Do coins get lost at a bigger rate than they are created?

[oblivi]

We don't stop seeing people saying how they lost passwords, hard drives and so on, losing coins forever.

Is this rate of coins being lost bigger than the rate coins are being generated at?

[Yakamoto]

We don't stop seeing people saying how they lost passwords, hard drives and so on, losing coins forever.

Is this rate of coins being lost bigger than the rate coins are being generated at?

I doubt it personally, I think there are far more Bitcoins being generated than there are lost each day. The beauty of the blockchain though is we have no idea what the actual supply of it all is, so we can only assume they all still exist, and thus the value of the market cap of Bitcoin includes that which was lost.

[AgentofCoin]

...
Is this rate of coins being lost bigger than the rate coins are being generated at?

Currently, roughly 1,800 BTC is "disbursed" from the mining process every 24 hours.
What you are basically asking is, whether users are losing over 1,800 BTC per day.
No. That would be impossible right now (12.5btc per 10min on avg).

If I had to guess, I would estimate around 0.1 to 4 BTC lost per day an average.
(Not including large losses, such as an exchange or whale losing their keys or screwing up tx).

So, IMO, I would estimate that the base amount of 750btc, is lost per year.

[Kprawn]

4 BTC on average a day is a bit much, that accounts for 1460 bitcoins a year. In 4 years from now, we would be getting roughly 900 BTC per day and then 4 years after that 450 bitcoins. A loss of 4

Bitcoins per day, may amount to a lot of bitcoins over a 8 year period. We do not know exactly how much is lost and some coins are even burned on purpose. This is like burning money and throwing

gold bars in a volcano. 

[AgentofCoin]

4 BTC on average a day is a bit much, that accounts for 1460 bitcoins a year. In 4 years from now, we would be getting roughly 900 BTC per day and then 4 years after that 450 bitcoins. A loss of 4 Bitcoins per day, may amount to a lot of bitcoins over a 8 year period. We do not know exactly how much is lost and some coins are even burned on purpose. This is like burning money and throwing gold bars in a volcano.  

Technically, over time and if bitcoins increase in value, I would assume the average user would
have an even lower amount of btc within a single address.

For example, when a user now buys 1btc for 600USD, that is a lot for them and is probably within
one address. If that user loses control of that address, that user has lost 1btc.
But over time (many years from now) as the "block reward" decreases, the average user will, in theory,
only be able to buy a faction of that 1btc with 600USD, and will likely be in a single address.
If that future user loses control of this address, that user has lost fractions of 1btc.

So, in theory and IMO, over time, less bitcoins will be lost since value will increase and the average users
will only own factions of bitcoins. Now if you want to say how much "fiat" will be lost from those losses,
well that is a different question and could be very massive.

Most bitcoin "lost" are from the early days of mining and should decrease over time, IMO.

[pogress]

We don't stop seeing people saying how they lost passwords, hard drives and so on, losing coins forever.

Is this rate of coins being lost bigger than the rate coins are being generated at?

In my opinion the more value Bitcoin has, the less coins are lost. The most coins could be lost very early in Bitcoin history when one Bitcoin was worth under one dollar, but today people should have wallet backups when owning significant number of coins.

It will take a while before more coins are lost than distributed from subsidy to the Bitcoin miners. I guess 20-50 years.

[gentlemand]

1800 coins a day would be a fearsome rate of loss. As a pure guess perhaps 10-50 a day go up in smoke when keys are lost when every user is added up. Lots still don't pay enough attention but it's likely to be piddling amounts per person.

However I'm sure eye-watering amounts were deleted or lost in the earliest days. When 50 BTC worth nothing were arriving every ten minutes like clockwork you would've been inclined to throw them around.

I wonder how many people here would've been diligent with them at the time. It's very easy to claim you'd cherish them in retrospect but at the time it was nothing more than a weird program that locked up your laptop and made it noisy while producing meaningless numbers.

[yayayo]

We don't stop seeing people saying how they lost passwords, hard drives and so on, losing coins forever.

Is this rate of coins being lost bigger than the rate coins are being generated at?

No, that's not a realistic assumption. You have to consider that a high percentage of reportedly "lost" coins just changed ownership... Even if the private keys of all these coins are really lost, their number is far lower than the generation rate (approx. 75 coins per hour).

I also doubt that this will change in the foreseeable future. This holds true even when the generation rate drops further during the next halving events. Because Bitcoin's valuation will likely increase proportionally and the coins will be more widely distributed. This will reduce the average amount lost per holder.

ya.ya.yo!

[PeRo]

No, there is more Bitcoins generated daily than those which are lost. If more Bitcoins where dumped than generated, Bitcoin would dissappear sometime in the future. You are saying that it could be that over 1500 Bitcoins (around 9 million dolars!) is dumped every day? That is not near the truth, Bitcoins are dumped once in 2-3 months and not in such big amounts.

[topiOleg]

Actually, I did not see such stories in a while (losing access to a lot of coins). People might losing access to fraction of Bitcoins, but there are a lot more Bitcoins generated daily (1800). Hard to imagine over 1800 Bitcoins are lost daily.

[X7]

Most of the massive losses occurred in the early days, when people stored 20,000 BTC on old shitty hard drives and free time share USB keys.

[shinratensei_]

We don't stop seeing people saying how they lost passwords, hard drives and so on, losing coins forever.

Is this rate of coins being lost bigger than the rate coins are being generated at?

But I can say it's not a lost but it's just saving in the cold storage without keys to open that, but rate the coins are generated is always bigger than the rate of the lost coins but I'd don't think so every 4 years is halving coming and the regenerated of coins is reduced.

[extrabyte]

We don't stop seeing people saying how they lost passwords, hard drives and so on, losing coins forever.

Is this rate of coins being lost bigger than the rate coins are being generated at?

I think that the number of bitcoin generated is much larger rather the lost bitcoins, I'm not counting the hacked/stolen bitcoins because these are not lost but their owner has been changed without authorization, but even if we count them still the number of generated bitcoin is higher.

[poplolnman]

Most of the massive losses occurred in the early days, when people stored 20,000 BTC on old shitty hard drives and free time share USB keys.

yeah in 2013 ago there a lot of cases about missing hard drives , for example someone in london lost access to his hard drive containing 7,500 bitcoin worth 4 million pounds , he must regret it. in 2009 to 2011 bitcoin mining are earned thousands bitcoin a day and they just store it randomly due the price aren't so high like current price. noone knows how much bitcoin have lost exactly.

[nejibens]

We don't stop seeing people saying how they lost passwords, hard drives and so on, losing coins forever.

Is this rate of coins being lost bigger than the rate coins are being generated at?

I don't think so, i think the number of the lost coins is a lot less than the mined and generated coins everyday, there is hundreds of coins generated in daily basis.

[pooya87]

We don't stop seeing people saying how they lost passwords, hard drives and so on, losing coins forever.

Is this rate of coins being lost bigger than the rate coins are being generated at?

this is not such a serious problem with bitcoin.
usually those people who are losing bitcoin are not exactly holding hundreds of bitcoin but they usually have a very small amount which is nothing compared to the total available coins and the new coins that are being created everyday.

besides you have absolutely no way of saying how much bitcoin is being lost. all the numbers above me are pure speculation and can not be right.

[Kakmakr]

The number of coins lost, will fluctuate over time. Some people might lose a shit load of coins at once in a fire or a harddrive will crash or people might just lose their paper wallets. < wrong storage methods > So thumb sucking numbers will be a poor method to calculate the amount of coins lost daily.

Most people will be too shy or embarrassed to report their lost coins on public forums or some of them are just shills, who are spreading false reports. ^hmmmmm^

[Decoded]

I really really doubt it, unless people are intentionally losing their coins. Also because that if they get lost more often than they are created, then my coins should be lost.

[~Bitcoin~]

Actually 12.5 bitcoin is being generated right now every 10 minute and there is less chance for a loss of 12.5 bitcoin in the same time period due to missing password or lossing paper wallet information. So i don't think rate of lossing is higher than bitcoin reward that is geting mined.

[johnnyyash]

We don't stop seeing people saying how they lost passwords, hard drives and so on, losing coins forever.

Is this rate of coins being lost bigger than the rate coins are being generated at?

I don't think so, i think the number of the lost coins is a lot less than the mined and generated coins everyday, there is hundreds of coins generated in daily basis.

coins are been generated everyday lots, so in this dont think they are loss...the loss ones are more....because everyminiute and everyday bitcoin go round been mined..