How many Bitcoins are lost forever?

[knowhow]

well the less running out there better to gain worth on the next years and yes i guess around 4 to 5 milions already losted ,i believe that someone bought them cheap and left them on wallet and nowadays doesnt remember the key soo lost some money that is worthing atleast 100x more anyway to the total avaible suppy well is better.

[grendel25]

This idea that fewer coins due to loss or destruction will be helpful to bitcoin by raising the value of bitcoin doesn't make a lot of sense.  To the contrary, it underscores the physical security issues with bitcoin.  If I put my fiat in a bank, I won't lose it because I forgot some ridiculous password.  No, I have an identity and I can use my identity to verify my ownership of the currency and then take actions to always control the currency I placed in a reliable and insured bank.

Now, I'm not saying there aren't benefits to bitcoin.  Bitcoin definitely is valuable in ways that fiat will never touch.  But... there is a huge issue with security and that the various losses have definitely contributed to the slow adoption to the mainstream.

But this idea of "the less the merrier" is only valid if 1) bitcoin continues to successful and 2) People can benefit from actually having at lease "some" bitcoin to actually use.  People who have lost their bitcoin because of the inherent security flaws (yes, forgetting or losing your own password is a security flaw) wouldn't agree with this idea that losing their bitcoin is a 'good' thing. 

[Lorenzo]

ahh such tricky question:)

14.3M mined, from them were 740k goxxed...adding bad luck, human factor and stupid RNG. ok, lets say at least 3M until now...maybe even more.

The private keys for the Mt. Gox coins are probably not lost forever unless they lost them due to some accident or technical glitch. If you believe that they were hacked, then the coins are either sitting in a wallet somewhere or they have been sent through mixing services and are now spread out across multiple addresses.

[1FfmbHfnpaZjKFvyi1okTjJJu]

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?

im never lost at private keys , but im ever lost because some 1 hack my email, i lose 1BTC at local exchanger and 0.7BTC at bittrex
that my true sad story

[thebigtalk]

No one really knows how much because of the amount of the users of bitcoin. Imagine the guy who throw away his hard drive with tons of BTC in it. Yes that's a real news.

[thebenjamincode]

in my opinion
as time passes by, more and more bitcoins will be lost forever
i think 1/3 of the total bitcoin is my guess

[Amph]

in my opinion
as time passes by, more and more bitcoins will be lost forever
i think 1/3 of the total bitcoin is my guess

i don't think so, it will be harder from now to lose coins for anyone(there will be only small amount here and there, that will be lost), in the past many have lost them because they did not pay much attention to the bitcoin mania, because bitcoin was worthless

not it's a different story, there is more care in managing your wallet and everything related to it

[Dire]

1) There will always be enough BTC, since you can add more zeros and someday buy an awesome new car for 0.0000000000001776 BTC.

I've always thought that looks messy and unworkable.

I think it should look something like this: 0.(~12)1776 btc

With the number in the brackets representing the amount of zeros.

[NorrisK]

1) There will always be enough BTC, since you can add more zeros and someday buy an awesome new car for 0.0000000000001776 BTC.

I've always thought that looks messy and unworkable.

I think it should look something like this: 0.(~12)1776 btc

With the number in the brackets representing the amount of zeros.

Or just introduce names like cent to dollars and Satoshi to bitcoin. What's the problem with saying 1776 Satoshi? Definitively better than 0.00001776 bitcoin.

[RappelzReborn]

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?

I don't think it's possible to know , since some wallets are simply inactive and that dosen't mean that they lost private keys or access to their wallets but I will take my chances and say it's above 2.5 million coin (It could be more if Satoshi Nakamoto lost his 1.2 million coin or whatever the exact number it )

[mattiadeabtc]

is a very difficult question to be answered , how do you know if the person who has a wallet with the bitcoin , is still in possession of the private key ? just one random example...SATOSHI NAKAMOTO

[NUFCrichard]

Impossible to know... but when they were nearly worth nothing in the start, lot of them were lost for sure.

Yes, we can't be sure of the exact number of lost bitcoins. But:

1. It is not important.
2. It is actually a good thing that bitcoins are lost.
3. Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone.

There must be a market for bitcoin treasure hunters?!  It's basically hacking, but authorised by someone who realises that they had 100k Bitcoin on a computer that they threw away, or lost the passwords for!

There was a story during the last boom about someon looking threw a tip to find his old PC hard drive because he has 1000BTC on it!

30% lost currency is crazy if you think about it, so really on 15mill will ever be usable

[Lorenzo]

1) There will always be enough BTC, since you can add more zeros and someday buy an awesome new car for 0.0000000000001776 BTC.

I've always thought that looks messy and unworkable.

I think it should look something like this: 0.(~12)1776 btc

With the number in the brackets representing the amount of zeros.

Or just introduce names like cent to dollars and Satoshi to bitcoin. What's the problem with saying 1776 Satoshi? Definitively better than 0.00001776 bitcoin.

It's already being attempted right now with "bits" which are worth 100 satoshis. If/when the BTC price is $1 million, each bit would be worth $1 and each satoshi would be worth $0.01. The whole thing would work in the same way most of our national currencies work today since everything would be written with two decimal places.

No one really knows how much because of the amount of the users of bitcoin. Imagine the guy who throw away his hard drive with tons of BTC in it. Yes that's a real news.

There was a story during the last boom about someon looking threw a tip to find his old PC hard drive because he has 1000BTC on it!

Yup, here's an article about it.

It really goes to show how careless some early adopters were with their bitcoins back when they were virtually worthless. It wouldn't surprise me if many of the coins which were mined throughout 2009, 2010, and early 2011 also met the same fate. Another guy from Norway bought $25 worth of coins at around the same time, forgot about it, noticed in 2013 that the price exploded in the meantime, and then used his mined coins to buy an apartment. Despite the fact that both guys were extreme early adopters, whether or not they were actually able to take advantage of their unique situation pretty much boiled down to sheer luck:

He's not the first to forget about a lot of very valuable bits. But in a happier ending, a Norwegian man named Kristoffer Koch remembered his 2009 stash of $25 worth of bitcoins in time and cashed them out when they had grown in value to about $848,000.

Link: http://www.cnet.com/news/man-forgets-he-once-bought-25-of-bitcoins-now-worth-848k/

[Wexlike]

ahh such tricky question:)

14.3M mined, from them were 740k goxxed...adding bad luck, human factor and stupid RNG. ok, lets say at least 3M until now...maybe even more.

Those 740k gox coins were never lost. Maybe distributed through other exchanges, but definitely not lost.

[randy8777]

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?

im never lost at private keys , but im ever lost because some 1 hack my email, i lose 1BTC at local exchanger and 0.7BTC at bittrex
that my true sad story

some one stole your coins is very sad to hear, but they aren't lost forever. the hacker has them, or maybe he spent the coins already.

[pooya87]

interesting question. would be great if we could know the exact answer to that though.

i personally have lost ~0.01 to a brainwallet address that i have created once but forgot the password to as time has passed.

i also wanted to add this bitcoin address that is eating bitcoins and make them "lost forever".
https://blockchain.info/address/1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE
it has 1.98BTC so far!!

[okae]

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?

i think that nobody will know it never, because there can be lot of ppl who use cold storage and never move his coins so i think is imposible to think on an accurate number.

btw if a need to say a number i will bet for just a few of them, i dont think that there is so much BTC lost.

[lockscreen]

no have idea, i really don't know
we can find out who the owner of the largest bitcoin?

[SmartIphone]

How can bitcoin be lost? i cant understand this? maybe the fees that are taken from each transaction ?

[Valanor]

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?

that like a joke because no body know it
but i want to calculate with my joke  

Total Output Volume bitcoin    1,142,743.87432222BTC
No. of Transactions   121,259

= 1,142,743.87432222/121,259

= 9.423992234161753BTC