Is it possible to find lost bitcoins?

[Russlenat]

It is possible to lost bitcoin if you have provided wrong bitcoin address and I think it impossible to find lost bitcoin in any transactions because you cannot privately message of those wallet owner. In other way of bitcoin lost is if your lost your key in your wallet address and it is so sad and big regrets will happen then.

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[kodes88]

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.

i also wonder,how excatly bitoin called lost,are they sent to wrong address?or dissapear from wallet? i think if bitcoin sent to wrong address,it not lost,just landed to other people address,but how if that address not yet opened?i mean that address not generated,so is that bitcoin will appear in that address when it generated by someone?

[pkdas]

No one can.
Because it is a open source system.. no one control it..
If one's lost it losts forever..

[deisik]

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.

i also wonder,how excatly bitoin called lost,are they sent to wrong address?or dissapear from wallet? i think if bitcoin sent to wrong address,it not lost,just landed to other people address,but how if that address not yet opened?i mean that address not generated,so is that bitcoin will appear in that address when it generated by someone?

Yes, the coins will appear in that address

In fact, they will appear on the blockchain right after the transaction gets confirmed. You can think of all possible addresses (wallets) as already existing in a sense, i.e. when you generate an address you actually generate a private key which allows you to use the bitcoins you are going to send to or receive in that address. But when you send coins to an unused address, this address appears on the blockchain regardless since the blockchain has no idea whether someone has or has not a private key matching it

[harimauagam]

It's not possible to find the missing bitcoin but I do not know it in my opinion how about you.

[Jeger.Kiting]

I guess you will not be able to find the missing Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is a digital not a real form that can be stored anywhere, so once you forget or lose your private key you will not be able to find Bitcoin that you have forever, So be careful with Your private key to open your digital wallet.

[Raven91]

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

No one could find them unless you know the private key they are consider as lost when you forgot the password or private key of yout wallet no one could open it unless the main site just scam your bitcoin but they are not autorize to do that i guess.

[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

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

As long as there are people who agrees that something has value, no matter how abundant it is, there would always be a price tag for it. I don't know if we're on the same page, but apparently manipulating the 21 million cap would defeat its purpose of limited availability, and I don't think that the hard-coded limit would ever be changed even after our lifetimes.

Also, people tend to find value/price on nearly everything that they see. I wouldn't be surprised if someday, water will be monopolized just like some basic necessities that we have today.

[aoluain]

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.

oh man that is horrendous!
do you mind me asking how many bitcoins you lost,
I'll bet you tried everything to try and restore them?
I wonder how many others lost their coins over time?

Is there any way of knowing how many are lost ? [probably not]

[justspare]

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 .

As you know it will never recovered because it is anonymous. Hence the system upgrading after 1 August then might something will be different happen maybe this change should be also held in that upgrading so we cannot say that it would happen to. But according to upgrading which is showing best side of bitcoin which we will bring many changes.

[virasog]

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.

okay be handled it with a 12 word passphrase crack with better odds. I haven't looked into the exact protocols, but I assume that all of these wallets use a static list of words when they produce their 12 word passphrases and that should be easy enough to find in the open source. In the end, it is a lot of effort and resources to go through that will likely never produce any results.. But to answer your question, yes in a technical sense it is very possible.

[northstarh]

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

Not many feasible, many bitcoins were forgotten when it was formed, then the value of bitcoin was very low, many possessed thousands of bitcoins, but they missed, I bet they felt sad when bitcoin increased. old. They ignored the opportunity to get rich when they were holding hands.

[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

As long as there are people who agrees that something has value, no matter how abundant it is, there would always be a price tag for it. I don't know if we're on the same page, but apparently manipulating the 21 million cap would defeat its purpose of limited availability, and I don't think that the hard-coded limit would ever be changed even after our lifetimes

Obviously, this is not so

Everyone agrees that air is vitally important (without it you won't last longer than a few minutes) but since it is abundant and freely available to everyone, there is no and can't be a price tag for it. It is said that its marginal utility is equal to zero, i.e. no additional amount of air is of any value to you in typical circumstances. Indeed, on some other planet it would cost dear, but whenever and wherever it is abundant, it is basically a free lunch. This is the same in respect to other things which are in abundance despite the fact that they may be of vital importance to everyone. You could monopolize water (or anything, for that matter), but then you can't claim that it is freely available to everyone, i.e. it will no longer be in abundance. In that case you would create artificial scarcity via restriction of free access

[dreamer81]

what is a lost bitcoin? no bitcoins can be lost, the only thing you can lose is the private key that gains access to btc at a specific address..... if you change the topic to "Is it possible to find lost private keys", the answer is no.

[Jombrangs]

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

hmmmm no one know how to find the lost bitcoins

[Basaleyi]

it is not possible at all if you don't own the private keys or original wallet.dat file perhaps those who owned the lost amount are dead by now .try to think vice versa or in reverse if anyone able to find lost coins in bitcoin or any other blockchain as in eth that could be away of hacking others .

[deisik]

it is not possible at all if you don't own the private keys or original wallet.dat file perhaps those who owned the lost amount are dead by now .try to think vice versa or in reverse if anyone able to find lost coins in bitcoin or any other blockchain as in eth that could be away of hacking others .

I guess the reality is a bit different

Strictly speaking, there are no lost bitcoins since all bitcoins are still kept on the blockchain in their entirety. It is the private keys that's got lost. But if you change the protocol and are successful at persuading miners as well as developers to accept these changes, you can easily reclaim the coins which otherwise are left for dead. It may be not worth trying of course, but the possibility is obviously there. My point is essentially to show that what is done by one human can be undone by another human (given enough time, money, and effort)

[sonawer]

If you analyze blocks for sending, then some of the funds are purposely destroyed, sending them to non-existent addresses in principle (only ones and a couple of letters). I think in order to return the lost cue you need to change the system code again ... but again, will everyone agree) I suddenly save money on the account and am going to go to the future for 300 years ahead? I will disagree that my cunts drowned)

[cipotok]

To find the missing bitcoin is likely to be very small because the digital world can all happen, it could be because of our own negligence that forgot our own account or bitcoin password itself.
So do not get your hopes up if the missing bitcoin will be able to come back again.

[marcbitcoins]

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

hmmmm no one know how to find the lost bitcoins

So if it is lost forevere threfore we should be carefull when doing bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies transactions. Always ultra sensitive when comes to input our personal keys, wallet keys and other digital details.  Double checking is very necessary or we lost our hard earned coins.