How many Bitcoins are lost forever?

[mace15]

This is a difficult to answer on how many bitcoin are lost. We could not count the exact figures then the total bitcoin were lost forever. Everyday are many uses bitcoin, having bulk transactions doing withdrawal, transfer also. So for me its hard to tracked these losts.

[Vaskiy]

This is a difficult to answer on how many bitcoin are lost. We could not count the exact figures then the total bitcoin were lost forever. Everyday are many uses bitcoin, having bulk transactions doing withdrawal, transfer also. So for me its hard to tracked these losts.

Bulk transactions help for the easy way to calculate the number of bitcoin easily. Only method which can be used to make the number of lost bitcoin is using the transaction details. It will be a long process, every bit of bitcoin will be transacted at least once. Now if the number of bitcoin address and the transaction along with that gives better results.

[clickerz]

we can't really estimate without getting all the required information. An address staying dormant for a long time may not necessarily means that the owner could have lost the private key, nevertheless that person could have just set the cons aside or have it transferred to an offline paper wallet without trying to access it.

That is correct, some dormant accounts or wallets are possibly long term investment as we do not have a proper metrics on that.So, we could not tell how much is totally lost. I think there is no other way to recover lost wallet,private keys etc. Its gone forever.

[seven4smoke]

im sorry if this was asked before but, is there any site tracking the number of "dead" bitcoins?

None, there is no way to track those dead/burned bitcoins. They are lost forever, we really can't have a way of knowing of how many they were lost even the experts, they are just estimating the amount of total lost bitcoins forever

That's a result of decentralization where no center which will help you when things like this happen. in contrast to centralization. when you lose your money you can do contact support

I also think that if the user is willing to use its resources, then the loss of access, it is always possible to restore when the specific conditions stipulated earlier.

[mikecgna]

I think that if there were any casualties in the bitcoin, it happened only at the dawn of cryptocurrency development. But as if to suggest that virtually nothing is worth while bitcoin, the possibility that the number of abandoned coins can be a huge amount. But it is still just a guess.

[d-trixx]

This is a difficult to answer on how many bitcoin are lost. We could not count the exact figures then the total bitcoin were lost forever. Everyday are many uses bitcoin, having bulk transactions doing withdrawal, transfer also. So for me its hard to tracked these losts.

As remittances are no calculations are not up to snuff, even if such an opportunity would be. Most likely these bitcoin already dead load will be stored on the purses forever.

[DrVaribo]

I do not understand this anxiety or concerns about bitcoin those that had the opportunity to be lost. In fact, such a thing could happen, and indeed may have somewhere to coin purses, which left their owners for various reasons. But that is changing. This is just for information, or is it important?

[GooCust04]

I think that if there were any casualties in the bitcoin, it happened only at the dawn of cryptocurrency development. But as if to suggest that virtually nothing is worth while bitcoin, the possibility that the number of abandoned coins can be a huge amount. But it is still just a guess.

Most likely users are not so stupid to lose their bitcoin. All the same, even after losing access to the purse, you can restore all regain. So in the example of direct numbers is useless.

[E-shipper]

Perhaps if the talk of a bitcoin bank confirmed, when his work has become known to all full. The fact is that bitcoin has the maximum number of digits, and as the bank will be able to control, on the question of bitcoin losses, will answer a lot easier.

[kumax]

I do not understand this anxiety or concerns about bitcoin those that had the opportunity to be lost. In fact, such a thing could happen, and indeed may have somewhere to coin purses, which left their owners for various reasons. But that is changing. This is just for information, or is it important?

It is not just an info, it actually may be important. If a big amount of coins will be lost in a future, it would mean that there will be a lower number of coins available on the market, which would mean their value will be higher.

[mrkevio]

I do not understand this anxiety or concerns about bitcoin those that had the opportunity to be lost. In fact, such a thing could happen, and indeed may have somewhere to coin purses, which left their owners for various reasons. But that is changing. This is just for information, or is it important?

It is not just an info, it actually may be important. If a big amount of coins will be lost in a future, it would mean that there will be a lower number of coins available on the market, which would mean their value will be higher.

But it's pretty hard to calculate how many are lost. Even if we knew how many coins are not into circulation, we still don't know how many of them are lost. Because many, many people are saving their money just like me, waiting for a price increase.

[kumax]

I do not understand this anxiety or concerns about bitcoin those that had the opportunity to be lost. In fact, such a thing could happen, and indeed may have somewhere to coin purses, which left their owners for various reasons. But that is changing. This is just for information, or is it important?

It is not just an info, it actually may be important. If a big amount of coins will be lost in a future, it would mean that there will be a lower number of coins available on the market, which would mean their value will be higher.

But it's pretty hard to calculate how many are lost. Even if we knew how many coins are not into circulation, we still don't know how many of them are lost. Because many, many people are saving their money just like me, waiting for a price increase.

If we would like to be really precise, we shouldn't say "lost" bitcoins, because all coins are written in a blockchain so there are no lost coins. We can describe them as coins which are not used and it may be because of lost wallets, dead owners, burned storages or if there is an owner, who doesn't want to spend them (so they are not used on the market).
You can count the total number of these coins if you look on the blockchain and find the ones which are not moved in a long time. I don't say it would be easy, but technically it may be possible.

[BitHodler]

I do not understand this anxiety or concerns about bitcoin those that had the opportunity to be lost. In fact, such a thing could happen, and indeed may have somewhere to coin purses, which left their owners for various reasons. But that is changing. This is just for information, or is it important?

It is not just an info, it actually may be important. If a big amount of coins will be lost in a future, it would mean that there will be a lower number of coins available on the market, which would mean their value will be higher.

But it's pretty hard to calculate how many are lost. Even if we knew how many coins are not into circulation, we still don't know how many of them are lost. Because many, many people are saving their money just like me, waiting for a price increase.

If we would like to be really precise, we shouldn't say "lost" bitcoins, because all coins are written in a blockchain so there are no lost coins. We can describe them as coins which are not used and it may be because of lost wallets, dead owners, burned storages or if there is an owner, who doesn't want to spend them (so they are not used on the market).
You can count the total number of these coins if you look on the blockchain and find the ones which are not moved in a long time. I don't say it would be easy, but technically it may be possible.

You can't just blindly count every address that contains coins that haven't been moved in a very long time. And then again, how many coins must a certain address contain in order to get counted?

There are probably tens of thousands of addresses that only contain like 0.01-1BTC, that haven't been moved in a very long time. Will you count these as well?

Then you have people that have lost access to their coins last year, but how will you determine they are not just stored by people as investment? It's too much hassle and definitely not worth the effort.

[kumax]

You can't just blindly count every address that contains coins that haven't been moved in a very long time. And then again, how many coins must a certain address contain in order to get counted?

There are probably tens of thousands of addresses that only contain like 0.01-1BTC, that haven't been moved in a very long time. Will you count these as well?

Then you have people that have lost access to their coins last year, but how will you determine they are not just stored by people as investment? It's too much hassle and definitely not worth the effort.

I know that the problematic is way more complex than a simple address counting, but there are some ways how to count at least some of the burned addresses with some amount of coins in them. The last info I've heard is that the total number could be somewhere around 3 million "lost" bitcoins already, but I don't know where it was, I just found this post from 2015:

Someone summed up the lost BTC only from the thread. In total BTC 134578.27864659
And this is likely just a particle of all lost coins.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7253.msg8601641#msg8601641

It's almost 2 years old, so the 3M number could be real now.

[grenade launcher]

You can't just blindly count every address that contains coins that haven't been moved in a very long time. And then again, how many coins must a certain address contain in order to get counted?

There are probably tens of thousands of addresses that only contain like 0.01-1BTC, that haven't been moved in a very long time. Will you count these as well?

Then you have people that have lost access to their coins last year, but how will you determine they are not just stored by people as investment? It's too much hassle and definitely not worth the effort.

I know that the problematic is way more complex than a simple address counting, but there are some ways how to count at least some of the burned addresses with some amount of coins in them. The last info I've heard is that the total number could be somewhere around 3 million "lost" bitcoins already, but I don't know where it was, I just found this post from 2015:

Someone summed up the lost BTC only from the thread. In total BTC 134578.27864659
And this is likely just a particle of all lost coins.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7253.msg8601641#msg8601641

It's almost 2 years old, so the 3M number could be real now.

If there was such a possibility, it already existed statistics and published data on the losses bitcoin. But it is not and probably will not.

[bitbunnni]

I do not understand this anxiety or concerns about bitcoin those that had the opportunity to be lost. In fact, such a thing could happen, and indeed may have somewhere to coin purses, which left their owners for various reasons. But that is changing. This is just for information, or is it important?

It is not just an info, it actually may be important. If a big amount of coins will be lost in a future, it would mean that there will be a lower number of coins available on the market, which would mean their value will be higher.

But it's pretty hard to calculate how many are lost. Even if we knew how many coins are not into circulation, we still don't know how many of them are lost. Because many, many people are saving their money just like me, waiting for a price increase.

If the price will go up, the number of coins will still decrease. Because no one dare to sell valuable savings. Therefore, I do not see the losses of bitcoin.

[rytyr]

What would be very interesting, how many Bitcoins have already been lost by someone new to Bitcoin, who created an address, collected a few bits or mBTCs and then lost interest in Bitcoin. This user probably lost the private key of his address so that the collected bits were no longer accessible. If this happens with many, a large amount of lost bitcoins accumulates.

[fullypak]

What would be very interesting, how many Bitcoins have already been lost by someone new to Bitcoin, who created an address, collected a few bits or mBTCs and then lost interest in Bitcoin. This user probably lost the private key of his address so that the collected bits were no longer accessible. If this happens with many, a large amount of lost bitcoins accumulates.

It is correct because I also lost my first blockchain account login details and couldn't recover back that account. First when I got introduced to bitcoins was collected few bits from faucet sites but after one month thought it is not worth for my time then didn't come back to bitcoins for a long time. After two years time again I gain interest towards bitcoins but by then I lost that account and started with new one.

[Blitzboy]

What would be very interesting, how many Bitcoins have already been lost by someone new to Bitcoin, who created an address, collected a few bits or mBTCs and then lost interest in Bitcoin. This user probably lost the private key of his address so that the collected bits were no longer accessible. If this happens with many, a large amount of lost bitcoins accumulates.

Yeah, I've heard many stories about bitcoin newbies dropping out when they are frustrated and lose the will, which results in a lot of bitcoin lost. And there are some people who have completely forgotten their bitcoin wallet, and it could be a whole fortune in those wallets. And so we have lost quite a lot bitcoin for no good reason.

[JasonXG]

I know it is a tricky question. What do you think, how many Bitcoins are lost forever and are 'out of the network' by lost private keys?

Good question. One I have pondered often myself. I think logically most bitcoins were lost when it was still a very fresh idea and people were mining whole bitcoins with a single so please pc setup. Because people never knew their value back then they were careless and didn't think it was a problem. Years later it is abundantly clear that this is a huge problem since the bitcoin system was no longer just some cool new technology but actually took off and flew like a rocket to over $1000 big ouch of you lost coins.