Bitcoin Forum

High all...

A few Q's:

If BitCoins get 'lost' ...

for instance...
if somebody loses their wallet file and codes...

or.. if a newcomer just fiddles a few days and never looks around to his account of 0.001234 BTC... (x 1000's of thm)

Are these coins lost in BitCoin limbo ?
Or are they somehow re-generated by the system ?

Because if this does not 'recycle' then I guess the 1st target of 21.ooo.ooo bitcoins total...
Will never be reached....

Where would the 'lost' value of these bitcoins go ?

Thanks for your time :)

Greetz,
Peter Lunk  8)

Yes, they're lost forever and no, 21 million will never actually be reached because of this.
All this does is increase the value of the remaining bitcoins, fueling deflation over time.

They will be lost, forever gone.
Of course the 21 million mark will still be reached but never will there be 21 million BTC in circulation.

"When Bitcoins are lost, the remaining Bitcoins will increase in value to compensate"

Has anyone seen any estimations on the amount of 'lost' bitcoins?

There's no way to know if coins are lost or not just by looking at the blockchain. All a wallet is is a number (also called your private key). If you lose that number then there's no way to access those coins. But there's no way for the number to know you lost it so to speak. You know the last time the coins in the wallet moved, but lots of people put coins into "cold storage" for many months or years and yet have not lost their wallet.

Yep, there is no way to know if a coin is ever lost or not. Ever.

You could have the intention to keep your coins for 20 years and there is no way for the system to know this. The coins are gone forever if lost, and I bet this happened to a lot of the early mined coins when they were worth pennies. It will always happen on a smaller scale as time goes on and computers crash at the right time. Forever.

This is part of the appeal. If enough people loose them, and enough people buy and hold, the value could go to the moon. This will only happen if Bitcoins reach Google/Facebook/Ebay status where it is the one ring to rule them all. If not bitcoin could be a stepping stone like Netscape or Myspace.

My I phone was hacked at 5:51 Am this morning.  I was just waking up and all 180 bitcoins were gone for a total of about 20K how do you track them down and get them back.  the adress that took them was

 1KSvqznN7YijagkZMDTP4yHwfarKjm9HrY    this address stole 178.9 bit coins

1diceDPtUMBpWgv8i4pG8HMjXv9QDJWN      this address took .901 bit coins

Question is how do you track down these criminals and how did they get into my phone and how did they get my password

I'm sorry to hear this. Most of the time your computer is compromised by spyware/keyloggers. They are administrated via browser vulnerabilities or hacked software and can search for wallet files, passwords and other info. Or, your account info was phished from a fake website. This is why Windows is not a good choice for an OS. Linux is free and way more secure.

Well first of all, never ever trust web wallets or mobile phone wallets with any amount of bitcoins you can't afford to lose or get stolen. Always store large amounts of coins either in a paper wallet or offline (also called cold storage). Paper and offline computers can't be easily compromised.

Otherwise, bitcoin is made in such a way that as soon as a criminal "launders" the money it's impossible to trace. You can explore the blockchain and see if you can track where it went but that won't get you a name or address, and probably won't even get you an IP. You may need to hire a professional to do this.

Really prevention of theft is the only way to stop someone from stealing your bitcoins. Once your bitcoins have been stolen, there's really nothing you can do unless the thief is very, very careless. And with bitcoin worth so much now, everyone and their dog seems to want to steal them.

it looks like the adress that stole my bit coins through my phone sent them to 4 accomplices it is too bad that they can not be traced.  There has to be some way to do this. Below are the 4 addresses that now have them.

14SBnFJ5ihizwwGRcorKb3c9BFiX4unGsL        13.72518016 BTC
1ET5oUQMZF6ms8YKA2cxGFB9zJF9TqZXEC   56.81660972 BTC
1DNr3fjVR9X8DXqzoJiq1c2h6hGvP5rAvQ        36.14417883 BTC
18H2NYRnRbiDj3Lv4yT35S13KxExPtGrah        74.21353129 BTC
                                                            -180.9 BTC

You can never fairly trace this money 100% to the theif. Anyone can make it seem like someone else is the one with the coins now. I am willing to bet that if you offered up $1,000 to the right hacker you might be able to look uber deep into the blockchain and have a damn good idea of the person responsible if they can crack one of the systems involved and do hours upon hours of research into what locations received what. Im still not sure of if this is even possible at all. You could end up $1,000 deeper in another scammer.

blockchain.info will let you know where your money went. If it has been spent (it has been spent...again and again...sorry...) you can cry to the new owners, if you can track them down, but what are they going to tell you? "I didn't know they were stolen." They might be the same people who stole the coins. This is where your hacker might help. If they can somehow comprimise a computer of the theifs you could figure this out. But what then, show up at the house and go Taxi Driver on their crew? Probably not worth it. What if you had the wrong person?

Id give up and let this be a lesson that phones are not to be used for anything over $100 or 1btc. For transactions over $500 I would have a specific cheap computer used for nothing but bitcoins. This computer should have a fresh install of Linux and never be used for any other reasons. If you do this and have a good 16 digit password you are 99.999% safe forever.

If you have $20,000+ in bitcoins you need to know this stuff. Im sad that theives still make off with this much money because this is the worst thing bitcoin has going for it by far. I know admitting such a huge loss can be hard but thanks for helping to educate everyone as to what not to do.

ive always found this aspect to bitcoins interesting.

Im terribly sorry for your loss. I wish it was easier to make paper wallets i dont understand it either