How many Bitcoins are lost forever?

[ragi]

We'll never know.

[LiteCoinGuy]

i think it is safe to assume all satoshi's bitcoins as lost forever, not because of lost private keys or anything, i am sure he has all of them but because he is not going to use any of those coins.

exactly. i read alot of satoshis writings here on the forum and also emails to other forum members and the development process. you can see that his intention was not to get rich, Satoshis intention was to change the world. that is a little bit more than just money.

if he would move his old coins, he would hurt BTC very badly. iam pretty sure the deleeted the private keys.

[bryant.coleman]

I think there are 20% percent of Bitcoin lost forever.

there are 14.3 million bitcoin in circulation right now so 20% is equal to 2860000BTC
you are claiming that there are 686 million dollar worth of bitcoin lost?

care to explain why you think that?

I don't know for sure, but the 20% figure given by wywoc1 seems to be quite possible. Some BTC5,300,000 were mined during 2009 and 2010, when the exchange rate was less than $0.001. Most of the people were mining just for fun then. Many of them threw away the coins which they mined, or lost them through negligence. If we assume that half of the coins mined during 2009 and 2010 are lost, then it comes to 20% of all coins in circulation right now.

[tyz]

Please add the currency unit for the guessed 50 million. Let me guess, you mean Satoshi   

50 million

[misterycoins]

I bet a large fraction of Bitcoin are permanently lost, either from when BTC was new and worthless and miners didn't bother backing up their wallets, or forgot their passwords etc.

[BitcoinNewbie15]

This is an interesting question/topic... The exact answer to this question is very hard to come up with. I would imagine that there will be many Bitcoins lost throughout Bitcoin's use. People's hard drives may crash, they may not store backups, they may loose/forget/delete their private keys, etc. There could be many Bitcoins lost already. Maybe somewhere as high as even 1 - 2 million BTC. But as for now, that number largely remains unknown.

[bytezero]

It is hard to calculate the permanent loss ,due to deaths, forgotten passwords etc
My guess is that about 1 million are permanently lost.

[crazyivan]

I would say between 5-10% of the total amount available. Still, the market says the current supply s enough to cover the demand. We ll see what happens next year when the block halves. I think this upcoming LTC block halving ll be a great test.

[BillyBobZorton]

i think it is safe to assume all satoshi's bitcoins as lost forever, not because of lost private keys or anything, i am sure he has all of them but because he is not going to use any of those coins.

exactly. i read alot of satoshis writings here on the forum and also emails to other forum members and the development process. you can see that his intention was not to get rich, Satoshis intention was to change the world. that is a little bit more than just money.

if he would move his old coins, he would hurt BTC very badly. iam pretty sure the deleeted the private keys.

I've always thought that was the case tbh, im surprised he would not even use 1 BTC. Are absolutely all of satoshi's addresses know? maybe he got some other addresses we never knew about, without not so many Bitcoins, but still enough to retire and live comfortably forever (anything from 1000 to 10000 BTC, which is nothing compared to some of the mega-holders out there).

[BayAreaCoins]

Forever is a long time.

None are lost "forever".

i think it is safe to assume all satoshi's bitcoins as lost forever, not because of lost private keys or anything, i am sure he has all of them but because he is not going to use any of those coins.

Wouldn't count on that...

I'm not going to get freaked when his coins start moving and I'm reasonably sure they will one day .

[Gyfts]

I would speculate a lot of the lost coins came from the curious miners when Bitcoin developed. They just experimented with the concept and left BTC in a wallet they deleted shortly after. There were also a lot of stories (that made actual news stories) about how some have had a ridiculous amount of BTC in a hard drive which they just threw out.

[scarsbergholden]

I would speculate a lot of the lost coins came from the curious miners when Bitcoin developed. They just experimented with the concept and left BTC in a wallet they deleted shortly after. There were also a lot of stories (that made actual news stories) about how some have had a ridiculous amount of BTC in a hard drive which they just threw out.

Yea i saw a popular story that a guy that had 50k bitcoins on an old hard drive threw it out and actually when a few months back to the local garbage lot to try and find it, drive is still lost so im sure there are people still hunting the drive in the garbage lot like treasure hunters.

[jt byte]

yes bitcoins can die with you ...I've recently been thinking about that .  I'll be printing out a paper  backup and keeping it in a safe for my family in the future!!

[pooya87]

yes bitcoins can die with you ...I've recently been thinking about that .  I'll be printing out a paper  backup and keeping it in a safe for my family in the future!!

yeah, that is actually a nice idea. you'll never know about your future. i have recently been working on creating a cold storage on linux with encrypted wallet and everything to prevent it from getting stolen but this is going to make it impossible for my descendants to have any access to my money
i have to think of a solution...

[thebenjamincode]

It's really impossible to know. I first need to have a superpower to know the answer. Thinking of what would be the answer squish my mind. But it's kinda an interesting question

[tyz]

I guess you meant this story
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/27/hard-drive-bitcoin-landfill-site

The guy lost "only" 7,5k of his Bitcoins. It is a big amount but not as bad as 50k 

I would speculate a lot of the lost coins came from the curious miners when Bitcoin developed. They just experimented with the concept and left BTC in a wallet they deleted shortly after. There were also a lot of stories (that made actual news stories) about how some have had a ridiculous amount of BTC in a hard drive which they just threw out.

Yea i saw a popular story that a guy that had 50k bitcoins on an old hard drive threw it out and actually when a few months back to the local garbage lot to try and find it, drive is still lost so im sure there are people still hunting the drive in the garbage lot like treasure hunters.

[LiteCoinGuy]

I think there are 20% percent of Bitcoin lost forever.

there are 14.3 million bitcoin in circulation right now so 20% is equal to 2860000BTC
you are claiming that there are 686 million dollar worth of bitcoin lost?

care to explain why you think that?

I don't know for sure, but the 20% figure given by wywoc1 seems to be quite possible. Some BTC5,300,000 were mined during 2009 and 2010, when the exchange rate was less than $0.001. Most of the people were mining just for fun then. Many of them threw away the coins which they mined, or lost them through negligence. If we assume that half of the coins mined during 2009 and 2010 are lost, then it comes to 20% of all coins in circulation right now.

i agree, at least 1-3 million seems to be reasonable.

[bitcointumbling.com]

You can't really answer that correctly, but it's quite interesting to think of how many have been lost due to that.

[lockscreen]

how many bitcoin i lost is not comparable to how many bitcoin that i get
still try to recover that
but because i get free manner so i don't think about it xD

[knowhow]

well it will stay on our dream the ammount near that arent mooved and lost really forever i guess people will try to hack the passwords on the next years since they dont see a change on the balance they will try it but well with new protection system they could acess the account but wont be able to send them to no where .. soo maybe the owner offer a reward it can return into the game