How many Bitcoins are lost forever?

[marleybobthedog]

Everyday many user create fresh wallet and many user use it and many forget or get locked out of their wallet may be because of this and that reason. May be they had activated 2 way verification and unable to do it later of might have protected with ip and later the ip changed.

[lol3c]

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?

It is impossible to estimate the amount of Bitcoin which are lost forever. If you want to calculate this amount, you must make a big global analyze. however, Bitcoin is used anonymously by many organization and individual, which means we can never know exact data because there will be people who are not willing to provide the information about bitcoin they have lost.

[choppork]

I guess 1 million bitcoin is lost forever because previously it eas too cheap to be considered as money so many might have thought bitcoin as useless and thrown away hard disk or exit their wallet and forgot the password or private key.

That makes no sense. It's clear to every bitcoin user that bitcoins is an investment and they can sell it whenever they want. Throwing away your hard disk because you think is useless is absurd.

Even if the price of bitcoin faces a huge dip, I won't be throwing my hard disk away. First, because it contains all my files. Second, there's no point doing that. I haven't seen someone becoming so outrageous about the price decrease in bitcoins that it lead him into throwing away his hard disk.

[croutonhexagon]

Obviously lot of bitcoin had been lost in human destruction like pc crashed, hard disk formatted, virus affected, lost device and lot of reasons. May be one had store bitcoin in paper wallet and later the paper got wet. I think I should not mention reasons here everyone know well that lot of bitcoin is lossed

[Lucius]

I think that on this question is almost impossible to answer,but it is certainly of significant amounts.In the early days Bitcoin had almost no value and consequently those who have it are not really paying attention to security as is the case today.

For this reason I think that most Bitcoins is lost in this period.After price is hit 1000$+ people have become much more cautious,but even today we can read that people lose their coins in different ways.

[Mastsetad]

I think that on this question is almost impossible to answer,but it is certainly of significant amounts.In the early days Bitcoin had almost no value and consequently those who have it are not really paying attention to security as is the case today.

For this reason I think that most Bitcoins is lost in this period.After price is hit 1000$+ people have become much more cautious,but even today we can read that people lose their coins in different ways.

I wonder how the people would feel like if they really did not give any importance to their bitcoins at that time and they see the price now, but that is actually right, a lot of people would have given no importance to it by thinking it's worth nothing and they have left their wallets with the coins and forgot the passwords or private keys and those bitcoins are locked their forever.

[BitcoinPanther]

I think that on this question is almost impossible to answer,but it is certainly of significant amounts.In the early days Bitcoin had almost no value and consequently those who have it are not really paying attention to security as is the case today.

For this reason I think that most Bitcoins is lost in this period.After price is hit 1000$+ people have become much more cautious,but even today we can read that people lose their coins in different ways.

I wonder how the people would feel like if they really did not give any importance to their bitcoins at that time and they see the price now, but that is actually right, a lot of people would have given no importance to it by thinking it's worth nothing and they have left their wallets with the coins and forgot the passwords or private keys and those bitcoins are locked their forever.

I think they don't mind it.  The reason is that the fact they did not gave importance to their bitcoins, they would probably forgot that they have bitcoins in their old hard disk.  So basically if that things happen, the bitcoin in that storage would probably gone forever.  There are many cases like this.  Bitcoins that have not moved from its addresses for years.  This maybe one of the coins that are lost forever because owner cannot access the wallet address holding it.

[tyz]

Well sure, technically the Bitcoins are not lost until they get permanently burned. However, if you lost the private keys of your Bitcoins then it is very likely that they will never ever be transferred again. So those Bitcoins are acutally out of the "game".

Can someone please explain me how bitcoin can be lost?

I don't feel they can ever be lost, losing the ability to access your wallet is the worst that can happen, but in reality the coins are still there.

They can be lost forever. For example, you have thousands of bitcoins and it makes you feel unsafe if you will just store it for a single bitcoin wallet. So what you did is you create another wallet for distribution of your some bitcoins and partitioning it. But as the day goes by, you forgot the private key of your account and as well as your email. So basically, the balance bitcoin on that wallet will be lost forever.

[farl2web]

This question generally can not find an answer, because how many people lost wallets, and with them the keys to their bitcoin, as well as those who have not learned to use, although the beginning of its activities still put. But still this figure is unknown.

[marleybobthedog]

Well that's a good question to investigate! I guess that is very difficult to know at this point because no one gave report if lossed bitcoin. I think that we will only be able to find how many BTC are lost after they are all mined. Or we can probably research the blockchain legldger and find a pattern that could lead us to see how many BTC could be outside of the. And many user forget wallet id so some amount is loosed in that way

[anonbit992]

It is very hard to predict the exact number of bitcoins that are lost either due to misplacing the private key or by the death of the holder. But I believe a good chunk of the total number of bitcoins mined should have been lost because I have heard a lot of people telling that they lost bitcoins when they formatted their old hard drive or due to other silly reasons.

[croutonhexagon]

Well i have just learned new things today/yesterday about some bitcoin addresses i had found something, Here are some btc addresses that receive bitcoins but these can't be spent, for more information about have a check at this thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1168745.0

[SmirnoffVany]

It is very hard to predict the exact number of bitcoins that are lost either due to misplacing the private key or by the death of the holder. But I believe a good chunk of the total number of bitcoins mined should have been lost because I have heard a lot of people telling that they lost bitcoins when they formatted their old hard drive or due to other silly reasons.

When bitcoin will reach its bottom and production stops, that's when you can already try to predict such numbers. But it probably will not be very significant, because then everyone will be busy counting their profits. After all, only the price will jump to the maximum.

[error08]

I guess it should be so many of bitcoin that lost forever around BTC1-100 as we don't know for sure, so just let us know how much it is in your opinion. Unfortunately, blockchain technology created so secure and give control to user of their wallet and no one could know how much btc inside even admin of blockchain. Moreover, there are plenty of wallet sites and we don't know which one that have been lost their private key, so no answer about this just lucky guess.

[elena-tur]

Well i have just learned new things today/yesterday about some bitcoin addresses i had found something, Here are some btc addresses that receive bitcoins but these can't be spent, for more information about have a check at this thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1168745.0

I do not know whether the difference is that they have lost and how many have lost. If coins are lost, it is the problem of those who have disappeared, and not from other users.

[krishna1]

its not possible to answer this question until we just count all the old addresses and see how much balance they have un transacted for years . that can also be someone saving money for a long term investment but lets take it now as lost bitcoin which can not be recovered anyhow

[eminem90]

its not possible to answer this question until we just count all the old addresses and see how much balance they have un transacted for years . that can also be someone saving money for a long term investment but lets take it now as lost bitcoin which can not be recovered anyhow

It only counts if you deal with it will not work. The balance of almost every purse replenished depending on whether the user is active, but it does not mean that the costs are always a minimum or maximum. If you can spend it all.

[shield132]

Maybe there isn't a big number of lost bitcoins but there is much big number of lost wallet keys and passwords, hard drive damages and etc, all this facts causes lost of bitcoin. We can't say specified number of lost bitcoins but there is some ways to discover it's nearly number. If person hasn't made transactions for 12 months or more, there is high chanse that wallet and bitcoin is lost. I think there must be some similar tools in blockchain to know number of lost bitcoins and that bitcoins must be remade because it's lost and lost things can be founded.

[kryptqnick]

When I read the question first, I didn't think it was about lost private keys. Come on, there are many verifications (phone, email, secret sentence) which help even if you lost the password and stuff. I thought it was about burnt Bitcoins and how many are burnt already is an interesting question. I have seen the news about 2000 BTC approximately, but I am not sure whether we can believe it.

[maister77777]

When I read the question first, I didn't think it was about lost private keys. Come on, there are many verifications (phone, email, secret sentence) which help even if you lost the password and stuff. I thought it was about burnt Bitcoins and how many are burnt already is an interesting question. I have seen the news about 2000 BTC approximately, but I am not sure whether we can believe it.

I also think that there is always a way out of a difficult situation, and above all there are opportunities to get back into your wallet. Thus, this option is already eliminated. But there are times when people just stop using purse and lose sight of him, along with the content. But I can not understand how it burned bitcoin?