How many Bitcoins are lost forever?

[Antesth]

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 anyone can give you an accurate number of how many Bitcoin has been lost till date.
But i think that it is a lot especially int he beginning when Bitcoin was still new and not so big as it is today

[alisus]

It's hard to estimate, because until now there is still no system that makes calculations about Bitcoin as a whole. But in my opinion! more days will be growing, this happens when someone forgot Private Key belongs to recording and there are also new users who don't understand about the performance of Bitcoin, which will result in omission occurred

[xskl0]

At least half milion BTCBTCBTCBTC 

[mmo_online_1981]

i think, a lot of BTC lost forever when Price low,, now less

[Evansloin]

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?

We can never give an accurate or solid answer to that because we don't have the exact data to know how many were lost.
But I personally think that many Bitcoins has been lost especially in the beginning of the Bitcoin.

[fullypak]

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?

We can never give an accurate or solid answer to that because we don't have the exact data to know how many were lost.
But I personally think that many Bitcoins has been lost especially in the beginning of the Bitcoin.

Yes, it is not possible to say exactly how many Bitcoin we lost from the beginning. I think I lost too many coins. In the beginning, I lost more bitcoins. But now I can control my play and my bankroll so I hope I am not lost many coins in recent days. The professional gamblers will maintain this balance sheet. The normal gamblers will not care for this.

[citywise2]

Since i come in contact with bitcoin i have lost  close to 18m Sato shi in the hand of scammers.
So i am now taking gentle in a sense that same thing will not occur any longer. I take everything very very serious now.
 

[megynacuna]

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 doubt if they can be determined, and asking the entire forum this question makes me think you're not really looking for an answer because no one can just give you that statistics else I guess you'd have found it yourself.

[poptok1]

One cannot distinguish between saved and lost coins, because it is only possible to prove ownership of a private key, but impossible to prove that a private key is lost. I.e. nobody can tell the difference between whether I just haven't moved my coins for five years or I lost the key.
However I just did some quick net search, from redit through stackexchange and ending with random people blogs and pretty accurate picture emerges, about 25% of bitcoins has been lost forever. 4.000.000! if you add Satoshis stash  
Some talented programmer could write a script which would be looking for wallets "inactive" for 4-5 years, with equal(like 50BTC or 75) amount of bitcoins (possibly from early mining), that could give us some more precise knowledge.

[margana]

At least half milion BTCBTCBTCBTC 

It must be much more than that.  People were losing thousands of them left and right when they were worthless.

Has anyone considered the implications that perhaps even the majority of bitcoins produced to date have been lost?

Losses will certainly continue over time, albeit probably at a much slower rate, it's still going to happen.  Counteracting the higher price though, all these new people flooding the market that have no clue what they are doing will also certainly lose some. 

Has anyone considered the implications for the market if we end up dealing with a supply of just 4,000,000, let's say, by 2025?

It should be possible to analyze the blockchain though and create categories of bitcoins shouldn't it?

Moved in the last month
Moved in the last 2-6 months
Moved in the last 6-12 months
Moved in the last 1 year
Moved in the last 2-5 years
Hasn't moved in 5 years +


Does this analysis exist?  it would be interesting.  It wouldn't say definitively whether coins are lost or not but it would show how many are actively circulated.  It would be interesting to look at that chart daily and see if any of the numbers change significantly indicating that perhaps someone took a huge chunk of coins out of long term storage and started dumping them on the market.  Likewise if the number that moved recently keeps decreasing it would mean people are buying and holding. 

Surely somebody is analyzing this data even if they aren't sharing it publicly....

[ir.yance]

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've been playing bitcoin but I'm not sure how much bitcoin is lost forever, it's a solid question to answer

[FansUnite]

A really interesting and obviously relevant question. Obviously difficult to quantify. It would also be interesting to know to what extent these lost coins are factored into the price (if at all). Everyone cites the 21 million total figure (and with good reason since that is the total pool). But while the total pool is, by definition, 21 million bitcoins, the fact that some are forever lost is a completely relevant consideration, since a lost amount does inherently bring down the total supply.

Imagine if someone bought up a good percentage of the world's gold, then destroyed it (can gold be destroyed?? - you know what I mean) - that would decrease the pool and increase the price of the remaining. That is effectively what has happened with these lost bitcoins.

I wonder if, as bitcoin becomes more and more popular and mainstream, if this will be considered more and the price goes up accordingly. Imagine if bitcoin was fully accepted as an asset class in 2023 and then research was completed to try and estimate how much has been lost. If news stories suddenly break that there had been say 3 million lost coins, as other sources have said, and they are announcing suddenly bitcoin volume is now effectively at 18 million - nice gains for holders.

Time will tell.

[btcprospecter]

It will be incredibly difficult to get a true figure of the amount of bitcoins lost forever. Even though analysing coins that haven't moved in five years plus as they could just be held or in storage.

[fedora8]

I would be fascinated to know the actual quantity of missing cash. I would like to think we will by no means know the real extent of lost cash. By there currently being significantly less cash in circulation it is bound to improve the value of current cash we just have to be safe with our coins we do maintain that we don't get rid of them.

[william8829]

Almost every time I bring up Bitcoin to someone new this question arises.  I think it's an important topic but difficult to give a solid answer.

Its a sore spot for those who have lost bitcoin.  From losing passwords or sites shutting down?  I have lost some bitcoin this way.  I know one person that think they may have coins on an old hardrive but does not have the password.  Maybe if they hold it in the future we will have software capable to crack the passwords

[Rinaze]

What's lost is lost. What's lost made what's not lost so much more precious

It's definitely interesting though to ask that question, just like asking who's Satoshi Nakamoto!

[Sithara007]

Bitcoin is already 8 years old. At least some of the holders would have died, without passing on their private keys to the heirs. And who knows? Even Satoshi Nakamoto might be dead. That may be the reason why he is not moving any of the BTC980,000 which he mined long back in 2009. And as time progresses, the number of lost coins will also rise.

[Cavyanpo]

Nothing at all has lost till now, I am amassing bitcoins by earning it on various methods including faucets, signature strategies and buying and selling and the bitcoin price is now rising and will boost far more and I am earning more and a lot more each working day with the rise in value.

[jc89]

No way we can determine the exact amount of btc that are lost forever. But I think it's quite a lot because if we will think of the scenarios how btc will be lost we can come up with a handful. One is of course forgotten private keys and/or death of the owner. Btc sent to non-existing address (correct format but nobody owns it) can also be one of the reasons. Though there is a possibility that someone mighy own it in the future but the probability is very low. There are other reasons and the amount of btc in those wallets varies so there's no way of telling it.

[xBitHodler]

It's really hard to determine how many bitcoins are lost forever. We don't know how many people are holding their bitcoins and how many of them died or lost their private keys. We can have up to 21 million bitcoins, even if about 1 million is lost forever it's still a huge number. Unfortunately, due to Bitcoin design, we can't recover them.