Bitcoin Forum

there are many threads and news about people losing access to their wallets and forgetting or seed phrases,
and it's better for scarcity of bitcoin,  but how can we know or speculate that the wallet is lost, and it is out of the supply? is there any platform where we can find lost wallets, if no, then it's a good idea to start a website and list every lost wallets.

Some very early addresses like satoshi's are basically lost.

A part from those,  You cannot know for sure only by watching the blockchain. Even coins which never moved from 2012-13 may just be moved at anytime.

You would have to look at news website and things liker that , but that source isn't always reliable.

Assuming you have 1 Bitcoin in a wallet right now and you write down the recovery seed in a book and God forbids it, a fire breakout in your home, and all the book was burnt to ashes, will you tell the world you've lost your 1 BTC? Only a very limited number of people will know about your loss, maybe those who are close to you and knew that you are a Bitcoin holder. The fact is you are never going to have access to your Bitcoin again unless you can provide your recovery seed, in this case, your Bitcoin is lost forever.  In a wallet that no one has access to anymore.

Bitcoin has no burning feature if that's what you mean, in altcoins cases, you have to burn some supply to reduce the max supply, losing access to your coin is different from burning coins to reduce max supply.

Bitcoin max supply will remain at 21 million, even if 10million is lost it's not coming back, it is forever lost.

I don't think by just scanning the address will guarantee you knowing that such wallet is lost or not but sometimes it could be that no transactions has occurred since store or for over several years. For instance, if a bitcoin was sent to an address for about 8 years ago and there was no output (sent out) and the only input (sent into) has been there such wallet may likely be considered to have lost access or owner is dead IMO, but I believe there may be other ways to detect wallet that have been lost access.

Since BTC has no central regulator, then of course there is also no central data that would provide there is no accurate way to keep track of this information. You can have an information probably through analysis of the blockchain and public data through blockchain.com (http://blockchain.com) or coinmarketCap.com (http://coinmarketCap.com) but still, that won't make any sense. This won't ensure if it is truly lost based on its latest transactions.

Lost wallets or ledgers. I agree, scarcity is what creates its value. So protect yours.

Aside from a few "burn" addresses:

- 1CounterpartyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXUWLpVr
- 1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE
....

There's no way to know if funds are lost for sure. But according to Chainlysis, ~20% (or almost 4 million coins) are lost[1].

As for your suggestion about making a site, then I personally don't see the point because you can prove that you own an address by signing a message with your private keys, but there's no way to prove that you don't own an address. In other words, anyone can claim that they have lost their funds but there is no way to confirm if that's true or not.

[1] https://www.newsbtc.com/news/bitcoin/chainalysis-up-to/

From my understanding so far, there's no website to tell you the real facts about an address that have no access to, take a view from few people that have commented earlier. If you lost your details then is a no go area for you because is lost forever and everyone is liable for their key and seedphrase, that is why you need to backup in multiple devices maybe if you have no access to one the you may have access to the other in order to access your assets.

In the sense that those coins will never be moved you're probably right,
I highly doubt that satoshi actually lost the keys though.

All sources are, that's the problem.

Even if I tell you, address YXZ which holds thousands of coins is mine and I lost the key,
why would you believe me? I can't think of any way to prove that I'm not a liar.
If i had the key, I could just sign a msg to prove that it's my address, to prove the non-existance of a key is way harder.

I don't believe there is a way to know if BTC is lost, unless the owner declares that they have lost their keys and seed phrase and you choose to believe them, but if they lost it to another person, that means if it was stolen, then it does not mean the BTC is lost because the thief still has access to the funds and even if they may not have moved it for many years, they still can because they have the keys.
Can we be so sure that the BTC's in Satoshi's addresses are lost, maybe they still have the keys and do not want to move it because it will give them away that they are still alive and part of the community, they may move the coins later in the future.

Maybe someone would source out the website sooner but there's no guarantee that all information given might be 100 percent correct, just bitmover did say from his post above.
So in essence they have now added for total percentage of burning down from the total supply.

No one or news site that could give exact amount of bitcoin the owners have lost access to the wallet except some essential cases were the owners come online to air out the figures and also showcase his address before it could be recorded as stats otherwise they don't have tools for that findings.

Any coins belong to burn addresses are the 100% proof if the coins are lost.

Some people can say if the coins aren't move for at least 10+ years it can be said the coins are lost, but it's not entirely correct because the owner might don't want to move his coins because he don't feel if $69K isn't really high for him and he expect Bitcoin price could achieve more than this.

Some people already have a track of the lost wallets... But the fact that a wallet is lost doesn't mean it will be in limbo forever, some of the keys can be recovered in the future.

A good example is the satoshi coins. We are talking about 1 million bitcoins... and that's a big piece of the network if the total of coins is 21 millions. And here the issue is: We can't be sure those coins are lost. Some people think they are, som others are waiting for them to move.

I would like to start by saying why do we need to know which wallets are lost forever and which are not? How can we use this knowledge? What is the benefit of knowing this? To subtract lost bitcoins from the total stock of bitcoins? What will change from this?

Technically, such a website will not be easy to implement due to the lack of complete reliable data on wallets. We will not be able to determine in any way which of the wallets has access, and which one doesn't. There is another curious moment. Today you may have access to your wallet, but tomorrow you may lose it.

In principle, you can add information about well-known wallets (like Nakamoto's wallet) that are lost, but there are few such wallets and, in principle, this is already known. I don't think it's worth building a website for.

There is no proof that coins sent to burn addresses have been lost. In theory, it's possible that someone already have the private key of such addresses or someone will be able to brute-force them in the future.
The only coins that are provably lost forever are those that haven't been claimed as block reward by miners and those that have been burnt using OP_return outputs.

Outside of a few programmatic things (can't send due to the way the transaction was made) and some addresses there is no such thing as a lost wallet.
People can CLAIM that they don't have access, and that might even be true at the moment, but you never know what may turn up.
i.e., 'I lost my seed phrase' turns into, 8 years later. 'Oh there is is, it was in the file folder for the water heater, oops'

Attempting to find / create a list of lost or undependable wallets may be an interesting thought experiment. But it would be mostly pointless.

I have coins that I have not touched in more then a decade and am not even 100% the private key I have is good anymore. But it's such a small amount it's not worth the time to figure it out or destroy the collectable it's on.
Is that lost or unknown.

-Dave

I'm not sure if it will be important for us to have and know. we can see transactions and some wallets holding Bitcoins. but we can't see if the intended wallet is lost or inaccessible.
all we can know is the remaining coins that can still be mined. and also the coins currently in circulation and traded. I myself am not really interested in a lost and inaccessible wallet.

In my case, I lost my ledger wallet while we were doing house shifting. The tiny thing got lost accidentally in the furniture back and was stuck there for 2 years and I did not even know about it. I was so scared about it but I had the mnemonic phrases stored and asked for help on the forum. I created an entire thread about it and got good support from the community as well.

Figured out how the ION Colman tool works and could be a good help when you lose your hardware wallet or software wallet. But the only rule is you should have your phrases stored properly.

With time we will definitely have lot of wallets lost in the deep cold and may not have chance of recovering back. This will definitely short the supply.

Determining whether a wallet has been lost can be difficult because you may not know who the owner is. Some people hold onto their BTC in their wallets without moving them for years. So, if you come across a wallet with funds from 2010, it's possible that the owner still has access to it but is holding onto their bitcoin. As a result, it's impossible to be 100% certain if a wallet is lost or not. Only cases where individuals confirm that they have lost their wallets would be reported in the news, and any other speculation would be just that - speculation..

There's no way you can ever speculate correctly which coins are out of circulation. In fact, if someone acknowledges that they have lost coins, you can't verify that statement. That's how bitcoin works, that's the beauty. My keys, my coins. No one knows ever whether I have access or not.

That's a speculation. We don't know whether satoshi is dead or alive. We don't know whether satoshi has access to all this addresses or not. We don't know anything, we can only speculate.

No bitcoin wallet can get lost,i.e the coins in the wallet remains there till the owner figures out his seed phrase or forgets about the bitcoin,if he can't get his seed phrase. It is impossible for any one to know a lost wallet and for anyone to believe you,if you tell them that you have lost your wallet because it is untraceable. There can be forgotten or abandoned wallet,due to the fact that the owners don't have access to their wallets. Trying to get the list if all bitcoin wallets that owners cannot access is impossible and a waste of time. There is no need to worry over spilled milk.

You can't know that for sure, only when someone actually says that he lost access to his wallet. Tbh this is the only thing I don't like about Bitcoin. At some point, it seems like 5 million or even more BTC will be lost and never be used, and that's not a good thing considering there can only be 21 million.

There's no way you can actually know if the bitcoin belonging to a particular wallet address has been lost except such a person comes forth and says that he/she has lost ownership of the private keys or seed phrase. Some persons might have some unmoved BTC in their wallet for years, so viewing such btc using explorer doesn't mean they are lost or abandoned.

We don't know that. Satoshi could reappear tomorrow and spend all their coins.

A prime example of this was several hundred early addresses which "woke up" after being dormant for 10 years in order to sign a message calling CSW a fraud.

This also doesn't mean that the coins are lost. People claim they have lost coins they haven't lost for a huge variety of reasons.

why do you say it's not a good thing when someone loses access to his wallet and 5 million Bitcoins can't be unlocked by anyone. It even makes Bitcoin step by step with the increasingly limited Supply of bitcoins in circulation. Only 21 million and several million cannot be opened by anyone. The rarer the bitcoin, the more expensive it will be.

Nothing is entirely lost in the bitcoin network, only inaccessible. As is the case for when people forget their seed phrases, privste keys, or passwords. The coin is pretty much still there, just out of the user's reach sadly. Now, the story goes different when we're talking about hackings and bitcoin theft. Which of course depending on the scenario, could either mean that you'd still be able to get a hold of your stolen bitcoin(s) in the process or those are gone forever and you bave to love on. It's all situational really for one to consider a bitcoin lost.

There's no way to speculate or know a certain Bitcoin in a wallet is lost unless the wallet owner makes a public announcement about it. Yes, the BTC lost among the total 21 million coins.

Yes, it will be a good idea to have a site that focuses on lost BTC wallet, and in case we have someone that wants to work on it here (https://www.cryptovantage.com/news/the-top-5-biggest-lost-bitcoin-fortunes-that-we-know-about/) are some well know Bitcoiner that seems to lose their wallet.

We call a bitcoin wallet "lost" when the seed/private key/wallet password is lost/forgotten. Yes, in technical terms the wallet is not lost, but in real life it can be no longer accessible, unless cracked.
It's not all about the owner finding the password again. I can give you an example of a situation where the coins are and will remain lost forever.
Imagine that long time ago you were mining bitcoin on your computer. You never had any backups because that bitcoin was worth maybe $20, but now it's worth close to a million dollars. The hard drive was physically damaged, for instance you had a fire in your home and everything burned to ashes. The coins will never be used again, so they're "lost".

We don't know how much of the supply is in this state of limbo, but coins that weren't moved for the last 10 years will most likely be put in this group.

There are many strong HODLers who have never moved their Bitcoin after buying. It may seem like it is a lost wallet, but you can never know for sure. Only those who have publically announced their lost wallet, could be listed. Otherwise, there isn't any system that could tell you that which one is lost. I have seen many thread regarding people finding their wallets after they have lost it in the past, long time ago.
And I don't know why would we need such thing right now. What lost is lost. If not found, it's a good thing for Bitcoin. So from my POV, it is unnecessary.

I don't think there is any software or technology that can detect the lost very easily. However, due to the lack of value of Bitcoin at the beginning of the discovery of Bitcoin, many large holders neglected to save Bitcoin reserving wallets, so there is no permission or access to all those wallets. So all those wallets are being detected as lost wallets. But today, the case of lost Bitcoin wallets is not very common. However due to various unforeseen reasons bitcoin wallets get lost or access keys/seeds get lost. If there is no special announcement then the lost wallet cannot be identified.

Bold of you to assume a ten year dormant wallet is categorized to be lost. Especially it is already noted that a decade wallet was recently activated,

The certain way to calculate inaccessible coins is the one that is sent/burnt into OP_return output. Attempting to list a coin that is claimed to be lost is meaningless. Even if you decide to go that way and speculate to categorize that some address is the lost one, what are you going to do? recirculate it back? That would be a catastrophe because the mechanism is faulty in essence.

Their is no way you will know if a wallet is lost, their is no website to show if a wallet is lost. I don’t know you expect that to be possible, some people bought bitcoin and they have been holding bitcoin for years now, if you see that kind of wallet, you might be thinking the owner already lose access to the wallet, but don’t be surprise that the owner of the wallet is still having all the details to the wallet, he might not just be ready to sell but some people will think the owner already lose access. The only bitcoin that you will know is lost is the one that happens to you or someone close to you, or the once the owner comes to social media to announce.

Whats the point on having a list of lost wallets? It doesnt make no sense on knowing that because there's nothing we can do with those wallets.There's no way on getting those coins back.
If they are out of circulation then we cant be having that complete 21M supply in circulation which means that if the demand getting higher and the supply gets lesser then expect that
it would really be giving out some positive value which we are really that longing for. Try to find out way on bruteforcing? Good luck with that.

That's why I said "will most likely be put in that group", instead of "are lost".
This is the way blockchain analytics operate. These companies make probable statistics and predictions and a 1 year old address with no outputs is going to be put in a group they suspect to be lost.
It sometimes happens that an old address wakes up, but as they say, exception proves the rule. The fact that 1 address woke up, doesn't change the fact that other 100 did not and many analysts will label much younger addresses lost. As a matter of fact, coins sent to an address could be lost automatically. Imagine a situation where someone sets up a wallet and dies. Later someone makes a mistake while sending money and sends it to an address belonging to that dead guy. The coins are lost in an instant. Sending coins to an address belonging to Satoshi or one of the known dead bitcoiners.

No one knows if the wallet is actually lost except for the owner.  Idle coins for years can possibly be considered lost but there are cases where the coins are moved after years of being untouched.  All the data about lost Bitcoin are just assumption and is not an accurate reference to whether a coin is lost or not.  So instead of stating lost wallets, we can categorize them as idle or dormant wallets.

No one can tell if some coins are lost or not, even the supposed owner behind those coins cannot tell us that, as the only way to demonstrate they are the owners of the addresses they claim to have some lost coins is by signing a message, but if someone could sign the message then their coins will not be lost, so OP do not worry about the coins of others and concentrate on what you can do to increase your own stash, as at the end those are the only coins which directly affect you.

Its good that you get the idea that, lost wallets translates to lost private keys or lost seed phrases. Though, that is only true when you've got no other access to the said wallet. Yeah, you head that right.

Seed phrases or private keys aren't the only access you've got to a wallet. Upon installing a wallet and accessing it on your device, your bound go create a password that enables you to have access to it. You might afterwards lose your generated seed phrase or private key but still have access to the wallet with your password. Hence, that wallet isn't lost technically, you've just lost every option of recovery if the wallet is uninstalled or the device is damaged.

Best practice would be to create a different wallet and send them coins over there.

Since I was onboarded, I really have not heard about any device that detects a wallet address that has been lost access to just like that. Non of such have I heard before and In as much as we are all  matured and old enough to take decision, we are as well old enough to watch over our assets and properly storing it to prevent lose but however, I would say so
Just a little ideas as it is when a wallet been doing transaction, and all of a suden there has not been any transaction on that address, but there are assets still on that. It is assumed that the owner of the wallet lost access to the wallet and therefore the wallet could not be able to transact anymore. So in that case it is assumed but inconclusive as to why there has not been any transaction on that. Wallet but it holds some funds not until the ownership surfaces to clear the air with explanations. We have seen wallet that have been dormant for years and assume they have been lost access to but all of a suden they got woken and transaction takes place.

We have one: https://bitcoin-supply.com/

The provably lost number of bitcoin numbers 2,828. Everything else is pure speculation. It doesn't matter if coins haven't moved in 1 year, 5 years, 10+ years. It doesn't matter if someone claims they've lost their private keys. Such coins are not provably lost, and you should not assume they will never move again.

Sorry, but this is a nonsense metric. Even addresses which are dormant for 5-10 years cannot be assumed to be lost, but only 1 year? Given that the general knowledge regarding importance of back ups and seed phrases is continually increasing, and given we know that more and more people are holding for the long term, then the vast majority of coins which have not moved in one year are simply being held.

it's so low amount that we doesn't will see any big effect on market, some website said arround 4million btc are lost, is it a speculation?
it's a small disappointment for me, because it's very less compared to total supply, if really 4million were lost then it's good for bitcoin's scarcity. but disappointment for who lost them.

There is no way to know, some inactive Bitcoin wallets from 2017 became active in 2021 and they are once believed to have been lost or the owners dead or something, I read this online and I don't know how accurate it is, there is no scanner or software anyone can use to know how many Bitcoin is lost.

Why would anyone care about the lost Bitcoin though? It's not as if you will be able to help get them back, or have OP find a way out? I believe it's impossible to get a lost bitcoin back even if you have the fastest computers alive, because private keys will be long lost and without the private keys you can't get the Bitcoin back.

Complete speculation. We have no idea how many coins are truly lost, and many coins which are indeed lost will be able to be retrieved in the future with advances in quantum computing and reenter circulation, so shouldn't be considered lost at all. All the estimates you see of 2 million, 4 million, etc., are simply based on how long it has been since some coins have moved, but this is a very poor indicator of coins being lost.

For example, a few years ago 145 address containing over 7,000 bitcoin which have not been active in 10+ years woke up to sign a message calling CSW a fraud. Many of these addresses still haven't moved the coins on them, which have been there since 2009, but we know for a fact they are not lost.

It is impossible to know if the wallet is lost because there are Bitcoins that even 10 years old and no movements will be transferred to another wallet because there are times that we thought we lost our seed phrase  but turns out we found it after 10 years and also having a website with list of lost wallet is not reliable because anytime soon those wallets can be transferred and we don't have basis that the wallet is already lost unless it was like 2009 but again it is just all about speculation unless that owner will say he lost it really.

There's no chance to lost your wallet, you will lost your wallet if you don't remember your password and seedphrase and you cannot retrieve your wallet if you don't remember your seedphrase. Save your password and seedphrase in your file, notebook or some stuff that has a security in it incase someone took your phone or notebook, just be careful my guy .

Please direct me to which blockchain analytics companies that use that kind of methodology, I would like to see about it

IIRC, I do aware such kind of method is used, and their claim is an "educated guess" to track lost coins. Welp, I can't stand with their reasoning and rather question their motive. Besides, I don't think there is even any statistical and prediction that significantly affect the probability of a lost coin if what they are doing are merely using a metric of an inactive wallet since X amount of time.

A claim that incorporates unprovable ways to calculate lost coins, will likely be an attempt mainly for publicity.

In my own views I think there was no trick or way to see that the wallet is lost but I think based on some basic facts we can guess whether the wallet is actually lost.
And the one big fact can be that there has been no transaction from that wallet for a long time. And it can be easily understood by looking at the recent transaction in blockchain.
But ultimately it depends entirely on the private key of that wallet. Now if the owner of that wallet gets the private key again, then the wallet can be activated again, so it is almost impossible to understand that the owner of the private key of that wallet has been lost.  Whether or not he is a big whale who has put his bitcoin on holding. ::) :P

Lost wallet is not detectable by any other person except the rightful owner of the wallet, I believe from my perspective that the only way you can know that you wallet has been lost is when you don't have access to your wallet, so I believe that another person cannot know that this particular wallet is a stolen wallets. That's while it's very good to let people know the important of seed phrase, and how to secure your seed phrase to avoid stolen of wallet, because when it lose its not detectable.

It is impossible to know for sure that a wallet is lost. Even by analyzing the blockchain or with other tools, you cannot assume that that wallet is truly lost. Also even if the funds haven't moved for years you can't tell the owner has lost the keys.

By simply scanning a wallet with a blockchain explorer, there is no way to know which wallet is lost. We only know that the wallet is lost when the owner of the wallet reveals it.  Very few users report that their wallets are lost. so I think creating a list of lost wallets is not possible at all. Since it is not possible to memorize the wallet key, many users keep losing their wallets. I don't think there is any way to turn it off or find out.

At that point you may consider that as "lost" when trading, that's the point. I mean if it is not touched for 10 years, then it should not be calculated for the market, it is also true that some of the many years long held coins are not in the market neither. Could they suddenly become active and be sold? Sure, but if it hasn't been touched for 10 years, then when you are buying or selling, you shouldn't be considering that as a threat or a benefit.

I personally believe that just do whatever you want to do ignoring that they exist, and you will be able to do a lot better trades. If you keep on thinking that it could be sold any minute now, then you are going to be worried about something that hasn't happened and that's called anxiety.

List all the addresses? Seems lot of data to be merged at one place and it could also breach the security of other addresses which are active and has got nothing to do with the lost wallets. I mean imagine, one day or another those lost wallet addresses might have transacted with the active addresses thus there will be raiding of those addresses by hackers and trying to trace the original destination for Satoshi/bitcoin. 

I’m not saying that Website would be threat directly. But you never know what sort of ideas a data collection center may generate.

Perhaps, there is other use than that. One can just watch the addresses having the balances and sitting as it is forever.

The main advantage of Bitcoin is that it gives you full control over the funds to which you have "unlocking" keys. You are the sole owner of the particular data in the blockchain, and you are the only person who actually knows whether the funds can be transferred to another address or not. Other people observing activity in the blockchain may only speculate on what is actually occurring, and their conclusions may differ significantly because there are no fully deterministic links when it comes to the Bitcoin blockchain. As for the owner of the funds, he knows precisely which addresses belong to him and which part of the blockchain is no longer available as a circulating supply.  It also applies to so-called "burn" addresses, that is, addresses without corresponding private keys: if you create your own burn address, you will be the only person who can verify that keys don't exist.

I remember estimates from Vice News (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_OPJMoLVdw) that if coins weren't moved at all for 5 years, they are presumed to be lost. Maybe others have different time frames, but aside from people who at some point claimed losing access to certain coins of their, we can't truly know whether the coins are lost or just left untouched for a while. But if the coins haven't been moved for years, they're effectively out of the circulating supply, so that metric is still important, even if the coins aren't really lost forever and might be used at some point.

I wouldn't say 5 years is enough, that is amount of time that could change and I think it is totally possible that people could hold for 5 years and sell, plus that 5 years depends on which 5 years as well, in 20 years people who held for 5 years would be common, but now we are at the start so it is harder to hold for 5 years since that would be nearly half of bitcoins life.

For example, I consider 10 years today as a good case of "probably lost" to me, because that is the earliest days of bitcoin, time when it was 100 bucks or lower, and people who still haven't sold should be considered lost, but 5 years? That seems a little less, and even 10 years will be normal in a few decades as well because it would become a lot more common.

I was responding to this post and somehow I did a typo with 1 instead of 10.
Here's what I wrote about it earlier.

 

I agree that we cannot be sure which wallets are lost and which are not, but the statistics are made anyway. We could use the example of that guy in the UK who lost his hard drive. The coins are like that Schrodinger's Cat, which is dead and isn't at the same time. They are probably lost forever, but there's a small chance that someone will one day find that hard drive.
You guys say that old wallets sometimes wake up, of course they do. People pronounced dead sometimes come back to life, but how often does it happen? Does it happen often enough for us to consider 10 year old wallets as active? How many of these wallets will eventually wake up? 1% maybe? 2%?

And there is absolutely no proof whatsoever that he actually lost those coins. Every claim of a lost wallet could simply be an unfortunate boating accident. I know I lose all my coins in an unfortunate boating accident frequently! ;)

I do not doubt that some 10 year old dormant coins are indeed truly lost, but it is impossible to put even a ballpark estimate on it. CSW was so sure that a bunch of early dormant addresses from 2009 had been lost that he claimed they belonged to him in court, and then the true owner signed a message out of the blue calling him a fraud. And even if we say all these coins are truly lost, they will likely be recovered in the future as and when quantum computers are able to break the ECDLP, and so the number cannot be removed from the total available supply.

I assume the list of lost wallets is quite a good idea, but there is a problem with legal aspects. Just for example: wife and husband are in hard divorce process, several children, several court visits etc... Wife declares husband's wallet lost, and starts blackmailing him, then police joins the deal, one more court case... Then this situation continues with similar actions taken by both sides and so on and so on... That's why it's quite hard to verify the wallet as lost.

When you can't login to you wallet after trying all possible way to login to the account. Them there are some times you might even received a message that you have successfully changed your password and username then as an understanding person you supposed to notice that you account has be comprised and you have to take immediate action to avert it back immediately.