Bitcoin Forum

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Hello everybody,

Just like real-world money, Bitcoins can also be lost.
But if they’re digital and have no physical entity, how is this possible? Can lost Bitcoins be retrieved?

Continue reading to find out how this happens and how you can protect yourself from losing your Bitcoins.

What are lost Bitcoins?

When Bitcoins stored in a digital or hardware wallet cannot be accessed anymore, they are considered ‘lost’. In this sense,
they are not missing but are just locked up in a wallet with no way of acquiring it.

How can Bitcoins be lost?

So how do you lose access to Bitcoin? One way is if you lose your private key. To ensure the system’s security, the network uses two keys:
private and public keys.

The public key is the address you give to others so they can send you Bitcoins. On the other hand, the private key is the address you use to
access the Bitcoins sent to you. The latter is the password that lets you use your funds for whatever purpose. It appears as a 62-character long address.

As long as no other person knows your private key, you’re the only one in control of your funds. On the other side of the coin,
if you lose your private key, no one can help you access your funds.

There are different reasons why Bitcoins are lost, and most of the time it’s either accidental or due to human error.
With the use of blockchain technology, Bitcoin fully guarantees the network’s security. All transactions uploaded in the blockchain are
immutable and once validated, there’s no way to change the data.

Bitcoin removes the need for institutions so no third party can access your precious information and control your funds.
While this sounds like utopia for some, it also comes with some drawbacks.

Since there are no banks, you are the only person in control of your funds. So if you forget your key or lose your wallet, there’s no customer service
you can call to help you. That’s why crypto people always emphasize the need for world-class security encryption when it comes to storing their funds.

Common ways Bitcoins become lost

Most Bitcoins become lost because of human error and/or mismanagement. Some forget to collect mining rewards while others
accidentally swap processing fees with the value of the transaction. No matter the reason, the fault usually lies in the owner and
not in the protocol itself. Other ways include theft and fraudulent attacks on exchange sites. But in these rare situations,
Bitcoins are not really ‘lost’ but stolen from their owners.

Below are some of the most common ways people lose access to their Bitcoins:

* Broken or lost devices
Aside from keeping Bitcoin in online wallets, they can also be stored away from the net on hard drives. In fact, this is supposedly
the safest way of storing your digital assets. However, if motherboards become fried or these devices break, then the owner loses
access to the Bitcoins stored inside and the data kept in them can no longer be retrieved.

In other cases, owners lose or change devices such as laptops and/or mobile phones and forget about the coins stored inside them.
One of the most popular lost Bitcoin incidents is James Howells’ in 2013.

After cleaning his house, he accidentally threw his hard drive into the trash along with 7,500 Bitcoins stored inside it.
Howell tried to retrieve the hard drive in the local landfill, but the law prohibited him from doing so.
Unfortunately, he never recovered his mined coins.

* Forsaken by their owners
Back when Bitcoin could still be mined using normal laptops, people minted numerous Bitcoins and just forget about them.
Only a few people knew about cryptocurrencies back then, and there was not a lot of practical use for it, so it was normal for people to buy
Bitcoins for fun and not do anything with them. These forgotten coins could be worth millions today, with Bitcoin’s current price trading at $18K.

If someone who owns cryptocurrency passes away without sharing their credentials with anyone, their Bitcoin is also lost for good.
That’s why some people recommend that crypto holders include their digital assets in their last will and testament, so their funds won’t go to waste.

* Sending funds to a wrong address
If you send your coins to the wrong public key or address, you won’t be able to retrieve them either. Since there is no personal information
attached to transactions, there’s no way to know who you accidentally sent your funds to. To make sure you’re sending your coins to the
right address, it’s best to scan the QR code rather than typing it in manually.

* Forgotten private keys and passwords
As previously mentioned, your private key is the only access point to your crypto treasure chest. And, unlike the keys to your house or car,
there’s no replacing it once it’s lost since each private key is fully unique.

How many lost Bitcoins are out there?

According to Chainalysis, an analysis firm specializing in all things related to blockchain, about 17% to 23% of all Bitcoins have
already become unrecoverable. An estimate of 2.78 million to 3.79 million BTC is forever lost to humanity. This amounts to around
300 inaccessible wallets containing anywhere between 1,000 to 10,000 Bitcoins.

But analysts predict that this number will start to drop as the technology surrounding crypto security improves. To prevent more
Bitcoins from being lost, it’s important to drive awareness about this phenomenon and discuss numerous methods on how to
strengthen existing security protocols.

Can lost Bitcoins be retrieved?

If you lose your private key, the odds of getting your lost Bitcoins back are close to impossible. However, if you lose your
Bitcoin because you misplaced a storage device, there’s still a chance of retrieving your funds. If your problem is a busted part in the device,
see if it can be fixed. Other than these possibly solvable situations, there’s no way to find lost Bitcoins once they are lost.

How to track down and find lost Bitcoins

Cases of lost coins and keys are common in the crypto world. To help these people find their lost funds, wallet hunters emerged
with a mission to find lost Bitcoins and forgotten keys. Individuals and companies work together with law enforcement agencies
and crypto holders to gather information about the possible locations of these coins.

Crypto hunters use advanced technology and hardware to accomplish this mission. Often, they’ll require any detail the owner
remembers about their private key. Then, they will run all the possible combinations which can break through the account
using a self-executing computer program.

These services usually cost anywhere between 5% and 40% of the recovered amount, though prices vary depending on who you ask.
Most wallet hunters offer a fixed price up front, while some request an additional fee once the funds are retrieved.
The success rate varies depending on the kind of service you hire and the client’s memory. Wallet Recovery Services, an online wallet
hunting company says their supercomputers can crack through 30% of all their client requests as long as they have a small piece of
helpful information about their key.

Another way of retrieving information is by hypnotherapy. Jason Miller, a hypnotist from South Carolina, uses a collection of
techniques that help people access older memories and remember important information such as their private keys or misplaced storage devices.

In exchange for his services, Miller charges 1 BTC per session and an additional 5% of the amount recovered.
He says 50% of all the inquiries he has received turned out to be successful.

Implications of lost Bitcoin

Since Bitcoin has a maximum supply of 21 million, having lost Bitcoins means that there will be fewer coins in circulation once
the maximum number has been mined. People predict all Bitcoins will be completely mined by 2140 or even earlier.
However, there’s no reason to panic since Bitcoin can be easily divided into smaller units, unlike fiat currencies.

How to prevent losing Bitcoins?

Take the extra step of securing your coins to avoid the frustration of losing your Bitcoins. Hardware wallets are the go-to
when it comes to storing your funds. For an extra layer of security, keep an offline copy of your private key,
but make sure you’re the only one who has access to it.


How about you, have you been lucky to keep all your coins?

Regards,
Karl
Bitcasino.io


Source: Bitcasino.io blog

This is quite an informative article that can help especially the beginners but just want to add to it.

I realized you mentioned how bitcoin can be lost by misplacing private key and also from hacked exchanges but you did not mention how it can be lost through malware installation on wallet devices and also through phishing attacks.

Also, you did not mention seed phrase all through, for beginners to understand, you need to let them know how important seed phrase are. Because losing the master private key, seed or the seed phrase can be used to steal your whole wallet and lead to Bitcoin and other funds lost.

Ways Bitcoin can be lost
1. Forgotting the encrypted password used
2. Seed phrase accessed by attackers
3. Malware attack like trojan and keyloggers etc
4. Through phishing sites
5. Through fake exchanges
6. Through fake wallets.
7. Through lost passphrase
8. Hacked exchanges
9. Lost to cloud mining sites
10. Lost to Ponzi scheme
11. Lost through fake giveaways and airdrops
12. Lost through misplaced seed phrase, private key or seed etc.

There are bitcoin that has been lost and not accessible again through the following bolded above.

1. Forgotting the encrypted password used
7. Through lost passphrase
12. Lost through misplaced seed phrase, private key or seed etc.

Sadly, a lost Bitcoin can be impossible to recover and so far I see no technology that can unlock the keys for this problem. Like if you lost the private key the only way to get back your Bitcoin is to get back the private keys, nothing more nothing less. That's why it can be sad if one has been phised to share the private key and someone can be able to steal the Bitcoin in your wallet. We know that there had been many stories of lost Bitcoin and when Bitcoin started to climb the ladder they realized how much they lost. And there is nothing we can do about it except maybe mourn a little and then move on -- just like experiencing a fire burning away our properties.

I liked the article, everything is quite succinct and clear.
The thought came to my mind that perhaps it would be possible to create a theme with real stories of people who lost or threw away their keys, and after a while, they remembered that they owned bitcoins, but could not recover them. Recently, the news is very often full of such stories.
It is always best to read life stories with all the mistakes that other people have experienced to keep others from making their own mistakes.

It is difficult to define lost currencies because no one knows the private key except you. You can report that the coins have been lost, but in the future you can move that money and benefit from it.
Specifically, we cannot verify the loss of currencies except for those that were sent to addresses from which a private key cannot be derived, for example 1ilostmybitcoinaddressreiwrw.
and therefore all the numbers on the lost currencies are just estimates.

Only few points here are valid.
Most of them are not lost just someone else have them.

This story is well known to me and many others, but what people don’t understand is the fact that that person made two critical mistakes that led to the complete loss of BTC. The first mistake is that he actually kept 2 HDDs in the same drawer, and that he actually threw the wrong drive - which is a very stupid move considering that the HDD doesn't take up so much space that it should have ended up in the trash. Another mistake is that he went public with this information, and although some information says that he was allowed to look for the disk, but when some others started digging in the same garbage, the owner simply could not allow it to continue and take responsibility for something happens to someone.


Such analyzes are mostly based on the fact that a certain coin did not move from a certain address for a certain time, and I think that this company took into account the time of 4 years. That's a pretty bad method to determine how much of something is lost, especially in the case of BTC.


People do not have to predict anything in this case, according to the protocol established in advance the last BTC should be mined in the year 2140 - so you only made a mistake in about 100 years. But in ten years, 99% of all BTC will be mined and that 1% will not mean too much for the next hundred years.


Hardware wallets yes, but they by themselves don’t mean much if the person using them isn’t familiar with how these devices work. Every day people complain that they have lost coins and have used hardware wallets - but when they admit that they kept their seed online or put it on a site that promised to double their funds, we realize that a lot of people actually have no idea what they are doing.

thank you for the article, I feel it is worth spending 5-7 minutes reading. So that adds to my insight into what and how the reason bitcoin is lost. quite easy to understand, of course this makes us aware of keywords that really matter as well as possible. because forgetfulness knows no age and now I will start writing down all the files that are considered very important, remembering when I will get sick, or even die. so that this can be continued by the family.

remember that writing something down, it will be very useful for anyone in the future.

It is not 2041, right? You must have meant 2140. Of course it is not a fix end year. The 21 millionth Bitcoin might be mined earlier or later depending on how the mining capacity will develop in the coming years. For now, Bitcoin Wiki has it estimated on May 7th, 2140.

Also, is Bitcoin's divisibility really easier or even better than fiat's? I guess fiat currencies could be more easily divided than Bitcoin although it is impractical since fiat is inflationary, which results to its value decreasing over time. So instead of smaller amounts getting higher value, it is going to be bigger amounts getting lower value. We all know Bitcoin is the opposite, of course.

This is quite interesting.

I mean why are they bothering offering this kind of service if they could do it alone and take all of the lost Bitcoin by themselves? Sorry but this is the first time I've heard such service so please enlighten me more. I thought lost Bitcoin cannot be retrieve once you forgot your private key or your seed phrase, because that's the only door to your Bitcoin safe haven.

Hello, AicecreaME and thank you for your interest.

Crypto hunters can’t take all the bitcoin to themselves because to do that, they need their client’s private key or seed phrase. They can only help those who have the faintest memory about their private key or seed phrase. If there’s no clue at all, then they won’t be able to help. so even if there are crypto-hunting services available, they don’t guarantee that they can get your coins back or keep them to themselves. Client participation still plays a huge role.
 
See this npr article/session where a crypto expert tried helping a guy who lost access to his bitcoins: https://www.npr.org/2018/01/18/578800271/finding-your-lost-bitcoins (https://www.npr.org/2018/01/18/578800271/finding-your-lost-bitcoins)
 
Other references you could check:
https://www.investopedia.com/tech/lost-cryptocoins-or-wallet-keys-call-crypto-hunters/ (https://www.investopedia.com/tech/lost-cryptocoins-or-wallet-keys-call-crypto-hunters/)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-fifth-of-all-bitcoin-is-missing-these-crypto-hunters-can-help-1530798731 (https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-fifth-of-all-bitcoin-is-missing-these-crypto-hunters-can-help-1530798731)
https://medium.com/luno/where-do-lost-bitcoins-go-7e8dd24abd0f (https://medium.com/luno/where-do-lost-bitcoins-go-7e8dd24abd0f)
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/21/3-crazy-things-people-are-doing-to-recover-lost-bitcoin.html (https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/21/3-crazy-things-people-are-doing-to-recover-lost-bitcoin.html)
https://fortune.com/2017/11/25/lost-bitcoins/ (https://fortune.com/2017/11/25/lost-bitcoins/)

I hope this will be helpful.

Cheers,
Karl
Bitcasino.io

Irreverisble transactions (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Irreversible_Transactions) are what bitcoin transactions are so senders must check everything are accurate before click on Send. And if they do it on exchanges, there are notifications to check a second time. They will also receive an email notification to check the third time.

I think most of loss come from loss of private key, mnemonic seeds, password for wallet. Or send bitcoin to wrong bitcoin address (by trust copy- paste and their devices have malwares) or address of other coins.

How to lose your Bitcoins with CTRL-C CTRL-V (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5190776.msg52682018#msg52682018). It can help to minimize loss from malwares.

Just imagine how many Satoshi went missing from using all those faucets back in the day. There was a withdrawal limit on most of those sites and many people never reached that limit or they did ..but it was all dust.

I only recently ...with the big spike in the price ... cashed out the dust that I had for years in Bitcoin wallets .. that I deposited from faucet withdrawals. It was simply not worth it to cash it out back then, because the amounts was too small. (The miners fees ate most of the profits)

Some are lost. But look at this:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5159185.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5159185.0)

Thanks @Karl for sharing this nice article.
I bought some bitcoins for my friend last year and he kept them in his blockchain wallet. Unfortunately, he lost the json file. He had saved the json file on his laptop's hard disk but did not back up the files when he installed a new version of Windows 10 on his laptop. When I asked him what was the status of his Bitcoin, he told me that the json file had been deleted during windows setup, I told him the current market value of Bitcoin. He apologized and regret for his mistake but could not recover the lost Bitcoin in any way. we should be aware about our key file.

The ways of losing BTC that I marked in bold are different from what the topic (and the rest of your list) is about, I believe. Losing BTC to scammers means that you don't have this money anymore, but it's not gone from the circulating supply. When you lose your seed phrase, on the other hand, nobody can get or use your coins, so they're truly lost for everyone. The latter has more implications because it's what makes Bitcoin even more scarce than it was supposed to be (due to a large percentage of inaccessible coins which are as good as nonexistent).

In that case you should bold the below too as they also are active in the circulating supply.

3. Malware attack like trojan and keyloggers etc
9. Lost to cloud mining sites

In both of the above cases the bitcoins are accessed by bad people and are active in the circulating supply and are not truly lost.

This is surely some useful information and new users that is currently learning about Cryptocurrencies should read about this because its applicable to all Cryptocurrencies and not just Bitcoin. Losing Bitcoin's are really disheartening because its always a possible profit even though it started from an small value. Mismanagement is truly one of the enemy of most Bitcoin owners who cannot access their electronic wallets or even ledgers that they have. Some of the news appearing are just painful to watch because most of this ledgers have a limit in which you can only get so many wrongs to open it and having it reformatted means you will lose everything within it and that is some sad mismanagement.

Has been corrected, check above.

Ways Bitcoin can be lost
1. Forgotting the encrypted password used
2. Seed phrase accessed by attackers
3. Malware attack like trojan and keyloggers etc
4. Through phishing sites
5. Through fake exchanges
6. Through fake wallets.
7. Through lost passphrase
8. Hacked exchanges
9. Lost to cloud mining sites
10. Lost to Ponzi scheme
11. Lost through fake giveaways and airdrops
12. Lost through misplaced seed phrase, private key or seed etc.

There are bitcoin that has been lost and not accessible again through the following bolded above.

1. Forgotting the encrypted password used
7. Through lost passphrase
12. Lost through misplaced seed phrase, private key or seed etc.

i lost all my coins but im not unlucky because i lost them in the form of  spending :D into the propriate stuffs . now serious , i have lost my btc too but that was before when im exploring things . i think no btc users that did not lost their btc's

this is my continuation from my story above about my lost btc , i lost it because i send them to a wrong  btc wallet address . now i make sure that i properly scan everything before processing a transaction because i dont want to repeat same mistakes again . if we are lucky we can get back our btc that we sent on a random user because they can sent it back on the address that they see

You keep repeating the same thing, forgotten passwords, forsaken coins and so on, seriously there is no difference between all these. People who mined Bitcoin before when it was still new and not so popular didn’t just forsake their bitcoins, the problem is that they have forgotten their passwords or lose the device where they stored or they don’t have their keys.

Like the story of a programmer who received a lot of Bitcoin for a work he did years and he left bitcoins because they were nothing to him, now the coins are worth millions and he can’t remember his passwords any longer, he just has only about seven tries left before he would be locked out finally from it.

Salute to these wallet hunters, if it wasn't for them, these lost 'bitcoins' would have been lost forever, I love the article and it seems to be an underrated one, most people often reply to nonsensical posts, and it's heavily true that most of the cases on losing one's wallet is through human error, though the OP may have missed some keypoints, I do think that it is helpful to newbies not to make the same mistakes listed above.

This also makes bitcoin less valuable if I may say, the more there is in supply, the price will be lower. I am not saying that I am not happy for them recovering these but satoshi says so verbatim "lost coins should be thought of as donations". I think that modern hodlers and newbies alike will not make the same mistake as those that did in the past, they never knew that the value will be this big at that time, and the waiting game is not for everyone.