Lost Forever: 26.04 BTC Burned In 2016

[1Referee]

he is talking about a different kind of lost coins not coins that are not moved. there are in fact lots of bitcoins lost because of reasons such as forgetting an encryption password to a wallet or a lost wallet because of hardware failure, and generally things like that beyond recover.
there is actually a topic in this board about it where people comment on it with their lost coins. i myself had a brainwallet with 0.01BTCish which i forgot the password to

I know exactly what he is talking about. Read this post again.

I think number of unspendable bitcoin is more than this because there are also lots of addresses which contain bitcoins and nobody have access to it, like addresses of wallets whose password were lost, known addresses of satoshi etc. However nice listing...

It could be anyone, but let's take Satoshi as an example as it gets mentioned here. Him not moving his coins doesn't mean that he has no access to his wallets/private keys anymore. It's very simple to just assume so since these coins haven't been moved, but there are good reasons for him and other early adopters not to touch their coins (yet). It's not just a few thousand $$ worth of Bitcoin that we are talking about. That's what I tried to point out.

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[nizamcc]

Last October a website called BTCBurns.cf identified 397 burn addresses containing 2,657.8686 BTC lost forever. It has gone offline. Since it stopped keeping track 26.04 additional bitcoins have been sent to these addresses.

The total number of unspendable bitcoins is now 2,771.4086.

http://bitcoinwhoswho.com/blog/2016/12/21/btc-burn-addresses/

I just found out about it, how many bitcoins of those users had been burned and how many they have right now if throw away so easy for them, that can't be come from one guy. Make some people jealous to see that waste of money, but as it stated from the beginning
"Lost coins only make everyone else’s coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone
I think that's why we get recently pump to the price, worth slightly more.

The lost coins have nothing to do with a pump or I would say, a steady price rise and so the same thing can be said reversibly.
Such coins could have been used for anything including "donations" to an actual charity instead of being burnt, but they didn't.
Should they still be considered as used in a better way?

[severaldetails]

I somehow like it that bitcoins can be burned.
Because the total number of bitcoins is fixed, every burned bitcoin increases the worth of the rest of the bitcoins.
Maybe not now, but with time this is going to have a notable effect to the availability of bitcoin.

[Pursuer]

This is nothing when compared to those coins lost by James Howells in 2009. A few days after the Bitcoin mining kicked off, Howells tried the same with his personal computer, and was able to mine some BTC7,500. But back then, BTC was worth close to nothing. When his computer got damaged, he threw away the hard drive.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/27/hard-drive-bitcoin-landfill-site

I am sure there are much more coins lost from the very early days. because bitcoin was like and experiment the first days it was released and before it hit the markets and was traded with actual money it had literary no value and when it was being actually traded with real money the value was still next to nothing.
that is why I say so many other nerds tried it for fun and uninstalled bitcoin and cleaned their computer afterwards.

[BoXXoB]

The actual amount of "long lost bitcoins" is for sure way greater than the said amount. It's impossible to throw any kind of estimations as we simply can't know about most of it.

It could be anyone, but let's take Satoshi as an example as it gets mentioned here. Him not moving his coins doesn't mean that he has no access to his wallets/private keys anymore. It's very simply to just assume so since these coins haven't been moved, but there are good reasons for him and other early adopters not to touch their coins (yet). It's not just a few thousand $$ worth of Bitcoin that we are talking about. That's what I tried to point out.

I agree. Doesn't seem logical that he wouldn't have control over those coins anymore. He simply hasn't moved them. It's not like he has an urgent need for even a small portion of the bitcoins

[aso118]

It is very normal for bitcoins to be burned or lost in circulation. Even fiat currency like local coins that are always gone in circulation due to many reasons like melting it and used in jewelry by Chinese smugglers. This event are of no threat to the current users of bitcoin, it may possibly signal an intense increase in the value. Whatever the case the market will just adopt to the situation, but in the future if bitcoin reaches 100 million dollars each then bitcoin being burned is a very big problem that needs a solution.

I think they are not actually burned or gone .. they are just lose because of wrong sending bitcoin and forgot their own wallet password.. this is i think the problem that is why those bitcoin are gone that honestly in bitcoin i think we can not say that those are burned coin.. i think it is just a lost coins..

It is not about forgetting your wallet password. If you remember your password again, the coins become usable again.
Burn addresses are valid addresses like 1CounterpartyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXUWLpVr, to which nobody has the private key.

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

unspendable coins?
so is this like in the hacker movie where they skim off pennies off every bank transactions and accummlate millions of dollars this way?

[eternalgloom]

The actual amount of "long lost bitcoins" is for sure way greater than the said amount. It's impossible to throw any kind of estimations as we simply can't know about most of it.

It could be anyone, but let's take Satoshi as an example as it gets mentioned here. Him not moving his coins doesn't mean that he has no access to his wallets/private keys anymore. It's very simply to just assume so since these coins haven't been moved, but there are good reasons for him and other early adopters not to touch their coins (yet). It's not just a few thousand $$ worth of Bitcoin that we are talking about. That's what I tried to point out.

I agree. Doesn't seem logical that he wouldn't have control over those coins anymore. He simply hasn't moved them. It's not like he has an urgent need for even a small portion of the bitcoins

Coinbuzz wrote an article about this, back in 2015. They made an estimate that around 1/3rd of all Bitcoins may be lost coins from addresses that haven't spent anything since 2011.
Of course, there's no way of knowing that these addresses are inaccessible, but that doesn't mean you can't make some reasonably accurate estimations.

Here's the article:
http://www.coinbuzz.com/2015/03/31/23-bitcoins-mined-13-may-lost/

On a side note: I'd like to know where they got their numbers from.

[sweeeter]

I sent 10 to what might as well be a burn address and i guess other fools like me also messed up not making back ups. There are 100,000s of unusable bitcoins. LOL.

[sportis]

I think it is not burned, i think it was lost by users stupidity. But also how come people can send btc to a specified burn address. When in fact that address is already burned, the address is still active but not accessible? I'm a bit confused on what is really burned addresses. BTCBurn website got some concrete evidence that the address is really burned?

Some lost from users but there is the expression Proof of Burn that is an alternate consensus of Proof of Work and Proof of Stake. More details has the following wiki https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_burn. Even more there is an archived post in reddit with a list of these addresses https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/3kqdjv/a_list_of_bitcoin_addresses_used_to_intentionally/. Someone above told that people intentionally had burned their coins when exchange rate to fiat was low but I have neither read nor listen anything about it yet. 

[20kevin20]

What if they were actually cold wallets? It doesn't matter though, there are probably hundreds of thousands or millions of Bitcoins gone. People who joined Bitcoin in the first year might have thrown away their PCs, or erased the data they had together with their offline Bitcoin wallet. There were many cases in which they later found out they had millions in their accounts after cleaning up the house.

[Huge Black Woman]

Man, that smells like a lotta wastage fo such a tiny currency.   I git that tar's 21 mill gon' be produced, but i thank fo' the long term,  ya cain't waste that many...or the damn price is gon' hafta go up a lot t'accomodade all the people.   Rite? Anyways i don't know why anyone would want to boin they money.  Seem likka stupid thang t'do.

[MingLee]

Last October a website called BTCBurns.cf identified 397 burn addresses containing 2,657.8686 BTC lost forever. It has gone offline. Since it stopped keeping track 26.04 additional bitcoins have been sent to these addresses.

The total number of unspendable bitcoins is now 2,771.4086.

http://bitcoinwhoswho.com/blog/2016/12/21/btc-burn-addresses/

2771BTC in total, that is a fortune but is this act intentional or a mistake, how can they be sending BTC continually to a dead address.

Some people just burn some of their Bitcoin to increase the value of it overall, and to be fair 2771BTC isn't a small amount and it is worth a huge amount.

As for everyone who thinks that the bitcoin really is lost forever, though, it's far from that. It'll take a long time to get to the address, but I would be willing to guarantee that someone will find it at some point. Assuming someone seriously undertakes that goal, though.

[cjmoles]

I don't understand why anybody would intentionally burn their bitcoin....It doesn't make a whole of sense to me.  Why don't they just put them in cold storage somewhere and forget about them?  I think that most of these "burn" claims are bologny....I know that awhile back there was a group who wanted to kill bitcoin by buying them all up and burning them....but that's just a stupid thought now days ---->  $934/BTC who could afford that loss?

[thejaytiesto]

Last October a website called BTCBurns.cf identified 397 burn addresses containing 2,657.8686 BTC lost forever. It has gone offline. Since it stopped keeping track 26.04 additional bitcoins have been sent to these addresses.

The total number of unspendable bitcoins is now 2,771.4086.

http://bitcoinwhoswho.com/blog/2016/12/21/btc-burn-addresses/

It would be cool to be able to keep real track of the amount of burned addresses, but only those addresses that are publicly know to be as burning address can provide us efficient data in keeping track of real lost forever bitcoins.

if we take into consideration that the address of satoshi nakamoto contain up to 1 million bitcoins, we may think that the amount of burned BTC is over 1 million now, since its safe to assume satoshis keys are lost for life.

[bitcoinwhoswho]

I should have been more clear; 2,771.4086 is the absolute minimum unspendable bitcoins in existence. There are certainly more.

[CoinCidental]

Last October a website called BTCBurns.cf identified 397 burn addresses containing 2,657.8686 BTC lost forever. It has gone offline. Since it stopped keeping track 26.04 additional bitcoins have been sent to these addresses.

The total number of unspendable bitcoins is now 2,771.4086.

http://bitcoinwhoswho.com/blog/2016/12/21/btc-burn-addresses/

It would be cool to be able to keep real track of the amount of burned addresses, but only those addresses that are publicly know to be as burning address can provide us efficient data in keeping track of real lost forever bitcoins.

if we take into consideration that the address of satoshi nakamoto contain up to 1 million bitcoins, we may think that the amount of burned BTC is over 1 million now, since its safe to assume satoshis keys are lost for life.

some people believe satoshi mined 1-1.5 Million BTC
i have seen analyists thinking that 33% of the bitcoins maybe "lost" but i guessitwill take some decades to see if that is true
it is wrong in my opinion to think if someone didnt sell for $1250  then his coins must be must
many investors are likely fiat rich and dont need to cash out until something drastic happens in the economy

[unamis76]

I guess it's a bit more to add to this thread... Still don't understand why people burn their coins intentionally. I don't think any burning is purposeful... But to each his own.

[CoinCidental]

I guess it's a bit more to add to this thread... Still don't understand why people burn their coins intentionally. I don't think any burning is purposeful... But to each his own.

lookup "proof of burn"
this is the only purposeful burning i am aware of

the rest of lost coins maybe someday  retrievable when computers are powerful enough to break their passphrases

[ranochigo]

Last October a website called BTCBurns.cf identified 397 burn addresses containing 2,657.8686 BTC lost forever. It has gone offline. Since it stopped keeping track 26.04 additional bitcoins have been sent to these addresses.

The total number of unspendable bitcoins is now 2,771.4086.

http://bitcoinwhoswho.com/blog/2016/12/21/btc-burn-addresses/

What is a burn adress?I`ve never heard about this.

How is it possible people to continue to send bitcoins to those adresses?

A burn address is an address that is created for people to send Bitcoins to them and make sure that it is unable to be used. The address does not have a private key that is known to anyone. An example of an address is this: 1CounterpartyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXUWLpVr. It is extremely hard for anyone to generate an address that starts with 1CounterpartyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX and thus the probability of it having a private key that is known to everyone is extremely low. Many motivations to doing this.

Some people just burn some of their Bitcoin to increase the value of it overall, and to be fair 2771BTC isn't a small amount and it is worth a huge amount.

As for everyone who thinks that the bitcoin really is lost forever, though, it's far from that. It'll take a long time to get to the address, but I would be willing to guarantee that someone will find it at some point. Assuming someone seriously undertakes that goal, though.

And when someone does it we should IMMEDIATELY switch to a different algorithm of generating wallet. Your "very long" is underestimating what power it is to crack an address. When you get that address, the earth probably wouldn't even exist.

lookup "proof of burn"
this is the only purposeful burning i am aware of

the rest of lost coins maybe someday  retrievable when computers are powerful enough to break their passphrases

They aren't meant to be taken out. If anyone ever gets access to them, we should be fearing for our addresses to be cracked. This is impossible and if it does happen, we would have switched to a better algorithm to generating addresses.

Sending Bitcoins intentionally to an address that cannot be spent is irresponsible since it introduces blockchain spent as the UXTO of them will be stored forever. A better method would be to use OP_Return since they do not occupy any space in the node's UXTO.