasing exponentially, it gives a lot more financial incentive for wallet recovery services to be sought after.

I believe that capitalization takes into account all the bitcoins mined to date, and at least the only way to be sure of the reality of the statistics is to check which wallets are active and which are not. Because there is no other way to be sure that Bitcoin is lost or held for an extended period.

It will be difficult to find out information about the loss of Bitcoin, because we do not hold the Bitcoin data of anyone, it is also difficult to determine if it is the Bitcoin lost forever or not. Recently, before the price of BTC pumped to 19k $, a wallet containing 1000 BTC came back to life after 10 years of being buried. Obviously we are also not sure how much Bitcoin can be traded, I know quite a lot of people lose their Key to access their BTC wallets but I think it's just a few. The majority of wallets with a lot of BTC are usually whales' and it's not yet time for them to move it out, i think.

There is no way to get back the bitcoins that humans have lost. Many people have been quite subjective in storing the Key and after many years they have lost it and Bitcoin in their wallets is forever not transferred.
Besides, there is no other way to get back that bitcoin unless the hacker has information about the wallet. But to attack a cold wallet is a very bad idea, hackers will also give up soon.

Right-O, although I respect that OP is thinking analytically and has asked a question I've never heard asked here before. 

Just because that 10% or so of bitcoin is "lost," it still exists.  It hasn't been destroyed; it just isn't accessible to anyone.  I suppose you could create your own "effective market cap" if you could keep track of every single satoshi that's been lost but I don't see the point of that even if you had complete information with which to compile such a statistic.

Yep, then there's that. 

I don't know why so many people pay so much attention to the market cap of coins.  It isn't an indication of the quality of a coin or its usefulness, just the total value of all the coins in circulation.  I think TRX is a shitty altcoin, but it's high ranked on CMC because there are so many of them in existence that even though 1 TRX=$0.02, the market cap for that coin is enormous.  Means nothing to me.

They do not really take that into consideration, and there is really no need to consider it gone neither because they are actually "there" as in they do exist, they are just unreachable but that is just for now.

We do not know the future of bitcoin and blockchain world but I assume there could potentially be a method where people could find a way to get back into their own wallets, or reach into other wallets that has no security at all, it would be basically hacking at a level where other party doesn't need to exist in order to happen, or even quantum computers could exist to both secure our coins, but also hack into unsecured ones. So long story short it is not guaranteed that those coins are fully gone, there could always be something in the future that could bring them back.

I'd prefer them not to be released, because who is there to say which coins are to be touched and which are not? Are Satoshi's coins up for distribution or are they still in his possession? Should the past owner who lost coins demand some of them to be returned to him after a quantum machine cracks his lost wallet? These are the dilemmas we'd be facing. It's best to let them be and for the market to adjust the price taking those lost coins into account.

Interesting discussion. 

We do not know how many coins are lost.  At the same time, the market capitalization of Bitcoin is calculated based on all mined coins.  Consequently, the real capitalization of Bitcoin is less than the officially declared one. 

This has nothing to do with the price of Bitcoin.  Bitcoin price is determined by the balance of supply and demand.  At the same time, trading is carried out on cryptocurrency exchanges.  Lost bitcoins and bitcoins of ideological holders do not participate in trading.

 In banking idle accounts are forfeited. I think they will set a time limit on withdrawals

50, 70 ,100 years come to mind. Recirculation always keeping 21,000,000 as your base like I said

 or destruction and permanent reduction of the 21,000,000 down to say 19 million or what ever has not had a withdrawal is very likely to happen down the road.

It is pretty certain that I won't make the 75 or 100 year numbers . And 50 years from now I would be 113 years old and simply not give a fuck about it if I make it the that unlikely age.


I would like to see a vote making one of the above come true in 2059. 
They could cast the vote in 2030 or 2040.

When we calculate the market cap of stocks, bullion.etc, we don't exclude any portion claiming that those assets are being held by people who are dead or those who have forfeited their ownership. Around the globe, billions of $$$ worth of real estate can't be developed because they are being held up in property disputes. But they are included in the market cap. The methodology for calculating the market cap should be the same for Bitcoin. Therefore I don't think that we need to exclude the "lost" coins.

There is also the fact that we can never know the exact number of coins that is forever lost. I mean we know some of them, that is understandable, it is said that over 2 million coins are totally lost and can never be used, but we do not know "exact" number how much because I could just delete my keys right now and delete the my wallet and can never reach it ever again and not tell anyone about this and it would not be known but gone. So in order to calculate something that is forever gone would be very hard if you do not know the number of it, hence they do not care about that at all.

Act as if all of it is available because honestly we have no guarantee that it is fully gone, we do know that it is sort of gone but we do not have a contract stating it can never be used again.

I think as long as the circulation of bitcoin is still rotating and still having transactions it will make it difficult for us to count all the coins in circulation and how many have never been touched again, but unfortunately it will never be possible because the trading volume of bitcoin will always increase and that is certain there will always be transactions made.

It depends on the market cap for the currency or token to be lost. Many projects fail to balance their markets which is why they get lost forever this is why it is better to stay away from investing in lost tokens and those that have no market credibility. There will be no fear of getting lost. Bitcoins can never be taken away, even if their value is reduced it is possible to use them as currency. When the market for token investing is lost the stock market goes down.