Approximately, how many bitcoin are lost FOREVER!!!

[Artofficial]

Unless a Jedi can brute-force or guess the keys .

[WuLabsWuTecH]

no one knows. You can figure out how many BTC are lying dormant, but you have no idea if their owners still control their keys or not!

[Kaepora]

Unless a Jedi can brute-force or guess the keys .

When bitcoin first started I had quite a few and felt they were going nowhere so I deleted the wallet and everything along with it.  

[vinne81]

Unless a Jedi can brute-force or guess the keys .

When bitcoin first started I had quite a few and felt they were going nowhere so I deleted the wallet and everything along with it.  

How many BTC in that wallet? 

[utarinues]

My guess: I assume most users dont have backups so probably at least 1% already lost or 100.000 BTC

[CKJ411]

What would be the best place to determine where the dormant coins are lying about?

[worldinacoin]

For me alone I guess 10 - 20 BTC, in the early days when Bitcoin wasn't worth much.  Too troublesome to backup when changing computers, just delete

[BurtW]

Why do you ask?

[edd]

Unless a Jedi can brute-force or guess the keys .

There are other options.

Deleted wallets on old computers might one day be salvaged by "bitcoin treasure hunters." Heirs might eventually have the tools to extrapolate enough information from an old hard drive to recover a deleted wallet.dat.

Bitcoins sent to black hole addresses are probably gone for good, however.

[notung]

Once I read that due to the fact that some bitcoins are lost they will gain more value, as less coins are available. I don't see how if it's not possible to know how many are lost...

[Alexander The Great]

Id say a good million are lost forever.

[r3wt]

i believe that something must be done immediately to deny addresses that havent been seen on the network payments over a very small amount. i think some groups are probably buying bitcoin and sending them to nonexistant addresses to devalue and kill the coin.

[artos]

i believe that something must be done immediately to deny addresses that havent been seen on the network payments over a very small amount. i think some groups are probably buying bitcoin and sending them to nonexistant addresses to devalue and kill the coin.

Divisible down to 8 decimal places. They can destroy all they want, it won't accomplish anything.

[Alexander The Great]

Prices are going to go up for every bitcoin lost.

[Alexander The Great]

ive hears stories about people losing thousands in the early days so I bet theres quite a fair amount gone forever.

[darkryoushii]

i believe that something must be done immediately to deny addresses that havent been seen on the network payments over a very small amount. i think some groups are probably buying bitcoin and sending them to nonexistant addresses to devalue and kill the coin.

Divisible down to 8 decimal places. They can destroy all they want, it won't accomplish anything.

I'm sure a similar thing was said about IPv4..

[BurtW]

You can read about that somewhere in this paper: http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf
If i remember correctly i think about 2 million BTCs is lost for ever.

A ton are lost forever..

So that means that each Bitcoin must weigh (2,000 pounds lost) / (2,000,000 BTC lost) = 0.001 pounds / BTC

[freq]

There should be a recovery system in place that they go to

[STT]

A recovery system might be a way to recover what is not yours.  Every exception they add to the rules makes for easier corruption.

[Alexander The Great]

Is say 500,000 - 1 million