Bitcoin Forum

There have been almost 18 million Bitcoins created. We know that some have been lost over the years and can’t ever be recovered except potentially with quantum computers. 

18 million - lost coins = ?

My question is how many Bitcoins are left, which is really a question of how many have been lost?

According to Chainalysis (A blockchain analysis company), it's 4 Million coins (https://content.fortune.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/lost_bitcoins.png) (2017). This is clearly an estimation though. There is no way to know the accurate number.

Almost is not an exact expression, at any given moment we know the exact number of mined Bitcoins, this is public data available on lots of websites, and it says that there is 18,067,062 BTC (https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/) at the moment.

Here's a little task for you if you want to know how many Bitcoins are left - 21 000 000 - 18 067 062 =?

And as for the lost coins, we can only guess at that, but the higher the number, the better it is for all of us. Satoshi says about lost Bitcoins that they “make everyone else’s coins worth slightly more”, one should not look at it from the negative side (except those who lost coins/private keys).

That is an interesting question... and I happened to read an article about that last week.

According to Coinmetrics on their article (https://coinmetrics.substack.com/p/coin-metrics-state-of-the-network-d2e), by block 600,000 there were at least 1,500,000 coins lost... and that can happen for several reasons, in different magnitudes: you have the 50 genesis coins, stolen or zombie coins, duplicate transactions (yes, duplicate), unclaimed rewards and so on...

It is hard to say for sure, of course. We don't know if the zombie coins are just being strongly hodled or if they are in fact lost.

One way or another... interesting read. Highly recommend! 

18,067,075

If that estimate is close to accurate, then effectively there are only about 14 million Bitcoins in circulation or that can be put in circulation.  This is beneficial to know because it supports the idea of Bitcoin scarcity.

This is an interesting topic but no one really knows the accurate answer.
According to this analyst article about this year, there are 2,932,937.5 bitcoins left to be mined, and there are currently 18,067,062.5 bitcoins in existence. https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/how-many-bitcoins-are-there/. They are estimated that there are 3-4 million of Bitcoin has been lost forever. But this is still guessing and nobody knows what is the perfect answer.

Op is talking about the lost coins, not about the total bitcoins less the mined bitcoins. So, your little task is wrong,

So, as OmegaStarScream say, around 4M bitcoins are lost, and one of those millions are satoshi coins. And satoshi gives us some words about the lost coins:

Given the information about bitcoins, mined and lost + coins that are on the whale's purses (which are motionless + 1 million Satoshi Nakamoto)
very few coins are widely used by BTC fans

No one can give how many exact coins are lost by now but i think with the bitcoin adaption increases the lost coins ratio will also increase and i have a valid reason for this.

Currently everyone is using Paper currencies stored at home or banks. If a person dies, the banks can easily hand over the cash to his belongings on valid verification but if a bitcoin holder dies and he did not tell anyone the secret key, then those bitcoin will be lost forever. I know few of the people will give the access to siblings etc, but most of them won't and consider everyone having some portion of bitcoin and people dying in accidents etc will make bitcoins lost number increase to a greater extent.

I expect this lost number increases as more people hold or get access to bitcoins.

Well, that is one fact on how Bitcoin can be lost, but there are some lost coins that have dump with no reason,
particularly yes we can not estimate the exact amount of Bitcoin that still not mined yet, because it is continuously moving and there are consistently losing coins every hour or so.

That is why for OP we can only give you an estimation of 18,067,000 BTC near to this number for now, but the part that I always keep on thinking is what will the real thing that may happen if there are no Bitcoin's to mine anymore.

Well, we assume that the number of bitcoin's existence was 18 million in circulation and it will less to those who lost their Bitcoin forever.
The answer was still unknown and no one knows the exact number, but as what have said above it is estimated 4 million Bitcoin has been lost including the Bitcoin to be mined. You guys don't bother too much how many left and lost in Bitcoin because nobody gives an exact answer.

Since I checked in Google I have noticed 4 to 5 million Bitcoins are remaining in the market.
But unfortunately we do not have any tool to trace the the Bitcoins which is lost or stolen and kept somewhere.
If you ask me what is my left Bitcoin it is around 0.04 BTC alone.

The only way on how to find how many BTC are lost or missing is if all BTC holders announces how many each of them have and then subtract that number from total BTC mined till date. In short that's not possible.

I think it is more relevant to talk about percentages of mined coins per reward era, roughly translated to a year.

So, with that in mind, 99% of all coins will have been mined by the year 2030-ish. The last one percent will take another hundred years. Literally more than a hundred years.

It's the decade after we hit 99% and are mining the last 1% where we find some true price discovery about the value of each coin, and while past performance is no guarantee of future returns and history does not necessarily repeat itself, but it rhymes.

Just look at traditional stock markets. S&P or DOW Jones...

This question has been answered multiple times already ::)

Anyway you can think of those coins that were lost during transactions.

Those accounts that will never be recovered and have bitcoins that will never be used whatsoever.

These and many more could make bitcoin amount increase if they were "cleaned" from the system.
Based on that we could make a new estimation with a more precise number rather than speculating.

We can't find the exact numer coz we just can't control it. I've heard something about 6 million lost bitcoins, but it's just a rumor.

While about 18million plus has been mined so far and mining keeps going on. I doubt if anyone can tell the total number of currently lost bitcoin since most persons usually do not come out to declare their loss bitcoin, and there are some wallets that have never been touched before. 

There are two types of "unspendable" bitcoins.

There are those where someone has permanently lost their private key, and there are those where the transactions themselves are structured in such a way as to make the bitcoins permanently unspendable.

It is impossible to know how many bitcoins there are of the first type (permanently lost private key).  People who say they lost their private key might be lying. Private keys could turn up later on someone's old hard drive or on a piece of paper somewhere. Any attempt to calculate the number of "lost" bitcoins due to permanently lost private keys is just a guess and is likely to be very wrong.

The other type (transactions structured to make the bitcoins unspendable) are all publicly visible in the blockchain.  These can be counted right down to the exact satoshi.  These are known PROVABLE lost bitcoins that we can all be CERTAIN are gone.

Here is an analysis from 2014 of the 2,745.22283996 BTC that were PROVABLY LOST at that time.  I haven't seen a more recent similar analysis.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=675321

Will take too much effort on this and of course those who are dead already can no longer say how much bitcoin they have. Its not easy to know the accurate supply for now but one thing is for sure, the supply is getting smaller every year and the halving next year will make it more limited. We still need to have a better demand, and a better adoption to enjoy the price of a limited supply.

Considering the nature of the Bitcoin blockchain network, you can't easily tell the number of Bitcoins lost. People usually classify inactive bitcoin addresses having Bitcoins in them which haven't been used for some time now.  These addresses can't really represent the number of bitcoin lost.  People will just speculate an assumption of Bitcoins they think are lost. For the real number of lost bitcoins, no one can really tell the exact amount of Bitcoin. It will be better not to think about the number of lost Bitcoins.

Aside from the deceased bitcoin holders, also put into consideration all the persons who are not even willing to participate in this survey (if that's the process to be called) and choose to working silently in the dark. That's understandable anyway because it's a kinda intimidating when it comes to money talks. So Yes! It was impossible to know every decimal of lost btc in the system but there are estimations tho. I just don't know if it's really close to the exact (I guess so) :).

There are 2,932,450.0 left mine and the rough estimate of bitcoins that's been lost is 3-4 millions however this is all estimates there's no really accurate way in finding out the total bitcoin that's been lost. The real question is how long will it take for that almost 3million bitcoin to be mined ? i really hope it would last long so we can find better solutions in recovering them.

Not sure how many are left since we can't really find out the exact amount now. I'm just a little worried about the lost Bitcoins, would it still be possible to retrieve them?

why should we think of a bitcoin coin that has been lost. I think this will be a waste of time. because even though we think hard bitcoin will still disappear and until now there is no way or technology that can restore the lost bitcoin. and also the lost bitcoin will not affect the market price.

Maybe if some one hold and save bitcoin on their wallet but lost private key make bitcoin supply have increase lower, I think many people pass away but he forget give their bitcoin account for his family and keep gone their bitcoin on market transaction.

Am not really sure but i think its only 4 million bitcoin left but its not an accurate number i read that in one article on 2016 so its not really sure if that is the bitcoin left.
But if that is the bitcoin left is bitcoin now is very small left and it will be gone if many investor invest in bitcoin.

We can't say that because we never know, when or if at all sleeping coins will be moved again. Perhaps we can tell something about the likelyhood. But that means nothing. although it's not a science but estimates are 3-4 million currently lost, means truly lost as in can never be moved again. this also assumes Satoshi doesn't have their private keys.

Until now I still do not know how much bitcoin has actually been lost because very little information can be extracted related to it. Maybe some of the missing are now in the exchange or the market.

Many but not all of those Coinbase 50BTC rewards which were never moved even once are probably lost forever.
Besides Satoshi I am sure there were individuals who downloaded the Bitcoin core software and mined with it for a few hours or days, found a few blocks and basically said "What is the point of this" and deleted the software. Then the hard drive was upgraded or thrown out and those are lost forever.

Even if someone still has private keys to those early mined coins I am sure they would of moved them at least once for security reasons. From what I understand the early Bitcoin clients didn't have password options even for the private keys. So they were very insecure. Most would of definitely sent them to a cold storage address instead of risking them and keep them there.

Another reason is the sheer value of 50BTC which at $10K was half a million dollars, why wouldn't you take some profit at least. Most would of sold at $10 a coin or $100 or even $1000.

I don't think the data are one hundred percent accurate about the number of bitcoin lost. Since it is lost, we can't really tell the exact bitcoin a signlr person have lost. Me either don't know the exact amount if bitcoin lost but I know it's a lot... But even with the amount of lost bitcoin, we shouldn't think of it so much because it might bring negativity on us.

basically the total supply of bitcoin that we know is 21 million in total and circulating now only amounts to 18,054,212 BTC.

so it is very possible that the current available bitcoin inventory is only 2,945,788 BTC.

Less than 3 millions left and the last one will be minned around 2110 or something. Question here is what happens to miners when the last block will be done?

Though this amount is not calculated but it's really an interesting issue that how could you know about the actual figure, I think no one can state the actual number of Bitcoin ever, because how many Bitcoin we have lost it's not a knowing issue for other, it's too difficult to figure out the original number of Bitcoin still exits. not only that but also in considering the mining issue it's not possible to see the actual figure, another thing is that there is no way to measure or any tool to find this number.

I may have misunderstood it, but that doesn't diminish the more important question, how many BTC will be available when the last coin is mined. All the analyzes that give some answers are based on someone saying that something was lost because it was not moved for x years, which is a very stupid method. Some of my coins are not moved 4 years, is that mean they are lost? 4 millions of losted coins is just an assumption based on a bad methodology, the actual figure is probably much smaller.

My little task can actually help OP to understand some things, there is no almost 18 million coins, there is an exact number of mined coins.

No one knows how much coin has lost and left and I don't think there is someone who knows it here and will answer you right. I don't also think we need to know the exact amount have lost, what's more important to me here is to earn and to save it and wait until the right time comes to sell.

According to coinmarketcap, the current Bitcoin supply is 18,068,150 which means there are 21,000,000 - 18,068,150 = 2,931,850 Bitcoin left for mining. But they won't be mined all soon because the difficulty is increased.

There is no exact amount on how much bitcoin was really lost by the users, but there are a lot of estimates saying that it is around 3-4million coins some say 5million.
If you are pertaining to the total supply of bitcoin, just get the total amount and the amount of mined bitcoin then subtract it and it will give you somewhere near this amount 2,931,687.5‬ bitcoins still left for mining.

There is no way to retrieve the lost bitcoins, if someone has lost the private key then the coins stored there will be lost forever. Also if is impossible to find out if a wallet owner does not spend his coins. It can be either he has lost the key , or he is Holding the coins with no need to spend, or he is dead without given the private key to anyone. There is no way to judge this.

I get what you are saying. I would point out that both variables in the equation are constantly changing. The number of Bitcoins mined keeps increasing but the number of lost coins has to also be increasing.

I realize that we don’t know how many coins are lost but my point was to get people’s opinions about how many they think may have been lost so far.  Obviously there is no way to know, but it’s fun to speculate.

I think we need a different time frame to consider coins as lost, and it should be at least 5 years. Maybe even longer. 8 years maybe? Any coin that has not moved in at least 8 years, maybe could be lost.

There is no way to know for sure, but that's a pretty good guess.

There is also that 1 satoshi that was not mined by something midnight something; essentially a block was mined and less coins were mined than the maximum allowed, so those coins never existed and are effectively lost. That's not something most miners will do of course, they'll mine what they can.

There is no exact amount to determine the number of lost bitcoin coins. what is certain is that in my opinion the missing bitcoin is only a few percent of the total bitcoin supply, so I don't think it affects the percentage of bitcoin right now.

This!  ^^^ . Exactly this! ^^^

I have coins that I have not moved since 2012.  That's 7 years.  I know exactly where the private keys are.  I can move them any time I want to.  Fortunately (unlike with a traditional bank or practically ANY other custodial service), I can store those bitcoins securely for decades and it won't cost me a single penny!

Nope.

In just 1 more year, I'll have coins that haven't moved in 8 years.  I know exactly where the private keys are and I can move them any time I want to.  If that is true for me, you can be pretty confident that it is true for many other people that have coins from even longer ago than that.

Additionally, there are coins that are stashed with physical Casacius Coins which probably haven't moved (on the blockchain) for more than 9 years already today.  Those coins may have physically changed hands many times and could be accessed via blockchain at any moment.


Correct.  People really should realize this.  Looking at coin movement is a horrible way to determine coin ownership.


It really isn't.


There are more than 2,000 coins that are PROVABLY lost forever (see the link in my first post in this thread)

I don't really think lost Bitcoins have some level of impact on the entire bitcoin market and the crypto market as a whole. Lost means it will never be found and will never be useful in the entire crypto space. Just like physical fiat which usually gets burnt and lost, it doesn't really matter because they are lost.  Trying to know the number of Bitcoins that are lost is just a futile journey.  

Had a look at that thread, and just want to repeat this one:


There's also a bunch of "no known private key" addresses ... it's not 100%, but those can't be spent either. 1CounterParty, 1xxxxxxxxxxxxxx, the "zero" address", ... (heh, yes I know you can't prove it, but pretty much someone somewhere out there is trying to, and they'll fail.)

With the capital market been accused of false information, before I don't believe their current circulation numbers. However, I don't think to know the number of bitcoins left to be mine is something hard since we already have a site (https://www.bitcoinblockhalf.com/) where we can find all the necessary information needed.

Because they can, or they are stealing someone else's computing power or resources and doing it anyway. Zombie nets and stuff.

I'm sure no one will know for sure how much bitcoin has been lost. because there is no way that can be done to restore the lost bitcoin.
the bitcoin that is lost mostly belongs to people who forget their e-mail and password so they can't access their bitcoin. and we don't know how many people have experienced this. so there is no way to count lost bitcoin. for now the bitcoin that has been circulating is 18 million BTC remaining that have not been mined means only 3 million BTC.

Meaning to say that lost bitcoins are being stored at exchanges, wherein, the main access of the users is through their email and passwords and not from their public and private key. In this case, the bitcoins aren't lost at all, but there's a probability that if the exchange is faulty and some sort of fraud, then it will be added again to the liquidity pool of that particular exchange.

in just 2 years 1 million Bitcoin was mined.  the rest will certainly be mined before 2100. Although Bitcoin is limited, we can divide Bitcoin into 10,000,000 Satoshi units, so rest assured that we still have plenty of Bitcoin to use.

It is not before the year 2100. The last drop of Satoshi to be mined will be in the year 2140. That is 40 long years after 2100. That is going to be more than a couple lifetimes combined from now. There will be no problem about the value division of Bitcoin. There are several decimal points in there by design, one satoshi will take a very long time to grow into a huge amount.

Of course, it's interesting, but it's really just pure speculation because there is currently no reliable method to determine how much BTC has actually been lost forever. For all of us who own some of BTC, this is just something that will eventually increase the price - 21 million is total supply, and 99% of that amount will be mined by 2032. If the price continues to increase as has been the case so far, I bet we will see a lot of so-called lost coins moving to exchanges. I doubt that many will be able to resist the price of $100k or even $50k per 1 BTC.

Or probably much greater.  At this point, this bad method you said is pretty much an assumption and simply a guess.  I am quite sure that there are also lots of people who are still losing their private key as of this moment. So whether it is greater or smaller is still a guess.   And I think there is no accurate way to found out how many Bitcoins are actually lost and will be lost in the future.

2,930,137.5 Bitcoins are left to be mined

86.047% of Bitcoins have been issued

18,069,862.5 Total bitcoin in existence

1,800 New bitcoin mined per day.

For more information click here source link https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/how-many-bitcoins-are-there/

There are almost 1/4 of 18 millions of lost coins. incredible amount

Woah! Great number! There is still a lot of bitcoin that has not been mined. Wish i could have some mining rid ,anyway it is good to know that there is still a lot of bitcoin that has not been mined yet because we know that a number lf coins that has been circulated in the market really affects the market value, so if it will be all put in circulation I think bitcoin price will drop.

its more or less 3-4 million bitcoin is lost forever, there are 2.9 million btc still to be mine

Is that can effect the bitcoin price in the future? I meant when those 2.9 millions bitcoin will be mined, what's going to happen later? I hope even if bitcoin will die after many years, then it should come a good alternative for this crypto.

Difficult to answer how many are lost.
Before all this price pumping happened like $360 per bitcoin there are already lost coins and it keeps on adding up whenever a user is creating a wallet then joining faucet websites.
I am one of that examples.
I have some wallets that are forgotten and I know there are satoshis left there.
I also knew that there were a lot of us doing the same faucet work since the deposit amount is being consumed everyday.
Imagine how many satoshis are out there in different wallets which was not withdrawn.
That could be a lot also when summed up.

I see some people mentioning that about 4 million Bitcoins are lost, how sure are they about this number they are calling?
I don't think anyone can really tell how many Bitcoins are lost, there are no ways to tell if coins are lost or not.

We don't know how many are they, but one thing I do know for sure is that if many coins continue to lost, the few coins that are remaining will continue to increase in value and that means a time will come when the price of one Bitcoin will be worth a very high price.. When there are less coins and the demand is higher than the number of coins available to be sold, the rate will increase. Let's wait for those golden periods.

Mining all of Bitcoin in 2140 is theoretical.  Bitcoin is mined based on the power of the computer, Blockchain will pay for each block created based on the computing speed of the computer, also known as Genesis minning.  If there are many computers working together to solve the Bitcoin problem, it means that the mining speed will be faster.  So the time to create a block is relative.

Bitcoin mining good way for increase your earning every day with less risk when bitcoin price down like you invest or buy bitcoin on higher price, maybe mining need time and money before you starting earn bitcoin by mining, you have ready for buying mining tool with higher price depend with how much do you want earn every day, look your place have good connection with internet access or not.

According to my research there are only 21 million bitcoins that can be mined in total. 18million has been mined and 3million BTC left unmined. After this there will be Bitcoin scarcity.

Well if the basis is the assumption that something is lost the time period in which the BTC has not been moved from the address, then it can actually be just less, no more than 4 million lost coins. They say that 4 million coins are not moved in x years, this is how we get that number. You should also consider that before BTC was cheaper (more accessible to small people), and mining was possible with PC, so most of the possibly lost coins date back to probably the first 5 years of existence.

Today, very few people can afford to buy 1 BTC, and mining is almost fully reserved for big players+people are fully aware of the importance which BTC have+we also have hardware wallets which all together results in a very small amount of loss.

Mining will cost a lot of money to buy equipment and set up electric networks.  Not to mention the cost to pay for electricity each month.  If you have a small amount of money to buy equipment, abandon the idea of ​​mining Bitcoin because mining requires more diggers connected to create a larger network.  You will have to make a loss as some single machines will not work.  I have several friends who have liquidated their entire system because there is not enough profit to pay their electricity costs.

Many of them have left bitcoin because lost much when buy bitcoin with higher price, now bitcoin have down with lower price, many people not trust again with bitcoin maybe frustrated when bitcoin down, they not brave again for investing with bitcoin after lost chance get much profit whit bitcoin when price up.

And in some cases, if people create an account to an exchange, what they are doing is to withdraw their funds if it becomes high enough for them to consider profit. But the reality is that, not all exact amount of bitcoin could be withdrawn meaning to say that if a sure will change his platform or choose better exchanges, there will still be a portion of bitcoin left to his account and if we sum up all of the bitcoins from all kinds of users like this, then a huge portion of missing bitcoin could come up.