Bitcoin Forum

So I read a thread by a new member who was asking if the information that is being shared here is just theoretical to gaining relevance in the platform or is something that is actually being practiced in real life situation and the first thing that came to my mind is the numerous post about securing ones Bitcoin holding and the fact that some persons might be taking it for granted.

The truth is that people actually loose access to their private keys and will loose their bitcoin In the process and a lost bitcoin isn't even a disadvantage to the network but actually increase the value of bitcoin in circulation and so if you take all the security measures being shared in the platform for granted, you're putting yourself at a serious disadvantage because if you loose your bitcoin due to your carelessness, it's your loss and not that of bitcoin and I doubt their is a means you can use in recovering a lost Bitcoin without your private keys.

There are a lot of ways to lost your Bitcoin, specially during the early years, and who wouldn't forget this story? Man who lost 7500 bitcoin in a landfill asks gov't he wants to dig it up. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5384186.0)

And so there are a lot of ways that has been shared here in the community on how to protect your private key and mnemonic phrase.

• how do I keep my private key safe? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5440826.0)
• How best to secure your Private Keys and/or Seed phrase (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5211880.0)
• How do i make sure my Bitcoin Private Key is Random and secure? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5421415.0)
• bitcoin private key storage (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5387708.0)
• Best practices to prevent hackers from stealing our crypto assets (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5438741.0)
• Crypto Security - Additional Protection For Your Seed/Private Keys. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5230920.0)

Observing these kinds of threads, I can't help but wonder how some people managed to misplace their private key. We all know that bitcoin is not an investment that should be joked with, as doing so will result in the loss of everything you have worked so hard to accumulate. Therefore, my question is: Why did those who lost their private key purchase bitcoin? The most important thing to keep safe when owning cryptocurrency is your private key; sharing it with others puts you at risk of losing everything you have invested because having your private key is equivalent to having access to your wallet. Therefore, before engaging in cryptocurrency, make sure you are capable of taking all the necessary precautions to ensure that you are not a careless person.

You are correct. Once you lose access to your bitcoins either through losing your proof of ownership which is your private keys or through sending to the wrong address which you do not control, there is no way to recover the bitcoins. Transactions are immutable and Bitcoin is extremely secure.

If you lock yourself out, you can't get in.

Loss of private keys was more common in the early days when the value of Bitcoin was significantly smaller than it is now. It was easy to be nonchalant about an investment that only had promise but little value at the time. Today when even a few thousand sats is running into thousands of dollars people are more careful with their investments but still make common mistakes one of which is having a single backup in one location.
Having one backup means that any natural disasters that affects that environment results in loss of bitcoins.

It's obvious though, even the man himself knows this:


And it's hard to recover lost bitcoins, due to several reasons, yeah carelessness is one of them. Although I think the latest breed of bitcoin enthusiast now are very careful about their bitcoin because they know it's harder to get know as compare to start of bitcoin, 2010-2013 era.

The crazy part is Bitcoin OGs still gets their bitcoin wallet compromised, there are many ways that something can go wrong and sometimes you can't turn around a mistake that's already written to happen to you, mind you we learn from it.

There have been few times that my crypto wallet got hacked or compromised and I can't help but wonder why, because I don't like free things online and I am not a fan of strangers sending PM to me on Telegram and social media, if you think you got everything covered and you can't make some stupid mistake well think again, anything can happen.

Still it's better to be cautious than to be careless, and that's why I decide to lower the chances of making my wallet get compromised again, and that's why I decide to go for a hardware wallet, something I should have done for many years back, just be careful with decisions you make.

There is the seed phrase for that and also a rare case of still having the backup of wallet file for that wallet. This two can be use to recover the wallet but if you include either a passphrase to that seed phrase or a password to that wallet file and you forget them then you can’t still recover that wallet.

It is also true that you can’t recover a lost seed phrase or private key. All those services promising people that they can recover their lost private or seed phrase are fake. The only case is if you forget some words of the seed phrases and still have some then btcrecover can do that

That is the point. The problem of someone losing the keys to manage their bitcoin is personal, not the rest of the ecosystem that actually benefits from it. And it can be done on purpose as well, as someone who decides not to bequeath their bitcoin to anyone in particular, but to the whole community.

I agree. Probably the very first step when getting acquainted with Bitcoin, people need such stories so that they understand the essence of their ownership of their own bank. We are used to seeing people fascinated by the stories of the growth of Bitcoin and people's financial success, but instead, it would be wiser to show the other side so that people are freed from illusions and can soberly assess their ability to keep initial phrases and, in general, their ability to be careful.

maybe these people are so rich that they do not give much importance to the btc they hold or maybe they are so confident that they will never lose their private keys

anyway one needs to understand that their private key is an integral part of holding btc and one that should not be careless with

Bitcoin is Bitcoin, is itself and it is not the same as people who have bitcoin and lose bitcoin, bitcoin holders or owners. They are very different things and can not be considered the same in any context.

People who lost bitcoin are not risk factors for Bitcoin and Bitcoin network. I don't understand if anyone consider those people are risky for Bitcoin and its network.

They lost their bitcoins is actually good news and gifts, donations for other Bitcoin holders who don't lose bitcoins. Because total supply will be smaller than 21 million and with same demand, less supply as a principle of supply and demand, price will be higher.

Self-custody is important to ensure access to your coins, but it is also not something that beginners can deal with easily, many are used to having someone or something to take care of their assets, it is more a matter of adapting to a new thing and get used to storing your things responsibly

and some of them aren't really aware or care about bitcoin back in the days when they acquire the coins ,
there is a officemate of mine that had been paid with bitcoin many years back and since that is the only option His client gave him
then he accept the coin for the sake of His work , and then forget about it till 2017 when the Bull happens and he have heard about bitcoin again
and that's what happened that he have not saved His key so sorry for him losing 10 bitcoins .

I agree with the op's reasoning. When some BTC becomes unavailable because of locking oneself out of the wallet, it's the person who is locked out who suffers from it. Bitcoin become more scarce, so it can have a positive impact on the price if the demand remains the same, but the supply goes down this way.
Some might argue that lower circulating supply is bad for Bitcoin as well because the supply is already quite low, and a decrease makes it even less practical for global adoption. But I don't think it's a valid concern because Bitcoin is highly divisible into sats and because adoption is very far from a rate where it could become a problem.

Bitcoin has transferred ownership from being in the hands of a third party, such as banks, who control your money, and after their approval, you can buy and sell to a trusted party, which is the Bitcoin network, so you need the private key to access your currencies. Your failure to maintain that key means losing your money, and then increasing the value of Bitcoin will mean nothing to you. The price increase is not only related to a decrease in supply, but also to an increase in demand.

Burning Bitcoins or stored Bitcoins in practically lost wallets can be a hidden gem for Bitcoin's price. With a lower circulating supply and a growing demand year after year, the dynamics are set for something remarkable.

Imagine a decade or two from now when people proudly share stories of acquiring Bitcoin at five figures, reminiscing about the golden age of crypto. :)

Helping others to secure their bitcoins is praiseworthy work that most of the users have been doing all this time when someone asks about it or wants to learn to prevent others from scamming them. But when others are lazy enough to take this initiative before investing or holding some bitcoins, it's not anybody else fault but him/her because they didn't bother to learn one of the important things about having bitcoins and that is how to secure and prevent themselves from getting fooled to send it to the scammers and hackers.

Here we share real life experiences in form of suggestions and advice, so as a newbie you should consider the suggestions that is provided by more experienced member here in the forum. We know that it’s really hard to buy Bitcoins with your hard earned money, hence here all give appropriate suggestions to secure these precious bitcoins more securely. Use open source wallets, avoid using online wallets and exchanges to store the coins. Follow atleast this, and you will be safe from online attacks for the coins.

Bitcoin is in my opinion 99% of practical and 1% theory, every bitcoin informations we learn from the forum or any other platform are practical experiences of bitcoin users so if anyone is taking them for granted it's to ones disadvantage. Let drop one or two instances to consider:

1. Wallet hack and phishing prevention: when we learn about preventive measures to consider in protecting our bitcoin wallet from been hacked and against potential bug vulnerability we put what we learn to application because having your wallet hacked with your funds stolen isn't a theory. Maybe such people should wait till it happens to them.

2. Trading and investment: Does crypto trading sounds theoretical, maybe they should give it a try and experience the theory that's there in losing money. Etc.

People need to be careful in handling their private keys the importance of your private keys is equivalent to that of your funds as it's the only means to ownership of funds in a non-custodial wallet and should never be taking for grant in terms of it's security/safe-keeping.

At the moment a loss of private keys is a total loss of funds and there's no way for recovering it maybe in the future as technology develops developers might create a tech that can be use to brute-force into wallet with lost keys and gain access to funds.

Not following security advice is not only careless, its also digital self-sabotage! We often dont realize how important strong security is until we've lost Bitcoins and are sad about it. The harsh truth is that once you lose your secret keys, you cant get your Bitcoins back. Its not just about a personal loss; its also a stark warning of how harsh blockchain technology can be.

Now think about this: every Bitcoin that is lost accidentally makes the ones that are still in circulation more valuable. Isnt that ironic? Still, lets not make the problem seem small. Its a terrible cash blow for the person. We need to stress over and over again how important security is to our city. Its not just a theory; its a real-life must. It affects how much money you have online. Its clear what the message is: protect your Bitcoins like your future rests on it, because it does.

On small scale, when people are lost their coins, it's a lose for them since their assets are decreased.

In big scale, when people are lost their coins, it probably gives a tiny effect to other holders since it makes Bitcoin scarcer. So it depends on which scale we're talk.

Of course when people lost their coins, AFAIK all of them are caused by human mistakes.

If someone considers house certificates, land and other valuable assets important, then why are they so careless with the private key which is the only access to the wallet where Bitcoin is stored in it. If they consider the certificate important, then the private key must also be stored in a much more secure place. Private keys cannot be duplicated, you must protect them better than other valuable asset certificates. Carelessness in saving your private key will result in you losing money because you won't be able to access the wallet where Bitcoin is stored in it.

If we pay attention, there are quite a lot of incidents such as BTC prices which vary greatly as they do now. What @Jawhead999 said is true and most of it is caused by human error and it is also very clear that in looking at it it is also from the point of view from which we will see it. This is why future BTC is so valuable because if we want to own it then we have to buy it from existing Bitcoin owners.

But who will assume that lost of Bitcoin due to carelessness of holder is a disadvantage to Bitcoin network while there’s tons of lost incidents even on fiat but these type of incidents never associated to fiat network itself but rather to owner itself.

Lost Bitcoin doesn’t increase the price of circulating supply of Bitcoin but rather it just reduce the potential of decreasing the price in the future since inactive Bitcoin is already relevant to circulating supply. The demand on Bitcoin is the one that gives more value to Bitcoin and not lost Bitcoin just because it stop being circulated.

You made your point crystal clear and I agree with it, lost or abandoned BTC do increase the price of BTC because supply is being locked and it is permanent so supply is being cut down while the demand is increasing day by day therefore the price will increase ultimately. Your suggestion is practical but I don't see how it relates to your first paragraph context.

Like if a person thinks many members share impractical suggestion while the remaining ones shares practical ones, how this observation is related to your suggestion?

Overall, we should try to keep our private keys as safe as we can, and many people say the best way is to place them offline, like writing them on paper, and to save them from natural or artificial disasters, we should engraft them on some metal. I say that's not the best way. It's just not for me, maybe for another, it is but not for me. I had an idea that I had to test first then I will share it here by creating a new topic of how to keep your seed phrase safe on online places.

That is the risk, you have to be serious with your Bitcoin and its wallet, and Bitcoin can't be crucified for the fault of anyone. Those who are buying Bitcoin should learn about it to familiarize themselves with it and know the risks in both custodial and non-custodial wallets to know the best they can cope with between them. And if it's the self-custody arrangement you signed for, you should also know the dos and don'ts and no one should be dragged into the mistake and carelessness of another. The self-custodial arrangement is for a very good purpose, and in this, you own your coin and nobody can lay claims on it, ever. I see this as the best.

For the second part about Bitcoin gaining the opportunity of the lost access to wallets, I guess this is not the case. Despite that some whales hold Bitcoin and do not hide it, there are still many whales who own it but do not talk about it and still have their access intact. Yet, Bitcoin moved to about $15,000 late last year. But now, it has appreciated about x3. This reveals that there is persistent demand and supply, and it means that it's not about the lost access that Bitcoin is appreciating now but people pumping fresh capital into it at this season. Is that not simple enough?

Truly, Bitcoin holds the asset of some people who can't access it due to their fault but I must tell you that the percentage of those people is negligible and will have no serious effect in the market.

I have absolutely no issue with lost Bitcoin. That only means there is less Bitcoin in circulation and due to the deflationary nature of Bitcoin, that will only serve to strengthen the price of BTC. So I see this as a win for the rest of us Bitcoiners.

There is always many things you can do to avoid and prevent losing your Bitcoin wallet access.

Losing their keys is 100% their own fault. Bitcoin is about being your own bank, and people need to take that more seriously.

There is no threat to the worth of bitcoin whenever someone loss their bitcoin because as the number of bitcoin reduces so the price directly goes up because everyone knows that price enhances when there happens decrease in supply. Although bitcoin has no disadvantage but people who lost their Bitcoin's key information will be definitely in disadvantages.

This case is astonished because everyone is struggling for getting money so how one can forget secrecy of his money because bitcoin is also a money. If someone is interested in getting profit then he will never forget his password or anything else related to bitcoin and will be serious about saving it in different places but an irresponsible person will not care about what happened to his money.

When it comes to my security, I owe a lot of it to this forum. I try my best to put whatever I learn on the forum into practice because, at the end of the day, it's for my benefit. If something should happen to my phone or wallet and I become a victim of cybercrime one way or the other, I will be the one affected, not a member of the forum. It will even be worse for someone like me who knows what to do and doesn't do it.


That's one way to look at it. It won't be an issue when a handful of people lose their Bitcoin by forgetting the recovering phrase or something, but when so many people begin to lose their Bitcoin like that, it reduces the amount of Bitcoin in circulation, yes this increases the Bitcoin price but it can also be a disadvantage because Bitcoin supply is fixed.
About 6 million Bitcoins are lost, so imagine that number increased to 10 million.

There are people who just come online and run across some information; they read it just for entertainment purposes and to kill boredom. There are also people who just search for information online, get the answer to the questions they ask, and transfer it just the way they see it to another. There are also people who actually read, understand, and practice what they have learned. Those people are the ones who are really security-conscious.
 
Here is a Bitcoin community where people share useful information for it to be helpful to others. It's now left with the next person to treat the information as important as it should be or take it for granted and fall into the trap of making a mistake that could have been avoided if there was attention given.
 
This is just life. Only a few people practice what they preach, while others act strong while making careless mistakes. Just like someone who praises and supports bitcoin as a privacy coin and still moves their holdings to a centralized exchange where they need to pass KYC, where is the privacy right there?

For those who don't take security seriously, losing their coins because of that is more like doing the coin hood than harm, as they are contributing to a number that could have been in circulation, which serves as a donation to the growth of others.

I think that's individual issues, not really an issue for bitcoin as a whole. I get that it may feel like it is not a big deal but the reality is that it is a bigger deal than what we assumed it could be. I know that it may look like a market issue as a general but usually who gets involved will be the only ones that get any damage regarding these troubles and in other cases it just won't be an issue at all.

I believe that the best thing we could do right now would be to let the situation get bigger and better, so we need to end up with something that needs to be a huge deal. I can see the situation changing one way or another, and for that to happen, we need to end up with a deal that needs to grow to be bigger, and these individual stuff won't matter.

I have come to understand that even negative trust is a better publicity than no trust or no publicity at all, because it can be predicted or anticipated. What am saying is that despite the losses from trading, losing wallet key phrases, hackers or scammers or from investment in BTC by acquisition, that have been recorded, the value still remains ever growing.

What is left to be seen is the effort that has been effectively channeled in to make the Crypto idea become a better reality than envisioned.
Those who gain massively or even in bits from involvement in BTC know that they had their own experiences at first but persisted with a constant improvement on the original knowledge thats rather deficient.

That's right, if you want to deal with Bitcoin, then first learn how to handle it to eliminate all risks. When someone loses their bitcoins it is bad, but in most cases it is only their fault, and the reason is that the safety of the coins was not taken care of properly. Coins are not necessarily lost forever, if someone stole them, they will be in use in the future, so this will not always lead to a decrease in their quantity in circulation.

When you own Bitcoin, you become a bank yourself, you need to know this before you buy Bitcoin and not forget about it.

Many lost their keys because they never knew Bitcoin would be this big. Some of them saw it as a joke and just invested with scepticism and ended up misplacing the private keys. My relative bought Bitcoin but he knew nothing about the coin, he just bought it because a friend persuaded him to buy it. He knew he copied the keys but because he didn't take it seriously, he didn't know where he kept the password and private keys. Some also lost access to their coins due to natural disasters that led to them losing access to wallets. While so many others lost their funds due to carelessness.       

After someone is introduced to Bitcoin, he should spend time to study about the Bitcoin space. He needs to learn about wallet transactions and a very important topic should be how to secure your funds. Investing in Bitcoin without learning about crypto security might lead to a loss of funds. And the loss of funds has no adverse effect on the Bitcoinshpere.

In numbers of social media that's into existence I think theirs no social media that teaches better than bitcointalk in terms of bitcoin related issues or discussions, if someone who is privileged to find its self in this community come up with different agenda of being ingrate for taking the community or whatever we discussed here for granted that relates with bitcoin, that means the person don't want to learn and understand the basics things of bitcoin, because from the way I understand bitcoin bitcointalk is the highest place that impacts the knowledge of bitcoin across, all the information that we acquired today concerning bitcoin almost all come from bitcointalk, we knowing the important of wallet security is from bitcointalk.

These events are very surprising to keep bitcoins it is better to keep its keys safe if ever the value of bitcoins increases then you will have to face a lot of difficulties. There are many people who do not keep their personal belongings organized but if they lose their keys to keep bitcoins they will suffer a lot. It is better to know about bitcoin and then use these processes so that there is no fear of losing. Wallet keys should be kept in a place from where easy access is available.

It is very important for us to be able to keep the private key well because if they cannot keep it well then we will lose the Bitcoin assets we have and we will not be able to get access. We must be able to keep them just like other valuables that we have and also we don't need to give them away. Anyone knows about the private key and only we ourselves can access it. Don't let anyone tell this to someone we can't trust.

Everyday minute there are many scammers want to scam us  and as a beginner for investing and holding we need more knowledge about it we don't need to hurry as we all know that greediness will fall us into loss. So we need to more vigilant as this is the right thing to do once we are involve in investing.  If could someone want to know our Private information then it's better to ignore them to prevent our privacy.

Many will play with everything being discussed in this forum and others will adhere to the instructions which will save dem from unnecessary losing of assets. Some people dey always prefer experience to become their best teacher, u fit dey ring am for their ear no be say dey no dey hear u but dey get this doubt of say e no go fit happen to them and dey go come feel less concern.

Like you said OP if anyone should loss their private key then it becomes a big advantage where else it helps the market get better but considering personally the amount of money invested by the person, who knows how long the person toild to invest such amount of money and all gone due to carelessness. We better start being conscious as anything being discussed are not base on assumptions and must have happen times without number so we have to be careful enough not to be found wanting.

If you are using a private wallet (which is always recommended) And you lose its private key, you are fucked. Same thing with Bitcoin transactions. Once you have completed the transaction, it is irreversible. You can't get back here Bitcoin. Double-checking or triple checking before every transaction is always recommended for any kind of usage. I have seen people backing up their secret key online and I was one of them too. After reading so many posts about securing your privacy and your key, I no longer keep them anywhere where it could be hacked, or the information could be compromised.

I don't think telling people will have any kind of effect. Because people don't listen to you unless they have faced it themselves. They will keep on ignoring this kind of thing until they become the victim. Few will listen and do it. Others will suffer and learn it the hard way.

When people lose their private key, it's 100% not Bitcoin's fault but theirs. Losing access to your Bitcoin wallet will decrease the circulation of supply (not literal) which helps Bitcoin to be more valuable.
Lost Bitcoins will not immediately affect the price but it will help Bitcoin to decrease its volatility since that coin is not moving or no transactions.

The only risk I think it gives to Bitcoin is that false information that is being spread to people who didn't know yet about Bitcoin.

People's interest in Bitcoin is increasing day by day. Bitcoin is joked by people who don't understand anything about Bitcoin. People who have no knowledge about Bitcoin are the ones who joke or make fun of Bitcoin. The most important thing is that when I work on bitcoins I may have some personal stuff. It's better that I don't share my wallet with anyone. Bitcoin is a completely proprietary and confidential matter. Of course we should all trade in Bitcoin with great caution.

I doubt it too that therell be a problem it bitcoin because people are losing their bitcoins. Bitcoin's decentralized and its immutable nature ensures that lost bitcoins remain irretrievable which i think contributes to the scarcity of the total supply. It’s a personal loss.
It's a personal responsibility too to implement strong security measures to avoid such losses because as scary as it is, the decentralized nature of Bitcoin means there's no central authority to recover lost funds.

If we assume the opposite, then people who find bitcoin (gaining access to previously lost or other bitcoins) actually reduce the value of bitcoin on the network. Still, this sometimes happens (very rarely), but more often than not they lose bitcoin rather than find them. We will see an interesting effect (a lot of drama) if access to Satoshi’s wallet (with ~1 mln. bitcoins) is ever gained.

Well, of course, your mistake with losing the bitcoin is not a weakness of the bitcoin, but only your personal weakness. In fact, private keys is what makes you strong (independent and free from an economic point of view) from any financial systems and regulators. Use this as a priceless gift from the Founder.

The one owning bitcoin is educated enough to learn more about bitcoin. People should stop investing blindly into different assets.
Everyone should know what they are doing and what they are holding. Owning bitcoin comes with the responsibility of holding it securely.
People should know that losing the keys mean losing the coins. If they lose their coins then it's their fault.
Bitcoin's value will only keep increasing as more people keep losing their coins thus reducing the bitcoin circulating supply.

The reality is there are so many people who invested on bitcoin that don't really have any idea what is a non-custodial wallet. We can see people who just want to gain profits on bitcoin that's why they invested in it without any deep idea how to secure their assets, we can typically find them during the bull market where everyone flocks into buying assets and just store it into their favorite exchange until they can sell it for a profit. It is what I observed last bull market where everyone was blinded about the potential profit they can make on bitcoin and they just rush/blind buy it for their reason. Some of them just don't think that their asset is vulnerable or they can lose it.

It's true that it will be solely our fault if we lose our bitcoin, though there are people who are careless enough to not care about it since they don't have any idea how vulnerable they are.

If someone is careless in storing their seed phrase and loses the key then it's obviously not bitcoin's fault because the bitcoins will still be in the wallet but you only lose access to your own wallet containing the bitcoins.

The most important thing is how we can secure the seed phrase properly as well as the copy that we store it should not be lost because it is the only access to our own wallet, if someone is careless and loses the important thing in the private key then he will experience a loss because he cannot do anything.

Losing BTC affect the quantity of Bitcoin and increase the quality of Bitcoin. Like the total number of Bitcoin in circulation will reduce and that will cause scarcity of Bitcoin and since the number has been reduced the supply will be limited and the demand will be high and that will cause another increase in the market price. So to avoid lost of Bitcoin everyone is be careful with their private keys and all the security measures in Bitcoin so that you won't lost your Bitcoin to either hackers or you misplaced it. People are investing in Bitcoin every day and if people lost Bitcoin to be lock forever then ot affect the supply of Bitcoin so it will affect Bitcoin as well.

Yeah, lost bitcoins are lost forever and is somewhat "removed" from the circulation. And yeah, it doesn't affect the overall "network", but there are people that ends up getting frustrated. They start blaming the whole blockchain and crypto currencies for being very complicated (even though it is not). They stop promoting crypto currencies and share their "horror" stories with others. The newbies or people that hears about bitcoin for the first time then starts to hesitate and decides never to invest in crypto currencies. So yeah, even though it might not affect the network, but it will discourage people. Instead of being happy or wishing for things like this to happen, we should be focusing more on educating the people and being sympathetic towards those who lost their coins.

You make a good points about how important it  to keep your Bitcoin safe. Some people has lost their Bitcoin because they can not access their private keys. This is really not good for them and it also make the value of Bitcoin go up. So it is really important we should take take the security measures seriously.

Losing Bitcoin because anyone were careless can be a big problem. There is no way to get back if you lose your private keys. So in my point of view it is really important to understand how serious is this and not ignore the information here. If you do not take proper security measures so we can be at a big disadvantage and risk losing your Bitcoin. So everyone new person should be careful for future and should keep the private safe. If they will not safe them so in future they will regret.

It's not bad to hold bitcoin only for profits but not knowing what it is about and how to use it correctly and still holding it with a poor security is bad.
People hold stocks in the share market but there's nothing to worry in there because we won't lose the stocks if we forget the password to our brokerage account.
But we lose our bitcoins if we lose our access to our wallet. So people should know how to hold bitcoin correctly.

While helping others secure their Bitcoin is certainly commendable, it is important to recognize the nuances of personal responsibility in this digital landscape. While supporting community members is admirable, ultimately the burden of security lies with each individual.

The unfortunate reality is that some individuals, through laziness or lack of awareness, have begun their Bitcoin journey without fully understanding the inherent risks and security measures. This can lead to devastating consequences, as they become vulnerable to fraud and hacking attacks.

Remember that security is not a spectator sport. Not only in the cryptocurrency space, this is basic knowledge to protect yourself from potential threats in life.

You talk about people making sure that they are capable of taking care of their important data, you won't believe that people these days barely care about such things and all they care about is earning money, and it's so naïve of them to not take the necessary steps to secure their wallets and assets that store their money. You will see people spending thousands of dollars on cryptocurrencies and keeping them in an online wallet while having a common 8-letter password.

You will hit your head on the wall if you see how careless some people are with their assets when it comes to cryptocurrencies. They buy cryptocurrencies first and start researching and learning after that, meanwhile, their assets are either kept in the exchange they've bought them in or in a wallet without much security precautions.

And if you don't apply what you have learned, you are only wasting your time and money. It's better if you didn't learn at all because at least there is a valid reason on why you are losing. But, we usually wait for it before we make a move on how to improve ourselves. Apart from it, there is also another type of loss in/of BTC. You guys already explained it.

It is actually alarming if more and more people experience that, especially if it happens at the current time when there are now lots of tutorials and then wallets and exchanges are now more user-friendly than before. It could scare more people to engage in BTC which can still/also reduce its scarcity.

Even though there are many threads related to this, it doesn't mean that people don't make these mistakes. There are many of us Bitcoin enthusiasts who are just too busy collecting Bitcoins to think that once they have a Bitcoin wallet, their responsibility is over. But they don't know that the responsibility does not end with just keeping it in the wallet. When they realize they may not have anything to do. Such problems are likely to occur if a Bitcoin holder does not first consider the security aspects of their wallet. I need to know if my wallet seed phrase or keys are correct or not. Every holder should check it at regular intervals. Otherwise he may lose all the assets of his holding due to his unconsciousness. Besides, informing others about your bitcoins is also a big problem. If someone shares his confidential information with others, he will do it at his own risk and no one else can be responsible for it.

People losing their bitcoins is the biggest risk that makes centralized exchange a big opportunity to rise. What was the idea of Bitcoin creation? To make you your own bank, without relying on banks and other financial institutes. Today, after so many people have lost their coins, exchanges decided to use it for their advantage and they started to promote themselves as safe platforms where you can store your bitcoins and don't have to worry about private keys.
It's true that the more people lose their coins, the higher will be price because supply shrink and demand grows but I am not happy for anyone losing their coins. Also, we have limited number of bitcoins, max 21 million mined and if people continue to lose and lose coins over time, with the high transaction fees, only a few people will be able to use bitcoin and this will result in making this coin unpopular or protocol might change and lost coins will be mined again. This is also a threat for bitcoin because such level of control if gained even after the public permission, is still dangerous.

Most of the informations here are of personal experiences. People who have considered it wise to share their experiences for others to learn from and also to get counsel have managed situations and it is resourceful to the forum. If an advice is dropped here and one takes it for granted, its ok. We are all here to learn and most of the stories here has taught us what most of us have no idea existed and wouldn't want to experience and in most cases it bothers around Bitcoin.

Loosing Bitcoin can be painful but within the forum you can find someone giving tips on how not to loose yours, ignore at your own peril

All I can say is that, just like in the real world it isn't everything that people hear that they'll take seriously or will I say, not everyone that hears a warning will take it serious. The message has been passed and it's left for those would will take it serious to take it and be saved. Just as we have been warning people against leaving their Bitcoin on exchanges but some people aren't listening and every time an exchange goes down, we still have members of the forum that are been affected or as we have been preaching against using constodial wallets but people are still neglecting our advice and they'll keep regretting not taking our advice serious.

We'll always have people who'll be losing their Bitcoin just as we have those losing their fiats currency to scammers or due to their carelessness. You just have to make sure you aren't among those people because unlike fiats, losing Bitcoin can be devastating as each time the price of Bitcoin goes up, you'll keep remembering how much you would have made it you still had your Bitcoin and it'll keeps tormenting you, same thing goes when you sell instead of hodling.

Losing your Bitcoin to someone else does nothing at all; it doesn’t affect the network whether Good or Bad because it’s only the person whose Bitcoin was taken that will know about it. Except from that, life moves on and nobody knows anything. If the thief sends the money out, it is no different from if it were the real owner sending the money out. So, about circulation, it doesn’t help, it’s the same case because the funds are already in that wallet and that is circulation.

Bitcoin can be lost in two ways. Due to being duped or being careless with your secret keys. All of this is due to negligence and a lack of understanding or awareness about how Bitcoin operates.

Lost Bitcoins are gone and should not be considered a risk to Bitcoin because they are still in circulation, it's just that the owner misplaced or lost access to the wallet where they are, or if you accidentally sent it to an active wallet, the wallet owner will be the new owner of the Bitcoin and will use it as they see fit.

The only way to get your Bitcoin back is if you can recover your private keys, which is only possible if the Bitcoin is still in your wallet and has not been sent out due to someone gaining access to your private keys. However, if Bitcoin is accidentally sent to an unknown wallet, it is gone forever and there is no way to recover it.

If we lose bitcoin due to carelessness, it is definitely our fault, never bitcoin's fault. Yes I have seen many people here who lose bitcoin because of their carelessness and finally they blame bitcoin but it should never because bitcoin never lost by itself it only lost because of carelessness of the investor. If we can be careful ourselves, we can never lose Bitcoin. All that carelessness leaving our wallet seed phrase carelessly can result in losing our bitcoins if someone steals our wallet seed phrase. Then if for some reason our wallet seed phrase is lost from the phone or the phone is destroyed, if it is not recorded somewhere else we will lose our wallet seed phrase and thus we may lose bitcoins due to our carelessness. If we can take these two things seriously then our Bitcoin will not be lost.

That's a personal mistake they made because they weren't careful in storing their private keys or perhaps they didn't understand that it was important to store their private keys in a safe place. These kinds of mistakes don't need to happen when people understand the use of wallets and in fact not many newcomers know what a seed phrase/private key is.

Such losses will impact individuals as people lose access to owning bitcoin and have absolutely nothing to do with the network. That's why people advise to be careful about private keys when you create a wallet because otherwise the risk will be quite big. Carelessness and shallow knowledge can destroy everything, therefore it is important to learn first when you want to get involved in bitcoin investment, whether it's how to invest, buy and sell or how to store it safely..

If Bitcoin loss occurs due to the owner's negligence, then it can be called human error. and it doesn't solely blame Bitcoin as a focus.
it is the same as the case of using Bitcoin in crimes such as money laundering. the blame should not be on Bitcoin. but that is a human or user error. but the impact that occurs and we see leads to Bitcoin as a tool used for crime.

At the current price of Bitcoin, there are many people in the world who cannot earn this amount in their lifetime. If one cannot protect a resource so precious to him, then it is nothing but a freak. Personal responsibility should be taken for the safety and security of Bitcoin holdings. If you have a lock but no key, then that lock has no value. By using a hardware wallet or secure offline storage to store large amounts of bitcoins, we can greatly reduce the risk of losing our bitcoins. Remember, it's always better to be safe than sorry when it comes to protecting your investment.

I don't think it's even up for discussion. Of course it's your fault when you lose your bitcoin due to negligence, how would it be any other way? When you get burned by a fire, it's your fault, or are you going to try to blame the fire for being too hot? :D
When it comes to bitcoin's value, it's yes and no at the same time. Yes, it becomes more valuable when people lose access to their coins, but it cannot last forever and we shouldn't be happy that such situations occur. At some point, so much bitcoin will be lost that it could make it difficult to use. I'm not talking about the next 10 or 20 years, but if bitcoin continues to exist 50 years from now, you can expect most of its supply to be inaccessible.

That's true, although sadly someone's lost of private keys that has bitcoin in it is a tragic thing to happen.
But we can just conclude that it's like a contribution to the network and is like a donation to the community.
Because that adds up the value of it and makes the supply in the circulation scarcer.

I fully agree with you, losing access to our crypto wallets is on us and we can't blame other people for it, except for the case that people steal our keys. But even then, it could be the case the we are not paying too much attention where we store our keys and share information too openly. It's been so many years now that cryptos have been around and we all have heard the stories about people owning hundreds of BTC from the early days and lost access to their wallets over time. By now we all should have learned from these early mistakes and protect our keys more secure and also have a backup plan in case our access is lost. A single piece of paper can easily become lost over time, which is why having steel plates is a great alternative to store our keys. It's much bigger and we need to find a more permanent place to hide and store it. It’s like with cash, we need to keep an eye on our wallet and lose it by mistake. On crowded places there can be pocket pickers that try to steal our wallet, which makes looking after our cash and wallet very important. The more money we have with us the more we should be alert. The same goes for our crypto wallets as they grow over time.

There are a lot of people who use BTC like fiat, in the sense that they use centralized exchanges like banks and use it to store their funds, some of them are ignorant, while others think that some centralized exchanges are too big to fail. BTC is a permissionless and censorship resistant currency, when you are using BTC with the permission of a centralized exchange and giving the exchange the ability to censor you, then you are using BTC the wrong way and maybe you are not ready to use BTC.

The whole point of BTC is "not your keys - not your crypto" and it is good that way. It simply means if you lose the keys, you lose the coins. Period. There shouldn't be any way to recover coins without a key as that would destroy the purpose of the network. BTC gives you maximum flexibility with your wealth for as long as you take care of the keys in one way or another. But losing keys was a thing in its early days as most people were less educated and sophisticated with their security efforts and measures. I think this has changed significantly over the years and there are so many options to keep your keys secure.

But yes, any lost coins effectively get removed from circulation and hence mean that there is less supply for any existing demand. Though it would be quite some malicious joy to be happy about someone else losing their coins! :P

While such use goes against the best practices that are often mentioned on this forum, at the same time people are free to use bitcoin in whatever way they want, and this implies that people can use bitcoin on that way too even if we think it is wrong, and since leaving your coins in the custody of a third party is something people are used to do and it is more convenient for them then it is not surprising this has become quite common, however sooner or later they may suffer the consequences of not using bitcoin as it was intended as they lose their coins and they have no recourse to get them back.