Bitcoin Forum

Is there a situation where we woke up one day and found out all our bitcoins vanished? Blockchain or DLT has a common explanation where it is calculated to solve double spending problem which represent a incomparable transaction that are solve through the computers in the network?

I don't think that could ever be possible with the little knowledge I have of Bitcoin. There is no possibility that will ever make Bitcoin vanish into thin air; how will that even happen? This kind of imagination can only be possible on coins that are on a centralized system, where the team in charge can wake up any day and make away with all holders' coins. 

In the aspect of Bitcoin, it's only you and anyone else who has access to your wallet who could be able to move out your coins to a separate wallet. Even when that is done, the coins are not entirely gone because they can still be located on a different wallet. 
Unless the entire blockchain is shut down, which will only make coins available, the coins in your wallet won't disappear. 
In conclusion, I don't think there could ever be any possible scenario for Bitcoin to vanish out of a holder's wallet without a trace. 
 

0% I think. Its already been created and stored away thay no one will ever access or controls it. But there are some bitcoin losses already or those stored in private key that arent accesible by the owners or forgotten their keys. But who knows the innovation changing maybe some genius might tapped a way for this umpossible assumption but I doubt it will be easy just like that.

From my point of view I can say Bitcoin will never disappear. I think those who think so are completely wrong. But yes one thing is that if an exchange goes bankrupt or gets hacked then the dollars or bitcoins will disappear from there. Will disappear from the exchange but will be visible to other addresses taken. This kind of thing can happen in all coins other than Bitcoin like altcoin. The CEO of the coin can make it disappear if it wishes, this will only happen with the altcoin. Moreover, I think that no such incident will happen in the case of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin transactions are irreversible and a more total confirmations you have for your bitcoin transaction to that address with which you stores your bitcoin, a smaller risk to see it vanished (reverted by 51% attack).

How many bitcoin confirmations is enough? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5443953.0)


Check with this free tool: https://jlopp.github.io/bitcoin-confirmation-risk-calculator/
or that tool which is more accurate: https://web.archive.org/web/20181231045818/https://people.xiph.org/~greg/attack_success.html

The first tool does not count decimal number but the second tool does.

If you are asking a question that concerns you or an individual, then the answer is definitely YES - because every day people wake up, open their crypto wallets and all they see is zero on the balance. But this is not happening because of technical flaws or vulnerabilities that some hacker used to steal "all Bitcoins", but because a lot of people do not understand the basics of proper storage and use of cryptocurrencies.

The conclusion is more than clear, and that is that people are the weakest link in the chain, regardless of whether it is the reasons I have already mentioned, or the genetic tendency to destroy everything around them and ultimately themselves.

Don't think that in the future it will never happen let alone Bitcoin, humans can disappear/die as you asked, what's more bitcoin that is run through the internet network, there is no guarantee that the internet network will remain intact forever.

For that my advice is that you don't think too much about Bitcoin that you don't know about, now what you see and know is the best and what you can do, you want to invest, trade and so on, that's the best thought for you to do, don't fantasize about tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and so on Bitcoin is like this and that, remember: if we know what will happen in the future, of course we don't want to do anything but good, we are currently living in this world, not in the hereafter.

Nothing just vanishes in life. Should anything have to go out of existence, it would occur by some progression which means, the signs and warnings would be there but, could have been ignored all along. Besides, we exists in various time zones and as such, while some adjustments to a system is being made, there will always be some persons taking part and note of these changes.

Haven't said that, there is no surprises in cryptocurrency. If the bearish market don't come to be within a blink. It takes time to dip and then you would not the bulls pushing the market up again.
If you look at what stunts that have been thrown to the bitcoin innovation, having faith in the system wont be such a difficult thing to do. Still your advised to pick your investment with spare money.

To eradicate the bitcoin's blockchain network the governments have to shut down the internet all around the world or have to destroy each and every operating node which is practically impossible to happen so the direct and actual answer to your question is NO.

But your wallet may be drained overnight and the balance will be zero when you wake up which may happen to anyone if their device is infected or they gave their private keys unintentionally to someone, etc.

Only if you are hacked, which is usually the owner's fault by not following basic security procedures.


Bitcoin algorithm is already tested enough and you don't have to worry about it. It is safe to use.

It is much more likely that your bank/government one day decide to close your account and get your money based on some allegation.

Bitcoin price has a high  volatility , but they are safe and aren't going anywhere when properly stored.

How can something that doesn't exist vanish? :)

Have you forgotten how bitcoin works? There is no our bitcoin. In fact, bitcoin is not owned by anyone, but users get the right to own it (proof of ownership). Which means that bitcoin don't move anywhere at all (in transactions) and only information about the owner (wallet) is transmitted.

I understand your concerns, but I don't think it's something to be bothered with. The probability of your nightmares is about zero.

There are things that cannot just happen, even in years to come ...
If you have a deep knowledge on what Bitcoin really is, and how it's been operated entirely, then you'll understand that impossibilities were made to avoid anyone surpassing to make claims, recreat or retrace Bitcoin. So if it can't be manipulated on every end, then it can't vanish into thin air..
I understand that alot has been happening everyday....; Just like the time when we all got up from our beds to realize that FTX was gone and then bankman-fried never gave any tangible explanation as to what actually happened...

Sandra🧑‍🦰

We all won't wake up together. So, NO!!!!!!!

• If you lose your seedphrase someone can steal your bitcoins, it does not vanish but gets moved to another wallet,
• If you keep your bitcoins in a centralized wallet, the exchange can limit your access to "their" bitcoins,
• If there is a vulnerability discovered that breaks the security of the network (possibility = 0%),

Double spending is a way of cancelling transactions that have not gotten sufficient confirmations to be deemed irreversible. The minimum is usually one confirmations, can be 3 or 5 for higher amounts of bitcoins.

- Jay -

I know that only a newbie user would ask such questions. Op what is your intention in asking this question? I do not think this question has a direct answer but people would still try their best to give you what they can do. Bitcoin. Is not a centralized system that will just vanish like that.
I have experienced many Ponzi schemes that happened the way you (op) is saying but Bitcoin is different from those Ponzi platforms.

The initiative of Bitcoin is different from other things so nobody should use bitcoin with other nonsense schemes.

Bitcoin ain't going nowhere for now and in the nearest future despite the volatile market, unless scammers or hackers get ahold of your seed phrases or passwords.
Right now, the race against what would be acceptable as a legal tender is so heated that if care is not taken, Bitcoin or cryptocurrency would gain a upper hand.
The kind of initiative Bitcoin has put out has even assuredly provided a means of earning for those who believe in its potential.

This is only possible in a few conditions, which many of the members have mentioned above, like an unauthorized person might have got access to your wallet unemptied it, or you might have used some centralized exchange or wallet to store your assets, and when that platform got bankrupted or try to scam you, by flying away with your money. There could be many scenarios too, that can vanish your BTC, like the recent trust wallet issue, faced by some members, that their assets are not reflected in their account. That could be some bug or whatever. Some said it's a close source so we should not trust this wallet (trust wallet). The point still remains the same that a centralized body can cause such type of event.
According to my knowledge, double spending and the vanishing of BTC overnight are two different things, because double spending is impossible in the BTC blockchain, maybe you will find an example of Malleability vulnerability in the MT GOX exchange in 2014, some call it as Double spending attack, but that's was not a double spending attack. (Indirectly) but the Attacker did use a technique to alter the transaction IDs to make multiple requests. The point is double spending is an attack to use same BTC two times which is impossible so how can someone use it to vanish BTC overnight? ( please correct me if i interpret you concerns wrong).

If you generalize this type of error to every Bitcoiner, I doubt it can happen. The Bitcoin technology doesn't have such flaws, unless some users are careless in handling their wallet private keys and secret phrase. If you mistakenly end up exposing your wallet's secret information to a third party or to the public, offcus you can wake up and find all your bitcoins are gone (zero balance). Bitcoin technology is not centralized; the program has just been set up in the way it's functioning, so apparently every Bitcoiner can't just wake up and see a zero balance. Anyone who has had such an experience may be at fault.

I think it's just too much to think about this what if. Yes, we may be into this situation because of that possibilities. But it is highly unlikely that we're going to see it one day that it's entirely devastated and just vanished.

One situation that I think of is not it's going to be vanished but will be just be stopped as in the entire blockchain and that's when the whole world will have its interruption with internet.

Every cryptocurrency user sooner or later asks such a question.
But the fact is that the blockchain is a distributed registry and we have nothing to worry about. This is not a banking system that can freeze all your assets in an instant. In order to destroy bitcoin, you need to destroy all computers in the world. And this will never happen.

Therefore, cryptocurrencies are a strong tool, it is irreversible.

I don't think that will happen that we woke up and not find bitcoin anywhere. Some bitcoin have been lost or locked out in some unknown wallet but that will not cause all bitcoin to be lost. Most bitcoin that were lost happened in the past when the knowledge of how to own and handle the coins stored in the wallet were very minimal, then some hodlers of bitcoin barely understand wallet phrase, keys or password but the story is changing now and more people are securing their coins, so I don't easily know how bitcoin can varnish.

If you think about it logically, something like that is not possible for bitcoin. Because as long as I buy bitcoins until now, I have never heard of someone mysteriously losing bitcoins, without a trace. So I don't really believe it, let alone look at the security implemented in these existing wallets, all of them have very strong security, and it looks like it will be very difficult, even for great hackers.

If the price goes to zero, it's still reasonable. Because only its value decreases and disappears. But this also does not apply to bitcoin, the decentralization that is applied to bitcoin means that no one can play with the price. So in conclusion, bitcoin disappears suddenly, whether it's in terms of price or bitcoin itself, it's very unlikely.

It depends but technically, most likely it happen to those people who didn't know how to properly store their Bitcoin.
Prone or possibly lost is that you stored it in a centralized exchange or wallet, it will never vanish if you have control of your key.

Remember that it should be 3 confirmations before the transaction is called safe and even double spending can't do.
Understanding the basic function of Bitcoin, it's always an advantage if we are knowledgable enough about how to use Bitcoin.

Uhm I think it's super unlikely that all the Bitcoins would just disappear overnight. So basically, Bitcoin uses this thing called blockchain to keep everything safe and nobody can mess with it. Before anything gets added to the blockchain, a bunch of nodes and miners have to verifiy it. IMHO, it's like super hard for anyone to mess with or erase transactions because of this.
The double-spending prob is when digital cash is used and someone spends the same money twice. It's a real issue I think. But apparently, blockchain tech solves this prob by making a network that's decentralized where every transaction gets verified and recorded on a public ledger that everyone shares. So basically, it's super unlikely that all the Bitcoins would disappear because of the security stuff set up by the blockchain tech. Finger crossed.

That is the last prayer we can ever pray for now,and that is the last thing we want to even hear, because what Bitcoin has done to our lifes,I don't think any government of any nation can ever do,making employment opportunity available for that large amount of crowd in the crypto space.Bitcoin's importance can never be over emphasised

So many times,the government of different nations have tried to ban Bitcoin,but the more they try,the more it gains more recognition.There is no way any government can silence Bitcoin,because even the richest men of the world are investing in Bitcoin, therefore giving it stability.We will never pray for that,and we can't wake up any day to see that Bitcoin has vanished.Bitcoin has come to stay,and it is better for you to get that ideology out of your mind now.

No chance that it will happen since no one can access your bitcoin easily unless you give your private key to someone you thought trusted person. Also your thoughts is unlikely gonna happen since we can see blockchain is very well establish. Also just make sure that you never click any harmful links or download anything unknown since maybe from that hackers can find loopholes on your wallet and stole your balance. There are some incident from the past which the wallet owners forget they have bitcoins left on their wallet but you can see that it never been deducted nor vanished easily. So this kind of thoughts is really impossible to happen.

Is this meaningless disappearance, like just disappearing, without any reason?

^ if this is what you mean then I don't know if it will happen but seeing the resilience of bitcoin until now (even though in essence what is created by humans has a chance to disappear but for bitcoin I don't think that will happen) the possibility of it happening (bitcoin disappearing) is very small.

just rest assured that Bitcoin won't go away even if there are issues/rumors quantum computers can hack it (sounds like a fairy tale) lol.

It's impossible for Bitcoin vanished over night, accept the stolen wallet that the private key has been compromised, which is Bitcoin has created for future usage and no have control to anyone.

Yes, it can happen that you wake up one day and see all your bitcoins are vanished and stolen / hacked by someone if you do not keep your seed phrases safe however if you meant that overall bitcoin to be disappeared altogether then it is not possible. Can you say that one day you wake up and see there is no internet globally? Of course, the answer to this is No.
Similarly thinking Bitcoin blockchain to have vanished, when it is decentralized, is not possible.

If everything is done in the correct manner and  propesecurity measures are put in place, I don't see a situation were coins just vanish in thin air, unless you share your computer with someone knowledgeable about cryprocurrencies,  and maybe you are fond of using pirated software which could have malware that is stealing your data.

And in a situation of double spending, well low fees could trigger this as you try to speed up a transaction by replacing a fee but coins should still come through unless its a scammer that doesnt want to send the correct amount to you.

Yes, it's possible that all your Bitcoins vanish overnight and you wake up only to find out that your wallet is empty, but that won't happen because of double spending or the 51% attack, but only if you are storing your Bitcoins in either an online wallet or in a platform wallet like an exchange or anything else because in that case, your assets are always at the risk of being stolen.

That is the reason why it is important to always store your Bitcoins or any other cryptocurrencies in a secure wallet, it should either be a hardware wallet or a wallet that gives you access to your private keys, Electrum is an example of that.