Bitcoin Forum

We know roughly how many btc have been mined,but anyone any rough idea or guess how many have been lost in cyber space or old wallets with a tiny amount in them abandoned never to see the light of day again.

There is no way to tell. Likely 10's of thousands, if not 100's of thousands.

I actually believe it could be up to 10% most from the old days when btc was worth just a few dollars

Far more than most suspect is my guess.

There is a thread on here which is adding up all the known losses but only known losses in reality there is much more that have been lost.

Last year, me and some buddies were doing a count up of pre-2013 "derp I lost my coins" stories and came to the conclusion that there's somewhere around a million known lost.

Also, it's still not entirely clear at present whether the bulk of the MtGox coins have actually been stolen, or whether their systems were so screwed up that they managed to transfer them to wallets they didn't permanently and safely record the keys for, so have been rendered inaccessible.

Add to that the sum of minor attritions and abandonment of small amounts, and we would have a guesstimate of somewhere around 2 million BTC that are unlikely to change hands again.

I say unlikely rather than, "never, no way, no how" because there might be some few cases where super spendy forensic recovery techniques become practicable, when aggregate coin value seems to make it worthwhile trying.

I have seen people posting old satoshi wallets with 50+ coins in it for more than 3years untouched i believe the count is far more than we think.

https://blockchain.info/address/198aMn6ZYAczwrE5NvNTUMyJ5qkfy4g3Hi
8000 BTC
I think its not lost in space, if we can find the private key, we can access to the wallet.

 :D :D if is the case if we can find the private key nothing never will be lost lol

Close to impossible of finding that key unless you live forever  :D no way of cracking that.

I'd say a little over a million are currently lost and irrecoverable.

This is the only correct answer. It is very difficult to prove that a private key was actually lost as you would need to take someone's word for this fact, which is generally not something that is acceptable to do in the bitcoin community

In addition to the anecdotal evidence of people losing their wallets, we know that about 2000 BTC were burned during the Counterparty proof of burn. It's possible that similar processes could increase the number of "lost" bitcoin.

The number of bitcoins disappear forever is not much, relative to the total amount of speaking

I wonder how can it be disappeared and how to count the lost coins?

1m+ seems like a good place to start. gives btc an artificially high looking market cap.

Unfortunately there is no way to find out. A wallet that remains inactive is not an indication that it is no longer used

I think 5% of all Bitcoins in existence are "lost" due to deleted wallets, lost passwords,etc.

Coins that haven't been touched in years doesn't necessarily mean that they are "lost" or forgotten.

Some guys keep their coins untouched for a reason  ;)

Is there a link to this thread. It would nice to see it. I haven't run into it so far.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7253.0

Same here!

I guess 3% due to deleted or lost password ;) and 20% because scammer :D

Scammed or stolen coins are still in circulation, do not count as "lost" to the economy.

Yeah, for it is unregulated and decentralized.

Probably around a million & 2 million.

Not possible to say, maybe 5% without those got by the FBI...

These stories are so painful to hear.   How does it feel knowing you could've had $10,000,000 last December?

:(

Sorry for your loss.

Suppose this brings us back to the old question where are Mt.Gox coins. Were they lost for good or just stolen.

20% because of scammers?

Stolen Bitcoins aren't lost, they are in the wallet of the scammer, and he/she can spend them at any time.

We don't have the possibility to know, perhaps 5% of the total.

The fact that bitcoin is fungible means that it doesn't matter if the bitcoin you have in your wallet can be traced to a previous theft/scam.

With the exception of the miners, most people almost certainly have bitcoin that can be traced to one or more scams/thefts via taint analysis.

Oh btw yes, there's a probable scam e-mail going around trying to freak you out that your coins are guaranteed to be Silk Road tainted, and that the IRS, FBI, CIA, DHS, Lions Club and Womens Institute will kick your door down at 4AM and take them. So, don't be panicced into sending them into that "mixer" service. If they succeeded in making you uncomfortable, (sigh) pick a reputable mixing service.

My knowledge points to around 1,4 mln currently

More. Most people likely only started to care about them when they hit $10 or even more. Then there also are those that have been lost due to site going bankrupt or lost in some kind of accident! But this is one of the factors that drives the price up (decreasing supply!)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=675321.0

As of July 20 it was proven that at least 2,745.22283996 BTC in at least 20,412 different outputs were unspendable.

There are probably many more lost to forgotten (or lost) private keys, but it isn't possible to prove that those private keys aren't available.  All you can do is trust whoever told you. These 2,745.22283996 BTC can be proven to be unspendable.

Oh just remembered, me and a buddy were screwing around and managed to send 0.0003 into the wild blue yonder..... well an address neither of us had the key for anyway.

Y. of course.Early low price time.

Noone could prove the exact number.

No one can provide accurate and there are arguments to answer. I am afraid that God does not necessarily know.

I think as time goes on and Bitcoins are used more regularly there should be less coins doing nothing in random wallets. Might be able to get a good idea of how many have been lost by how many are inactive over years and years

If there is always a private key for every address, how can they ever be lost? Just launch a bruteforcer and wait a couple thousand years.

haha a few thousand years! Might be worth it if BTC goes to the moon

If you include Satoshis coins a fair bit
But if you include actual coins lost there are the dumping addresses and then a few coins are destroyed now and then but I would say less than 1% of all coins mined at this stage in time
The mtgox coins are more less around but they could be considered lost as well.

I would not consider satoshi's coins to be lost as if he planned on never using them then he would probably have destroyed them a long time ago.

The gox coins were never "lost" they were instead given away to people that should not have received them