Bitcoin Forum

Let us speculate on this topic.

Without de facto online wallet standard, lot of Bitcoiners are keeping BTC in the wallets on their computers...
Giving that laptop/desktop life span averages 4 years, my estimate is that it could influence total coins in circulation by good margin in times to come

What do you think in terms of % in few years from now, how many of BTC go vanished due to

1. hardware HDD failure
2. computer change in combination with negligence to backup wallet
3. data coruption
4...
5...fell free to add more points

I agree, but my question to you was how many of them are around?
And by what  percentage will it shrink amount of BTC in circulation over time?

Given infinite time: All of them.
Within our lifetime: possibly 1%.

anyone with a notable amount of bitcoins know how to secure their wallets, so i think the loss of bitcoins that way will be unnoticable, even over a very long time.

that. I'm sure there's a number of people who toyed around with it a bit, had a wallet made with like 0.005 BTC in it, then ended up losing interest, and will never backup that wallet, ever.

At least two, mine :) .  I already lost two, it is lucky that I never had many bitcoins in the first place. 

how?

I have backups on my backups.

Normally when I am moving my bitcoin from one computer to another.  One careless move and the wallet is gone.

I lost 2 when my Android app crashed and there was no way to back it up (still none short of rooting your phone). I suspect small losses to phones, and when we get smart cards and magnetic strip charge cards, will happen often as those are lost or broken.

I guess a lot of Bitcoins/wallets were lost (or even deleted) in the early days, when you didn't really care about a few hundred or thousand coins.

Since people are lazy I think there are still Bitcoins that get lost. Hard to tell how many.

Not if you back it up before the move.

With Bitcoin you can as easily lose a penny as a truck of money.

6. Updating Android

Just did that and lost my wallet there. 3.8 bitcoins down :(

The Schildbach client really needs a way to backup / restore

1) Move your coins off your phone
2) ROOT YOUR PHONE!
3) Use Titanium Backup to back up your Bitcoin cliend
4) Copy your TitaniumBackup folder somewhere safe, and encrypt it.

That's what I had to do after losing my coins same way you did. I also wish they had a backup option, but until they do, the above steps are a must.

You need your wallet's data on paper somewhere in case of some EMP attack (2012 approaches fellas!) you can put it back in with a hex editor.  I know this sounds silly, but it's a good extra way to back it up.

this is the best suggestion yet :)

But, with prices around 2$ not a single f*ck will be given about hard copy wallet backups :)

Unless it's a large ass amount.

..since they get reproduced at a regular basis, that is no valid argument..

let this thread live on.

i think chances are high, that by the end of 2020 about 10% of all bitcoins produced so far will be lost. just remeber the 50k BTC in the amazon-cloud story..^^