How many bitcoins have been lost forever?

[Quantus]

How many bitcoins do you think have been lost forever?

I personally think its around 3 to 4 million.

[Cuidler]

Maybe around two millions. But most Bitcoins lost should be the early ones when the price was very low, now with much higher price people tend to secure their private keys more. Thus the amount of lost Bitcoins should not increase much anymore in my opinion.

The question is whether the Satoshi million Bitcoins are lost, or somebody still have the private keys. I guess either these Bitcoins move or after many years it become clear these Bitcoins are lost.

[groll]

How many bitcoins do you think have been lost forever?

I personally think its around 3 to 4 million.

Today it is unclear as to how much bitcoin was lost. It is unclear if they lost forever or they can still be retrieved. Here are the things we should consider or the datas that we must gather to have a computed amount of the bitcoin that was lost. According to this site https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/thousands-bitcoins-lost-time/ these are the things that we should consider:
1.Thrown away harddrives with bitcoins in it
2. no. of bitcoins burned

So if we can gather all the datas needed then we can establish a fact as to how much bitcoin or lost

[gentlemand]

of course we'll never know, but I'm going to settle on the 2 to 3 million option. that includes ongoing carelessness and early indifference.

[Vintry Dribbler 1975]

of course we'll never know, but I'm going to settle on the 2 to 3 million option. that includes ongoing carelessness and early indifference.

Perhaps factor in how long larger amounts & dust have been left to settle untouched, especially after say two or even three years.  Isn't there a webpage that has the age of coins?  Can't recall the correct term I am sorry to say.

[ir.yance]

How many bitcoins do you think have been lost forever?

I personally think its around 3 to 4 million.

I myself think maybe about 3 to 4 million, tpi is not sure also because I do not know his certainty, if I am wrong please forgive because the man was not spared from the mistake

[smartbitcoininvestor]

A number of Bitcoins lost definitely depends on what the original creators and early adopters did with their coins. It is tough but I would estimate somewhere between 500,000 to 5 million BTC have been/will be lost forever. More will be lost in the future due to theft, fire, accidents, hard drive/smart phone failures, etc

There is a decreasing amount of new bitcoins entering the ecosystem every year so I'd imagine the newly mined ones will be coveted a bit more highly.

[Taki]

I also think that the lost amount of bitcoins is actually not so little. many people bought bitcoin in the most beginning just to see what is it and how it works, but with time they just stayed it on a side and forgot about it, their passwords. I have a friend who said me recently that he bought 50 BTC 7 years ago. And he remind about it only now when I explained him how I make money on the internet and how much bitcoin costs today. But he said that he forgot the place where he was holding those coins and of course all logins and passwords. So, I think my friend is not the one and many people just lost their founds due to the death or other factors alike.

[TheGodson]

I'm going to guess around 2 million. Satoshi has 1 million coins and it appears that people have speculated that he probably died meaning those coins have been lost. Any other substantial amount would probably be a few isolated cases. People that have a lot of money in Bitcoin aren't going to be careless with it. People lose shit all the time though, especially when it is only a small amount. I expect the number of lost bitcoin to increase overtime. This will probably make bitcoin more valuable or perhaps, be its downfall.

[SvenBomvolen]

I also think it's around 2-3 mln bitcoin had been lost. Bitcoin is exist for 8 years already and different situations are happening with people, I suppose the bitcoin's loose is happening every day. People forget their pass words, loose paper wallets or just die. The number of lost bitcoin is growing day by day. I'm just wander how can we discover those coins and put them back in use?

[n0ne]

As Op stated the lost bitcoin seems to be around 2mi. During those days after bitcoin began its usage it got distributed as a free giveaway. During those days people didn't gave much importance and the same caused large number of bitcoin get lost. When slowly the price started to increase things changed and the lost volumes got decreased.

[edynolan]

we can not calculate how many bitcoins are lost.
we perceive it is lost when someone leaves the bitcoin in a wallet and forget it. but is it true if it happens when saving in wallet windows or so what is really missing. I thought it would be back or can be taken by those who make a wallet

[VitKoyn]

We all don't have access to blockchain so no one knows exactly how many bitcoins are lost and no one can access it anymore. I also think it's a lot but I will not guess. Who cares? even if the bitcoin supply is low but demand is high bitcoin will still gain more value.

[BlockHazard]

How many bitcoins do you think have been lost forever?

I personally think its around 3 to 4 million.

I do not know how much. but according to my estimates, there are about 3 million bitcoins that have been lost or inaccessible because the owner/user forgot

[whoisyourking]

I think 2 - 3 million..  in terms of they cant retrieved for ever because of so many reasons like in the first year of bit coin they did not think that bit coin will have huge impact in our economy these days, that day they are using non secure storage for bitcoin or vulnerable to any kind of attack bit coin is just siting on their hard drive thinking what is the use of it and forget forever...

[Manuj]

The poll says it is somewhere in the 2 to 3 million dollars figure. But I think there is no exact way to track the lost bitcoins. What I am pretty sure of is that the biggest bulk of these lost bitcoins are during those times when bitcoin was considered not very significant.

[ruskytailz02]

I think 2 - 3 million coins including all wasted and trashed first generation owners who didn't know where and why they do that..
but the thing is now we have enough supply of bitcoins waiting to mine

but for security and assurance purposes my private keys has multiple backups in my trusted drives etc.. so I don't worry if they will cause of failure

[Lion BItcoin Shop]

How many bitcoins do you think have been lost forever?

I personally think its around 3 to 4 million.

i dont know the fixed number maybe arround 2m
but i know some burning address, sometimes i think wanna use supercomputer to decode the private key, then i can use thats bitcoin 
this is some burning address
https://blockchain.info/address/1CounterpartyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXUWLpVr
https://blockchain.info/address/1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE
https://blockchain.info/address/1111111111111111111114oLvT2

[TIDOVEE]

Infact  I can say the presice amount of bitcoin I have lost, most of the ones I lost is due to ignorance at the early time due to wrong form filling, not copying link e.t.c I almost got frustrated but I learnt, now I'm better.

[xaviervilla]

How many bitcoins do you think have been lost forever?

I personally think its around 3 to 4 million.

Im going with the choice of two to three million. Because i have seen a lot of horror stories from various people with various reasons. Such as house burning, devices malfunctioning, storages being lost, wrong copying of private keys, forgetting, and more. The list really goes on. But i think this is just when bitcoin is cheap. Because I don’t think people today would be as careless as people back then with bitcoins. Considering it’s current price today on the market. Although there are people who still tend to be clumsy, I don’t think the numbers are still as huge as the numbers back then.