Is it possible to find lost bitcoins?

[lighpulsar07]

No. You can't get access your bitcoins without your private key once you lost your private key, you will lose your access to your bitcoins. Bitcoin in that wallet are considered lost although there are some recovery services online but it's not a guarantee you recover your wallet and gain access to your coins so, try to create backups of your private key.

[LouVandetta]

Millions of bitcoins are considered lost. Who will find them?

Nobody, I think.

Just like you said, millions of bitcoins are considered "Lost".
It means that it is already lost. I don't know how it works, but I do think that it's really hard or even impossible to find those lost bitcoins .

[73blazer]

The question is.... How much computing power would it take. Mabey at some.point likely not in our lifetime..
 it may become.profitable for large mine farms to turn thier computing power towards brute forcing private keys.  Of course that may have the secondary effect of crashing the price. But Mabey not if you mine old coins haven't been spent in decades. Just a thought
 

[szpalata]

Millions of bitcoins are considered lost. Who will find them?

Nobody, I think.

Just like you said, millions of bitcoins are considered "Lost".
It means that it is already lost. I don't know how it works, but I do think that it's really hard or even impossible to find those lost bitcoins .

Those that are stuck in wallets and cannot sponser themselves out because of high transaction fees are all many and could contribute significantly to lost bitcoins globally.

[deisik]

Let's assume that Bitcoin doesn't die in a few hundred years from now on, and our descendants (or even us ourselves if we manage to live that long) could reclaim these coins (coins that didn't move all that time) as public property for the common good

If you're looking that far into the future presumably brute force hacking could have improved so much that the missing bitcoins could be recovered.

In fact, we don't need that

We don't need to wait till advanced brute forcing becomes available (through quantum computing or otherwise). Actually, we don't need to wait any time at all. All we need is consensus what to do with lost coins and consensus in respect which coins to consider as lost. If we have both we can easily retrieve the coins that we think as lost. We would only need to make a few small changes to protocol (i.e. the way Bitcoin transactions are processed). For example, if it becomes known for certain that Satoshi is dead (provided he was alive in the first place at all, of course), and no one is going to claim his coins (his heirs or beneficiaries), we could retrieve and share them among all active Bitcoin holders (or spend them on something useful)

[SvenBomvolen]

If the bitcoins were lost for some reason, no one will find them. They completely disappear from circulation. This is the essence of the digital currency. Therefore, it is necessary to reconcile that many bitcoins will disappear forever, if someone has forgotten the password from his mobile wallet or for other reasons has ceased to have access to it.

But don't you think that with such temps the biggest part of Bitcoins can be lost one day? Bitcoin is shorted by 21 millions number, but people lost passwords and forget about their wallets or even die every day, so, in fact the number of Bitcoin is going to be smaller and smaller day by day.

[Qunenin]

Sure it can be done, but the odds of doing it are about the same as solo mining finding a block. in layman's terms with Bitcoin, the block of transactions is encrypted, the encryption key thrown away, and the miners try to crack that key. So basically finding lost Bitcoin is an almost-identical process. Now the private keys of wallets is based on a specific hash, there was a period of time when an easier method would be to brute-force a 12 word passphrase on a software wallet.

[Phyton76]

Nobody.

Because they are not hidden in sand on some island or in some garbage bin.
They are hidden by math.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=104461.0
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/22/is-it-possible-to-brute-force-bitcoin-address-creation-in-order-to-steal-money

Haven't double checked the numbers but those might be close, basically you will need 2^45 years.

As what we all know it is really impossible you can only open a lost bitcoins if you know the password or the private key of the wallet if you forgot the private key of your wallet and you have bitcoins there it is consider as lost and no one could open it maybe if the site hack your bitcoins.

[2girls]

Most of the wallets that I've used lately, seem to be pushing their security beyond that. I know that we briefly played with burstcoin, we threw about 150 common passwords and phrases in it and looked at the contents of the wallet. it was just for fun and we did not find anything, but the method I believe you're talking about for finding lost Bitcoin

[Amevalentine]

Millions of bitcoins are considered lost. Who will find them?

Brute forcing private keys is hopeless. What might be possible is recovering bitcoin from wallets whose passwords have been lost if the wallet file is retained, if the passwords are not too difficult to crack. And there might be bitcoins considered "lost" because the original owner has died, and whomever inherited their equipment has not noticed/found/deciphered their bitcoin wallet setup (or paper wallet tucked away somewhere). There are varying degrees of "lostness" to bitcoins that are considered lost.

Lost means many possibility, forgot password, long inactive account(usually forgot wallet), or owner acct has died.
that's why private keys creates to makes it privates, its different from password. when u lost it. Schvey said "This is what the security of Bitcoin is actually based on. If you’ve lost your private key, the system is so secure that you may not be able to recover it."
So it is impossible with regular resource to find them.

[paul gatt]

Millions of bitcoins are considered lost. Who will find them?

In fact, it has not been stolen, it just got forgotten, when bitcoin started working, some people used a lot of bitcoin, however, then the bitcoin value was too low, and they abandoned it. They gradually forgot it, many wanted to search it but they could not get it back. Unfortunately.

[northstarh]

Millions of bitcoins are considered lost. Who will find them?

No, it is impossible, we can not find the lost bitcoin again. When using bitcoin, we need to store the hardware wallet or private key so that we can retrieve it at any time. However, no one can find the correct private key to retrieve it.

[Taki]

Nobody.

Because they are not hidden in sand on some island or in some garbage bin.
They are hidden by math.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=104461.0
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/22/is-it-possible-to-brute-force-bitcoin-address-creation-in-order-to-steal-money

Haven't double checked the numbers but those might be close, basically you will need 2^45 years.

As what we all know it is really impossible you can only open a lost bitcoins if you know the password or the private key of the wallet if you forgot the private key of your wallet and you have bitcoins there it is consider as lost and no one could open it maybe if the site hack your bitcoins.

Right. I think we all need in something that will allow to take in use forgotten or lost bitcoins. I am not a programmer, just a girl, so, I have no idea how to realize this idea and does it possible at all?

[dothebeats]

Let's assume that Bitcoin doesn't die in a few hundred years from now on, and our descendants (or even us ourselves if we manage to live that long) could reclaim these coins (coins that didn't move all that time) as public property for the common good

If you're looking that far into the future presumably brute force hacking could have improved so much that the missing bitcoins could be recovered.

In fact, we don't need that

We don't need to wait till advanced brute forcing becomes available (through quantum computing or otherwise). Actually, we don't need to wait any time at all. All we need is consensus what to do with lost coins and consensus in respect which coins to consider as lost. If we have both we can easily retrieve the coins that we think as lost. We would only need to make a few small changes to protocol (i.e. the way Bitcoin transactions are processed). For example, if it becomes known for certain that Satoshi is dead (provided he was alive in the first place at all, of course), and no one is going to claim his coins (his heirs or beneficiaries), we could retrieve and share them among all active Bitcoin holders (or spend them on something useful)

Why would we need to vote something for what's already deemed as irretrievable? Voting to recover coins that are already lost is stupid and just makes available coins be less of what it's worth today. The key idea of a deflationary coin is to make available resources scarce over time to increase its value. Also, we aren't so sure if these coins really are lost or kept very well in cold storages.

[deisik]

Let's assume that Bitcoin doesn't die in a few hundred years from now on, and our descendants (or even us ourselves if we manage to live that long) could reclaim these coins (coins that didn't move all that time) as public property for the common good

If you're looking that far into the future presumably brute force hacking could have improved so much that the missing bitcoins could be recovered.

In fact, we don't need that

We don't need to wait till advanced brute forcing becomes available (through quantum computing or otherwise). Actually, we don't need to wait any time at all. All we need is consensus what to do with lost coins and consensus in respect which coins to consider as lost. If we have both we can easily retrieve the coins that we think as lost. We would only need to make a few small changes to protocol (i.e. the way Bitcoin transactions are processed). For example, if it becomes known for certain that Satoshi is dead (provided he was alive in the first place at all, of course), and no one is going to claim his coins (his heirs or beneficiaries), we could retrieve and share them among all active Bitcoin holders (or spend them on something useful)

Why would we need to vote something for what's already deemed as irretrievable? Voting to recover coins that are already lost is stupid and just makes available coins be less of what it's worth today. The key idea of a deflationary coin is to make available resources scarce over time to increase its value. Also, we aren't so sure if these coins really are lost or kept very well in cold storages

Well, there are other options

In fact, we don't actually need to get back the coins which are considered as irretrievable and lost for good. We could just raise the cap if we ever need that. If you are going to ask whether we will ever need that, I should just point out an important thing which almost all deflationary coin supporters invariably miss. The point is that scarcity by itself is not enough to make something valuable. That something should be useful at that, or rather, in the first place. So it is actually an inverted U-curve on a scarcity-value chart. If something is as abundant as air, it won't cost anything even if it is as vital as air. On the other hand, or rather end, when something is infinitely scarce it will lose value because it will be quickly made irrelevant. Say, there is no more air, therefore everyone quickly dies, and air loses all value soon thereafter. Whoever (or whatever) manages to survive without it will no more need it altogether, i.e. it will be of no value to them despite its infinite scarcity

[aoluain]

I have to say this is a very interesting thread
with lots of theories about values and recovery
but I would imagine that in the case of paper wallets
the are probably irretrievable but possibly in the future
as computing gets more and more powerful it may be possible
to recover lost coins.

Imagine the amount of times particularly in the early days
of BTC when people had them stored and decided to
format or throw away hard-drives etc. thinking that BTC
was just a fad and wasnt going anywhere . . .

My Dad always said "never throw anything away, you'll
never know when you might need it" 

[Barcode_]

I believe many of the bitcoins that were lost is due to users throwing away their hard drive with bitcoins stored inside during the early stages of bitcoin, as the price of bitcoins are just a few cents in the past, people who owned bitcoins don't treat it as an important assets at that time, so the chances to recover lost bitcoins is very low.

[cotton ball]

I believe many of the bitcoins that were lost is due to users throwing away their hard drive with bitcoins stored inside during the early stages of bitcoin, as the price of bitcoins are just a few cents in the past, people who owned bitcoins don't treat it as an important assets at that time, so the chances to recover lost bitcoins is very low.

I was one of those people who experienced it, at that time I didn't know about trezor and other hardwallet and I forgot to back up my private key. I still remember it was the rainy season and there was a frequent blackout that caused my cpu to be damaged and irreparable. I'm very disappointed and had stopped online for 3 years, I deeply regret the bitcoin I collect disappeared. There is no other way to restore it.

[Black Angel]

I think it's a very difficult thing even impossible, easier to guess the password of 1000 email addresses correctly in a row without any wrong than getting 1 satoshi.

[spadormie]

Is it really possible for us to lose bitcoin? What are the possibilities we lose bitcoin? Can you please state here? So that I will be careful in accessing my wallet and everything. I will check in this thread lately please answer