Bitcoin Forum

Millions of bitcoins are considered lost. Who will find them?

Nobody.

Because they are not hidden in sand on some island or in some garbage bin.
They are hidden by math.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=104461.0
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/22/is-it-possible-to-brute-force-bitcoin-address-creation-in-order-to-steal-money

Haven't double checked the numbers but those might be close, basically you will need 2^45 years.

If the bitcoins were lost for some reason, no one will find them. They completely disappear from circulation. This is the essence of the digital currency. Therefore, it is necessary to reconcile that many bitcoins will disappear forever, if someone has forgotten the password from his mobile wallet or for other reasons has ceased to have access to it.

The only way to have access to that bitcoins is importing them into a new wallet; and it's impossible without the private key. That bitcoins are out of circulation forever and nobody can use them.

Brute forcing private keys is hopeless. What might be possible is recovering bitcoin from wallets whose passwords have been lost if the wallet file is retained, if the passwords are not too difficult to crack. And there might be bitcoins considered "lost" because the original owner has died, and whomever inherited their equipment has not noticed/found/deciphered their bitcoin wallet setup (or paper wallet tucked away somewhere). There are varying degrees of "lostness" to bitcoins that are considered lost.

What is your criteria that you used to get the "millions"? Coins that have not moved in the last 5 years? Just because they didn't move doesn't mean that those coins are lost. They could very well be in cold storage.

A digital currency that has been lost due to the forgetfulness or death of a user, a broken technique or intentional destruction can never be restored.
In addition, several thousand bitcoins were deliberately destroyed. For example, the start-up Counterparty "burned" 2130 bitcoins in the process of distributing its own digital currency called XCP and it was not a single case.

I agree that these are permanently lost coins. I think what will happen is that there will constantly be Bitcoins lost every year because of lost private keys, forgotten wallets, or just someone dies and no one knows they had Bitcoins. Or someone does and family members don't know how to access the Bitcoins.

What will happen is that at some point, there will be more Bitcoins lost every year than Bitcoins mined every year. This is because the number of Bitcoins mined will constantly be dropping while the number lost will increase.

The only way to "find" them would be to stumble upon the private key that holds them.

The odds of this happening are so small that it is basically impossible to find them.

The probability of this is very small.

What's lost is lost

But there can still be a workaround, though. Let's assume that Bitcoin doesn't die in a few hundred years from now on, and our descendants (or even us ourselves if we manage to live that long) could reclaim these coins (coins that didn't move all that time) as public property for the common good (after some grace period expires within which you could claim the legitimate ownership of them, of course). It would require some modification to the Bitcoin protocol, but other than that (and consensus required for that), there are no particular hurdles or issues to do exactly that, i.e. find them back

Somebody says brute force method would work to encrypt some wallets, well we see it's in terms of thousands years to encrypt them. No method would work to obtain lost wallets then.

Could a bitcoin mining rig be put to use try to hash the right private key - or is that a stupid answer?

If you're looking that far into the future presumably brute force hacking could have improved so much that the missing bitcoins could be recovered.

They are burned bitcoins and there's no way for anybody to recover them even Satoshi himself, unless he'll do something with the codings and will recover the private keys and the seeds of this wallets. But if bitcoins are gone now, they are totally lost forever. And that's making the supply lesser in the market others are burning bitcoins.

You guess it right. It's a stupid answer. Bitcoins that are lost together with the private key of the address they are in are lost in limbo and would be very hard to recover. Theoretically, it would require millions of quantum computer to start brute-forcing just a single address since there are 2^96 private keys that is a "possible" pair to the public address.

"Lost coins only make everyone else’s coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone" - Satoshi Nakamoto :D 8)

i think it is impossible to find it. Due to the anonymously of bitcoin there will be no traces of lost bitcoins. We all know that bitcoin is anonymous so if there will be lost i think it can never be found  because it has no traces. That will be our disadvantage and an advantage also for us. Just earn it again.

As I've been saying to my other posts, bitcoin is not really anonymous, there is been a proof about that. The reason that lost bitcoin can't be found is because paper wallets need your passcode, but if you save it to your computer and deleted it, you're done. Also, if you send them to a wrong address which is not really a bitcoin address, that will be void.

those bitcoin are like gift for everyone, they decrease the inflation and permits bitcoin to worth more, it is rather a good new that many bitcoin got burnt for the bitocin holders, would be nice to know how many but we will never know, its certainly much more than we all believe

No. You can't get access your bitcoins without your private key once you lost your private key, you will lose your access to your bitcoins. Bitcoin in that wallet are considered lost although there are some recovery services online but it's not a guarantee you recover your wallet and gain access to your coins so, try to create backups of your private key.

Nobody, I think.

Just like you said, millions of bitcoins are considered "Lost".
It means that it is already lost. I don't know how it works, but I do think that it's really hard or even impossible to find those lost bitcoins .

The question is.... How much computing power would it take. Mabey at some.point likely not in our lifetime..
 it may become.profitable for large mine farms to turn thier computing power towards brute forcing private keys.  Of course that may have the secondary effect of crashing the price. But Mabey not if you mine old coins haven't been spent in decades. Just a thought
 

Those that are stuck in wallets and cannot sponser themselves out because of high transaction fees are all many and could contribute significantly to lost bitcoins globally.

In fact, we don't need that

We don't need to wait till advanced brute forcing becomes available (through quantum computing or otherwise). Actually, we don't need to wait any time at all. All we need is consensus what to do with lost coins and consensus in respect which coins to consider as lost. If we have both we can easily retrieve the coins that we think as lost. We would only need to make a few small changes to protocol (i.e. the way Bitcoin transactions are processed). For example, if it becomes known for certain that Satoshi is dead (provided he was alive in the first place at all, of course), and no one is going to claim his coins (his heirs or beneficiaries), we could retrieve and share them among all active Bitcoin holders (or spend them on something useful)

But don't you think that with such temps the biggest part of Bitcoins can be lost one day? Bitcoin is shorted by 21 millions number, but people lost passwords and forget about their wallets or even die every day, so, in fact the number of Bitcoin is going to be smaller and smaller day by day.

Sure it can be done, but the odds of doing it are about the same as solo mining finding a block. in layman's terms with Bitcoin, the block of transactions is encrypted, the encryption key thrown away, and the miners try to crack that key. So basically finding lost Bitcoin is an almost-identical process. Now the private keys of wallets is based on a specific hash, there was a period of time when an easier method would be to brute-force a 12 word passphrase on a software wallet.

As what we all know it is really impossible you can only open a lost bitcoins if you know the password or the private key of the wallet if you forgot the private key of your wallet and you have bitcoins there it is consider as lost and no one could open it maybe if the site hack your bitcoins.

Most of the wallets that I've used lately, seem to be pushing their security beyond that. I know that we briefly played with burstcoin, we threw about 150 common passwords and phrases in it and looked at the contents of the wallet. it was just for fun and we did not find anything, but the method I believe you're talking about for finding lost Bitcoin

Lost means many possibility, forgot password, long inactive account(usually forgot wallet), or owner acct has died.
that's why private keys creates to makes it privates, its different from password. when u lost it. Schvey said "This is what the security of Bitcoin is actually based on. If you’ve lost your private key, the system is so secure that you may not be able to recover it."
So it is impossible with regular resource to find them.

In fact, it has not been stolen, it just got forgotten, when bitcoin started working, some people used a lot of bitcoin, however, then the bitcoin value was too low, and they abandoned it. They gradually forgot it, many wanted to search it but they could not get it back. Unfortunately.

No, it is impossible, we can not find the lost bitcoin again. When using bitcoin, we need to store the hardware wallet or private key so that we can retrieve it at any time. However, no one can find the correct private key to retrieve it.

Right. I think we all need in something that will allow to take in use forgotten or lost bitcoins. I am not a programmer, just a girl, so, I have no idea how to realize this idea and does it possible at all?

Why would we need to vote something for what's already deemed as irretrievable? Voting to recover coins that are already lost is stupid and just makes available coins be less of what it's worth today. The key idea of a deflationary coin is to make available resources scarce over time to increase its value. Also, we aren't so sure if these coins really are lost or kept very well in cold storages.

Well, there are other options

In fact, we don't actually need to get back the coins which are considered as irretrievable and lost for good. We could just raise the cap if we ever need that. If you are going to ask whether we will ever need that, I should just point out an important thing which almost all deflationary coin supporters invariably miss. The point is that scarcity by itself is not enough to make something valuable. That something should be useful at that, or rather, in the first place. So it is actually an inverted U-curve on a scarcity-value chart. If something is as abundant as air, it won't cost anything even if it is as vital as air. On the other hand, or rather end, when something is infinitely scarce it will lose value because it will be quickly made irrelevant. Say, there is no more air, therefore everyone quickly dies, and air loses all value soon thereafter. Whoever (or whatever) manages to survive without it will no more need it altogether, i.e. it will be of no value to them despite its infinite scarcity

I have to say this is a very interesting thread
with lots of theories about values and recovery
but I would imagine that in the case of paper wallets
the are probably irretrievable but possibly in the future
as computing gets more and more powerful it may be possible
to recover lost coins.

Imagine the amount of times particularly in the early days
of BTC when people had them stored and decided to
format or throw away hard-drives etc. thinking that BTC
was just a fad and wasnt going anywhere . . .

My Dad always said "never throw anything away, you'll
never know when you might need it"  ;D

I believe many of the bitcoins that were lost is due to users throwing away their hard drive with bitcoins stored inside during the early stages of bitcoin, as the price of bitcoins are just a few cents in the past, people who owned bitcoins don't treat it as an important assets at that time, so the chances to recover lost bitcoins is very low.

I was one of those people who experienced it, at that time I didn't know about trezor and other hardwallet and I forgot to back up my private key. I still remember it was the rainy season and there was a frequent blackout that caused my cpu to be damaged and irreparable. I'm very disappointed and had stopped online for 3 years, I deeply regret the bitcoin I collect disappeared. There is no other way to restore it.

I think it's a very difficult thing even impossible, easier to guess the password of 1000 email addresses correctly in a row without any wrong than getting 1 satoshi.

Is it really possible for us to lose bitcoin? What are the possibilities we lose bitcoin? Can you please state here? So that I will be careful in accessing my wallet and everything. I will check in this thread lately please answer :(

It is possible to lost bitcoin if you have provided wrong bitcoin address and I think it impossible to find lost bitcoin in any transactions because you cannot privately message of those wallet owner. In other way of bitcoin lost is if your lost your key in your wallet address and it is so sad and big regrets will happen then.

i also wonder,how excatly bitoin called lost,are they sent to wrong address?or dissapear from wallet? i think if bitcoin sent to wrong address,it not lost,just landed to other people address,but how if that address not yet opened?i mean that address not generated,so is that bitcoin will appear in that address when it generated by someone?

No one can.
Because it is a open source system.. no one control it..
If one's lost it losts forever..

Yes, the coins will appear in that address

In fact, they will appear on the blockchain right after the transaction gets confirmed. You can think of all possible addresses (wallets) as already existing in a sense, i.e. when you generate an address you actually generate a private key which allows you to use the bitcoins you are going to send to or receive in that address. But when you send coins to an unused address, this address appears on the blockchain regardless since the blockchain has no idea whether someone has or has not a private key matching it

It's not possible to find the missing bitcoin but I do not know it in my opinion how about you.

I guess you will not be able to find the missing Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is a digital not a real form that can be stored anywhere, so once you forget or lose your private key you will not be able to find Bitcoin that you have forever, So be careful with Your private key to open your digital wallet.

No one could find them unless you know the private key they are consider as lost when you forgot the password or private key of yout wallet no one could open it unless the main site just scam your bitcoin but they are not autorize to do that i guess.

As long as there are people who agrees that something has value, no matter how abundant it is, there would always be a price tag for it. I don't know if we're on the same page, but apparently manipulating the 21 million cap would defeat its purpose of limited availability, and I don't think that the hard-coded limit would ever be changed even after our lifetimes.

Also, people tend to find value/price on nearly everything that they see. I wouldn't be surprised if someday, water will be monopolized just like some basic necessities that we have today.

oh man that is horrendous!
do you mind me asking how many bitcoins you lost,
I'll bet you tried everything to try and restore them?
I wonder how many others lost their coins over time?

Is there any way of knowing how many are lost ? [probably not]

As you know it will never recovered because it is anonymous. Hence the system upgrading after 1 August then might something will be different happen maybe this change should be also held in that upgrading so we cannot say that it would happen to. But according to upgrading which is showing best side of bitcoin which we will bring many changes.

okay be handled it with a 12 word passphrase crack with better odds. I haven't looked into the exact protocols, but I assume that all of these wallets use a static list of words when they produce their 12 word passphrases and that should be easy enough to find in the open source. In the end, it is a lot of effort and resources to go through that will likely never produce any results.. But to answer your question, yes in a technical sense it is very possible.

Not many feasible, many bitcoins were forgotten when it was formed, then the value of bitcoin was very low, many possessed thousands of bitcoins, but they missed, I bet they felt sad when bitcoin increased. old. They ignored the opportunity to get rich when they were holding hands.

Obviously, this is not so

Everyone agrees that air is vitally important (without it you won't last longer than a few minutes) but since it is abundant and freely available to everyone, there is no and can't be a price tag for it. It is said that its marginal utility is equal to zero, i.e. no additional amount of air is of any value to you in typical circumstances. Indeed, on some other planet it would cost dear, but whenever and wherever it is abundant, it is basically a free lunch. This is the same in respect to other things which are in abundance despite the fact that they may be of vital importance to everyone. You could monopolize water (or anything, for that matter), but then you can't claim that it is freely available to everyone, i.e. it will no longer be in abundance. In that case you would create artificial scarcity via restriction of free access

what is a lost bitcoin? no bitcoins can be lost, the only thing you can lose is the private key that gains access to btc at a specific address..... if you change the topic to "Is it possible to find lost private keys", the answer is no.

hmmmm no one know how to find the lost bitcoins

it is not possible at all if you don't own the private keys or original wallet.dat file perhaps those who owned the lost amount are dead by now .try to think vice versa or in reverse if anyone able to find lost coins in bitcoin or any other blockchain as in eth that could be away of hacking others .

I guess the reality is a bit different

Strictly speaking, there are no lost bitcoins since all bitcoins are still kept on the blockchain in their entirety. It is the private keys that's got lost. But if you change the protocol and are successful at persuading miners as well as developers to accept these changes, you can easily reclaim the coins which otherwise are left for dead. It may be not worth trying of course, but the possibility is obviously there. My point is essentially to show that what is done by one human can be undone by another human (given enough time, money, and effort)

If you analyze blocks for sending, then some of the funds are purposely destroyed, sending them to non-existent addresses in principle (only ones and a couple of letters). I think in order to return the lost cue you need to change the system code again ... but again, will everyone agree) I suddenly save money on the account and am going to go to the future for 300 years ahead? I will disagree that my cunts drowned)

To find the missing bitcoin is likely to be very small because the digital world can all happen, it could be because of our own negligence that forgot our own account or bitcoin password itself.
So do not get your hopes up if the missing bitcoin will be able to come back again.

So if it is lost forevere threfore we should be carefull when doing bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies transactions. Always ultra sensitive when comes to input our personal keys, wallet keys and other digital details.  Double checking is very necessary or we lost our hard earned coins.

I am trying to figure out what is meant by lost. Does that mean they don't exist anymore or are wandering somewhere in the wires but nobody knows about them. The second though is pretty ridiculous. So is the first one. Have bitcoins lost on exchanges or in wallets. It does not make any sense to me. Still, precautions should be taken.

In the sense you ask it, not a single bitcoin has been lost at all

All bitcoins which have been mined so far are still sitting on the blockchain at their respective addresses. And they will be there for as long as the blockchain itself exists. In this way, they are pretty indestructible. The fact is some of these bitcoins are not accessible since the keys that would allow moving them (e.g. spending) are lost for good (forgotten, destroyed, whatever), and that's what is meant by bitcoins having been lost

I think nobody can find the lost bitcoins, Because it is unknown and anonymous. Like what you can see in every transaction only wallet addresses we could see in the blockchain. If it is lost it will only be stock there forever unless there is a hacker can trace it. But that's not possible I think.

Nobody could find them simply because they are not hidden in some place, island or garbage can, they are hidden by math and you can’t do anything about it so I personally think they can’t be fount nor used by anyone.

It is very difficult to find lost Bitcoins, such as those looking for a hard disk in a junk box, maybe on a hard disk there are millions of Bitcoins, you can find those missing Bitcoins.

It’s extremely improbable, and effectively impossible to recover lost coins. This is what the security of Bitcoin is actually based on. If you’ve lost your private key, the system is so secure that you may not be able to recover it. But, if you were pretty sure that your passphrase contained words from a sentence from ‘The Return of the King’, but you’ve forgotten which page, then there's a solution. There are also tutorials for recovering your bitcoins in the aftermath of a technical difficulty, like if the hard drive you had them on broke down. But unfortunately for people who totally forgot their passwords, tutorials like this one require you to actually be able to locate the drive where the bitcoins are stored. Not to mention, success stories are rare and exuberantly celebrated.

Yes, I think so too. It will just be a big wonderland if you will try to find those lost bitcoins, but as i can remember there have been discussions here in forum about those lost bitcoins about how to retrieve them, also those users or investors that had died without giving their bitcoin as their last will to someone or even their family members. I think i had came across those topics long ago but can't really recall it clearly.

I started one such topic myself

But people were very negative toward this idea overall. What I had suggested to implement was to make Bitcoib blockchain last-will friendly, so to speak, i.e. if you set some option and don't move your coins for a certain amount of time (say, 50 years), then, after so many years, the coins are spent according to your will set in the blockchain as well. For example, you could specify to donate them to some charity or research, or just distribute the coins among all active holders

I do not know. it seems like a difficult thing. but I've also read an artkel in this forum. the person who created the thread claimed to be able to trace back the missing bitcoin. but I'm not so sure of that. hopefully there is nothing bad with the bitcoin we have.

Bitcoin transaction is made possible by the blockchain so finding the bitcoin you used on a specific transactions is always anonymous because it uses different types of transactions chains , yet there is always be a wallet that you could send the bitcoin so it would help you to locate your bitcoin but not necesarilly get it back in a part of your transactions.

if your lost bitcoin its means that address bitcoin without private key i think yes, that bitcoin wouldn't saved until the owner of thaat address take that bitcoin with the private key that match with that address

If the private keys cannot be recovered, with today's computing power,it would be next to impossible to find any bitcoins. However, we don't know what the future will bring as far a tech is concerned, and it may be possible that a super computer, such as a quantum computer may be able to do it, and even then it would probably be very difficult. If a true quantum computer could ever be built it would be able to perform millions of calculations at the same time, vs a modern computer, can only perform one calculation at the same time.


A true quantum computer would be millions of times more efficient than a modern computer. Now think if thousands of them working together can be put to the task of cracking encryption..

It's early imposible to bruteforce the private keys of thoes address. It may take up to millions of year for you to get a specific address. In short no one would get a private key unless the guy/girl did put the private key on a specific place.
The only owners could get thier bitcoins( if they still know the private key to thier address.)

No, there's no other way to access your Bitcoin wallet but through your private key. If you lost it, you lose your Bitcoin no matter how many kinds of hacking techniques you're using. Losinh wallet is the end of your Bitcoin.

I dont think so that is the big disadvantage of bitcoin. We cannot trace all transaction of bitcoin thats why all hacker are always exist and all illegal transaction will exist also.

you can find one of them if you want to search.
first, you need address that lost bitcoin. and then try to solve the password. but the problem is many word and number and combination of both that you need, that have much possible to use.
and i think no one will try it

bitcoin is digital currency so it is not possible that,if Bitcoin is lost, then it can be found in search. if you lost your bitcoin wallet password however you not back in bitcoin transaction.

As far as i have known, whenever you lost your bitcoin by transfer wrong address, you will never be able to get them back unless that guy wanted to because bitcoin can not be traced.

No, it is not possible to find lost bitcoin. Because bitcoin wallet also lost your bitcoin. There's some way to find bitcoin, if bitcoin makes some way to find lost bitcoin then it will be possible otherwise it can't possible to find any bitcoin.

It is impossible to find the lost bitcoins. And I think this is a disadvantage of bitcoin. Everyday some amount of bitcoin are getting lost, so the total circulation of the bitcoin is decreasing day by day.

Yep, and with over 1 Million bitcoins hacked from Mt Gox and Bitfinex, that's about 5% of the coins right there.   Then who's to say how many have been lost over the years from people who misplaced their keys...probably at least another 1 million coins.  The 21 Mil coin availability is probably more like 15 million between the hacks, lost coins, and burnt coins.

Blockchain experts states that coins cannot be used if wallets digital or hardware is lost and this is one of the reasons why there are so many investors are investing Bitcoin and Altcoins because of it's security feature.
There are more or less 2 million coins were lost in the wild so the fewer coins circulated the higher value of a coin.

In a single case, I would say that you can find lost bitcoins. Some people even buy old wallets to solve the password to get the bitcoins that lie in this purse. But not every password can be brootforced and in a global sense, it will be too difficult to do.

It is possible you can find your lost bitcoins if you are able to contact the miners that hashed that algorithm. You'll need to use a block explorer to search through your txn history though.

I know it's impossible to find lost bitcoins. If one loses access to his address and does not have the private key then those bitcoins will be out of circulation for good. But after reading this topic, I got another question. Wouldn't be important to know how many bitcoins were lost?

No one could know for sure, but maybe they could have an estimate about it. Like if coins are stuck in an address for lots of years, and probably those addresses are associated with wallets that are no longer operational (like multibit classic, etc), wouldn't that mean that those coins are potencial lost?

I don't even know if you can try to associate an address to a wallet, but you can probably check for coins that haven't been moved in a long time.
The thing is, that since BTC is limited, being able to estimate how much BTC were lost, could have an impact on it's price.

No it is not possible to find lost bitcoins because all the transactions of crypto currencies are non tracable. Which means they cannot be track by us.

No one, this is how digital coins money works. Once they lost the bitcoin and the private key you cannot find it anymore because we cannot trace it even the computer cannot bruteforce it. Its like finding a small coin in a deep sea level. I was wondering if the missing bitcoin in the circulation also affect the value of the coin

What is this brootforcing that you speak of? Please explain.

The lost bitcoins, that is, bitcoins, to which access for various reasons have been lost, remain encrypted in the block-chain block-chain. They can be extracted from there only by cheating them. Yes, it is very difficult, but not impossible. Let's say that now it is rather difficult or even almost impossible, since decryption provides an incredible number of options. However, given the increasing cost of bitcoin and the constant development of technical progress, in the future, I think this will be possible, especially with the support of the technology itself.

it is not possible if the missing bitcoin will be rediscovered because anyone who finds the bitcoin will return it to the person who lost it ... little talk. I've lost it until now it's back my bitcoin ...

Unfortunately, once they are lost they are gone forever
 The only way to retrieve is the private key and if that is not known, just drops them from circulation. As another poster said, the supply and demand will just make our Bitcoins more valuable. So at least there is some good news!

No one. If you lose your private keys, you cannot access your Bitcoin. This is good in one way. It gives your Bitcoin more security. So if you have all your private keys, you have control of all your Bitcoin. It is not like banks. However, in another sense, for example this scenario, it is not favourable. If you have your bitcoin stored in a ledger wallet or a USB and you lose it or break it, all your Bitcoin is lost. This is why everyone suggests that you back up your Bitcoin. Write down your private key and store it somewhere. Store your Bitcoin in multiple wallets. These are some ways that you can use to prevent you losing your Bitcoin.

I don't think we even have 15 mil coins in circulation at this point. There are pretty much less than that. Because hey you forgot that MR. Satoshi holds more than 6% of coins in his possession too. Lolz. SO that is why the prices are rising here and we are running out of the supply. The demand well it will never stop increasing and hence it will create amphora of investors leading to more demand. We might just hit 15K rates next month or even further if investors kept everything on the serious ends


Im fully confident that the supply is now so much less the rates will boost up a lot. The whales must be knowing this and they might invest more than millions in single shot.

When a user loses his wallet, it has the effect of
removing money out of circulation. Lost bitcoins still
remain in the block chain just like any other bitcoins.
However, lost bitcoins remain dormant forever because
there is no way for anybody to find the private key/keys
that would allow them to be spent again. Because of the
law of supply and demand, when fewer bitcoins are
available, the ones that are left will be in higher demand
and increase in value to compensate.

I have rcently heart about a British guy who throwed out hard drie with BTC7.5k on it.
you can find that drive and you will find bitcoins:)

if your lost bitcoin its means that address bitcoin without private key i think yes, that bitcoin wouldn't saved until the owner of thaat address take that bitcoin with the private key that match with that address

Unless you don't know the private key to your
wallet, it is not possible to recover lost bitcoins.

So all those bitcoins are probably lost and cannot
be utilized.

It depends on the thief. And there is a big range of behavior. For quite a few, it's actually pretty easy to track the stolen bitcoins in the blockchain. Tools like ours (BlockSeer) help make it easier. However, thieves do have something going for them - they can just claim it was someone else! Each time the thief sends all the bitcoin to a new bitcoin address, they can claim that the ownership has changed, and it is really someone else who is the thief.

I think it is impossible. bitcoin can not be lost. and they are only dug out, or moved from one wallet address to another. and if no password. You can not access the address of the thief

 bitcoin can not be lost. And they are only dug out, or moved from one address to another. I think if we had a password to enter the address of the thief. We will definitely find the lost bitcoin number

Nobody could find them simply because they are not hidden in some place, island or garbage can, they are hidden by math and you can’t do anything about it so I personally think they can’t be fount nor used by anyone.

Finding my missing bitcoin, I think that's impossible.
Even with the mine I think it is not necessarily getting the missing bitcoin.
bitcoin is lost because it is stored not because of scattered so it is very difficult to find it.

No one and never because you need private key to get that bitcoin back

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f you have provided wrong bitcoin address and I think it impossible to find lost bitcoin in any transactions because you cannot privately message of those wallet owner. In other way of bitcoin lost is if your lost your key in your wallet address and it is so sad and big regrets will happen then.

i think if bitcoin sent to wrong address,it not lost,just landed to other people address,but how if that address not yet opened?i mean that address not generated,so is that bitcoin will appear in that address when it generated by someone.

I don’t think anyone can find those lost bitcoins not unless a good hacker can find those. But for regular people, if they lost the private key or forgot their bitcoin addresses and passwords then I don’t think it could be found.

Nobody finds them. Bitcoin lost are permanently lost forever. The best thing to do is to keep your wallet very safe in order not to loose your private keys

it is not possible.who would care to find them?.

It is still a hard things to do for nowadays technology, to recover coins from someone wallet that is already dead. People that can find this lost bitcoins are, :
1. Someone with the credential info of the wallet.
2. Someone with a traces or clue that is enough to know the credential info of the wallet.
3. Someone with enough power and technology to brute force the wallet. And to make it done in a short time.
As i answer that 3 on top, i guess the investor would not want to share anything about their investment to others so no 1 and 2 is a no, and there are no technology can do a bruteforce  in a short time for nowadays technology. So, the answer is, no one will ever find it.
That is why, to make things better, if you hold on to bitcoin, you need a most trustable person to inherit your coins after you pass away. I suggest make a inheritance about the wallet info and inherit it to someone, your wife, son, daughter, etc. It is the right thing to do, because your bitcoin can be a useful thing for the live, and it will also help bitcoin to live as it will not increase the number of lost bitcoin.

Unless by a miracle you are able to get into the wallet, other than that, there is no way to get access to lost bitcoins and most of them belongs to people who lost access to their wallets in the first place.

Yes, it is possible. I lost bitcoin to binary trading scam and I used the services of a hacker to recover all my bitcoins. His info is cybertronxiii@gmail.com

As I know, it is impossible to find lost bitcoins. bitcoin was encrypted with sha-256 so it take too much time too decrypt it (or if you have a quantum computer, you can do it easy)

As of now once a bitcoin is lost for example an owner lost his private key or other necessary credentials that is needed to access a BTC wallet then it will just be lost forever and stay in that wallet it is keep because currently there is still no way of accessing wallet through brute force or any decryption. This might possibly happen soon but would still take lots of calculation and time.

Quite impossible, you may recover lost Bitcoins by doing attack to the network.
51% attack may succeed if you have enough hashpower and stuffs.
Other than that, if you are trying to use brute force, it's kinda impossible for now.
So no, it's impossible to recover lost bitcoins.

I think no one will find them because, the lost bitcoins are stuck in wallets that the owners forgot the password, and cracking those passwords will take immense amount of skill effort and time, a true prodigy in technology might solve it but as of now no one is capable of doing that.

Bpяд ли oни бyдyт вoзвpaщeны. Toлькo cпocoб дoбывaния и дoбывaния  :)

No one can do that except the the owner who lost or forgotten it, many bitcoins are already burn in an old hard drives, the owner died and the private key is lost, this are the bitcoin that will not retrieve and recover this will forgotten and lost forever.

no one hehehe. the private keys are encrypted type of password and the only way to open is with that.. if the wallet has for example 1 or more bitcoin then maybe I will try to brute force it  ;D if it is not that difficult or so called ..old type of wallet maybe there is a possibility..
you can easily see them i you have the address just type it on ethplorer or in ethscanner there you go hahahaha you can stare at them 24 hours  Grin.. it will not be part of circulation like Pluto called dwar planet in coins dwarf sleeping bitcoins   ;D

Actually i never been experience of lossing my coin in the trading site's but as far as i know there is an information  of trading site that you can bring all your complain about what happening to your transaction,maybe its pending or unverified.while on the other hand some other exchange website is have there own rules that they said in there trading sites said  that wrong sending of coins can leads your coins to dissappear.

I think there is no way you can find a lost bitcoin. Bitcoin can only be use digitally and never exist in physical form so it would be difficult to find any lost bitcoin. Once it was lost or stolen it will be lost forever. That's why we have to be careful on copy pasting our private keys. Once you mistakenly put your private keys anywhere here in the forum, well good luck to you and your wallet.

Lost bitcoin can be tracked, but it cannot be retrieved back until the receiver end has the mentality to return it back. I've a personal experience in it. Got hacked and around 0.5btc was stolen, but I have trying hard to get it back. Only thing I was able to do was to see the transaction happening to different wallet addresses.

Its possible maybe, its been recorded by the system or can be trace and see the wallet addresses where it sent at history transaction of blockchain. The problem is on how to email the developers to track those addresses.

The lost bitcoins since 2009 is the reason why Bitcoin price is going up. It makes the circulation of BTC limited. Cracking its private keys will take forever. Thats why Satoshi's genesis block wallet is still intact.

It is highly unlikely to retrieve the bitcoins that are lost in many form of ways, some of the examples are hard disk getting corrupted without making a copy of private keys to access their bitcoin wallet, people throwing away their old hard disk away without realizing they have stored some bitcoins on it.

I never knew it would be possible to gain access to a phone remotely. I contacted a hacker who helped me do this at a very good fee and he is very good at many things. Just recently he helped a friend retrieve some bitcoins he lost to binary trading!
He is called Optimus and his email is cybertronxiii@gmail.com

Bitcoin that is loss can be found if you know the wallet device of the user that loss its bitcoin. It is posible to access the wallet even if you don't know the password of the account by the used of brute force password cracking.

No, it is impossible, we can not find the lost bitcoin again. Bitcoin is a digital not a real form that can be stored anywhere, so once you forget or lose your private key you will not be able to find Bitcoin.

All Bitcoin transaction can see in the blockchain.info website which is main platform of bitcoin and also can see in which account bitcoin have transferred. But no body can tell that the actual owner of that account which is impossible to find out And if any type of wrong transaction have done and lost your bitcoin then you can not recover your bitcoin at any cost. Only you have to forget it.

Well that the caveat 'brute force' which is called DUMB, there are many ways to MINE bitcoin's, and they don't have to be a linear search;

The search space can be reduced to 2**40, from 2**128 ( 2**256 birthday )

DUMB 2**256, linear search, like Large Bitcoin collider, just DUMB search

Birth-day drop's search space to 2**128,

Smart baby-step/giant-step algo's can drop search space to 2**64

When searching your not looking for ONE,your looking for 500 million collisions with value, there are probably say 10k 'lost pristine coin' ( addresses ), finding one of them not much easier than finding just one, ...

But when you tie it all together, cultivate 200 million addresses with a balance, that drop 2**32 from the 2**64 space,  once your down to millions just a very good computer can be used to collect 'lost coin'

The above said is HODL mean "LOST"? If I HODL for 10+ years are my COIN? lost? I think not
But its important to go over the reality of the thing, too often I see DUMB shit on GITHUB, or even what LBC is doing, just DUMB, but people who are serious about this shit are doing it.

Bitcoins are multi crypted on the exchangers or wallets they are using, if lost bitcoins cannot be retrieved then it only means that it is really secured and it is a good thing since hackers today are always trying to penetrate the system to steal our coins.

This is true, but some private keys are hashes of some popular phrases or even worse - of words  (=brain wallet). Some of them are lost and some of them are long forgotten, because it was a popular way of setting a private key in those early bitcoin days, years ago!

Not all of them are lost or forgotten, some of them still undoubtly belong to the rightful owners, too. But it would be best for the owners to move them to some more secure wallets, as the best practices have changed considerably during all those years.

What I want to say, that it is still possible to stumble upon private keys being in the form of brain wallets and the original phrases long lost or forgotten.

Finding your missing guy the same as finding the missing bitcoin is unrealistic. So it's better not to lose your savings.

Finding my missing bitcoin, I think that's impossible.
Even with the mine I think it is not necessarily getting the missing bitcoin.

I think no. It is impossible for the lost bitcoins to be found. If one guy with let's say 1000 bitcoins in his wallet, and then he lost his private key, the bitcoins inside will be vanished forever.

You can not lose bitcoin. Only if you forgot your password from the purse or lost it, then this is to lose bitcoin. So this must beware.

Most of the bitcoin lost is due to negligence if the people whi hold their private key or to some people who deceased without heriting their bitcoins to someone. We cant really revive those bitcoin unless you are super duper knowledgable and have the right tool for it (that not yet invented yet). Even some hackers are having a hard time in decoding this. I guess we will be expecting tHose millions Of bitcoins lost will never be found. Maybe we feel this regrets in tHis lost But this is really part of tjis world.

there will be no way to find lost bitcoin since the system in the bitcoin can not re- transact the wrong transaction in bitcoin. The lost bitcoin will forever be lost.

As we all know, Bitcoin as a technology is very strong and that's why it is gaining popularity day by day. The security level is massive so no one can brute force and find the private key. Thus there is no practical way to identify the private keys of the Lost bitcoins unless and until you have a quantum computer (that is still in the development phase).

I have hard time believing what you stated here, but if it were true, then of course you realize that those people are ownership-agnostic, meaning that they take the founds from whatever the address they can brute force the private key to ... meaning, that put it simply: they steal that money.

It's very difficult to find the missing Bitcoin. Probably the one who will find the smart tech person in this World.

The question is really funny, but curious. I wish we could really have a chance to find these lost Bitcoins. Unfortunately, it is absolutely impossible. No one and nothing will return BTC that was lost once.

its almost impossible to get back cryptocurrency, especially those lost through hacks, this is precisely the reason as to why safety of your investment is empathized, encrypt your wallets as much as you can and follow the security tips to the later coz when a valuable investment as BTC slips away, its gone

Once you lost the private key /seed then bitcoins are gone forever. I am just wondering what will happen after a century if every year million lost. :o :o

In a single case, I would say that you can find lost bitcoins. Some people even buy old wallets to solve the password to get the bitcoins that lie in this purse. But not every password can be brootforced and in a global sense, it will be too difficult to do.

No one, do you mean to hack the wallet? No it's criminal. Just let them. If the supply of bitcoin is decrease then it's mean that the price will increase. I am not meant, just the one who responsible to bitcoin is the users it self. Just don't be like them who lost their bitcoin.

I think the fact that bitcoin is an internet currency, if you have lost or someone takes your bitcoin, it would be difficult to have it back. Make sure you have the best security at you bitcoin wallet. If you don't mind, how did you lost your bitcoin?

It is very hard to find those lost bitcoins which got hacked. If you lost the btc wallet address on your system, you can try using recovery software.

Forgotten wallets, hardware failure, Someone hacking your details, irrecoverable passwords or private keys causes supply loss of Bitcoin and It’s extremely improbable, and effectively impossible to recover lost coins. This is what the security of Bitcoin is actually based on. If you’ve lost your private key, the system is so secure that you may not be able to recover it.

Bitcoin is missing could not be found. They are not visible and cannot be held. That which is not visible to the naked eye, how to find it?

Not millions of coins are lost. How can millions be lost when only about 16-17 Million Coins have been mined currently out of 21 Million.

The Second thing the lost Bitcoins are lost in some outer space and you cannot get the hold of them Now..

No one will find them, why? Maybe because they are already hacked and someone already possessed it. No one knows where is it and who got it. Don't stress yourself because of this, just earn more bitcoin.

I think its possible that we found lost bitcoin. The reason why there are millions of bitcoin lost its because of the group of hackers. And the negligent of the clients maybe they exposed their private key to someone.or they lost their files. So it hard to find our lost bitcoin, so in order to prevent this kind of situations we be responsible for it.

If no one has lost, he can not find it anymore. This must be known by all those who have bitcoin because if they are not careful they can cry a lot.

It sounds funny seems finding Dora's treasure. This is possible to find a lost coin of bitcoin, but impossible to know where is the exact place of the lost treasure of bitcoin. This is unclear for we are dealing to online activity. Honesty, I did not yet encounter that, but I'm excited if that will fall on me and find bitcoin and come to my wallet I will be very thankful.

If I am the lucky one to know how to recover lost bitcoins, I will not consider to return them or whatsoever LOL
I think there are thousands of lost bitcoins, not as many as millions.

Masih banyak lagi aspek untuk menemukan tentang Bitcoin, terlalu banyak untuk ...... Cryptocurrency bisa hilang saat komputer mogok, orang kehilangan dompet ...

Completely agree with this. One of friends used to mine in 2012 and accumulated good amount. But he lost all those as he lost the wallet details. Never succeded in recovering the private key.

Brute-forcing is the only way to recover the Bitcoins if the harddrive is wiped and the paper is gone. But that could easily take you years to recover, maybe even hundred of years. These coins are therefore considered to be gone.

There is no such way using which you can recover any of the coin which you lost somehow. In case you lose your private key, then all of your coins which you had in your wallet will be compromised and there will be no chance of recovering even a single coin out of them. You need to take very good care of your private key and you need to keep it secure in order to avoid any mishap.

It is impossible to get back a lost bitcoin. Because the name of the actual owner is not written on Bitcoin. When he goes to the hand, he is the owner of those coins. If the address of the investor or lost person was written on the bitcoin But if the person found is only kind to him, then only he can get it.

Unless you have your keys, it's quite hard. Forget hard, it's impossible without your keys and it doesn't matter what you do you won't get back in the wallet. I lost the keys to my blockchain account in 2015 and lots my bitcoins too, had to suck up the loss and move on

It turns out that mining is the only possible way to issue (issue, extract) bitcoins, charged as a reward to the miners for solving mathematical problems with the help of computer equipment.

It's imposible to find that lost bitcoins. Maybe you can find the address but without private key its not yours.

It is not possible to find lost bitcoins without the private key. But it will make other bitcoin holder little worthy.

Nobody, as long as you don't have the passkey to that account there is no way you can access those funds, they are gone forever.

Once your bitcoins are gone then I'm sorry it would be next to impossible to try to get them back as the chances of successfully getting back your coins are quite slim and when I say slim I mean really slim as in the .0 percentage of getting them back. Just cut your losses and move on and next time secure your wallet with better securities. Sorry about your coins.

There are many Bitcoins lost, some for 'dust' wallets that are not considered worth sending, or cannot due to the transaction fees so are stuck in limbo. Some big amount of Bitcoin (and let's not forget the Alts too.) are lost due to people losing clients, and keys and seeds.. One guy from England, Wales lost millions as he purportedly disposed of his laptop HDD at a public amenity dump, now would be under tonnes of rubbish...