What is the real circulation of Bitcoin?

[winyau8888]

The total number of supply is around 16M nowadays

Despite the lost and locked up, the real circulation is around 6-8M? Am I right?

Please advice!

Thank you very much!

[pooya87]

Despite the lost and locked up, the real circulation is around 6-8M? Am I right?

no because you just said a random number that came to your mind and it is not even a logical number in my opinion because you are basically claiming without reason that half the bitcoin in circulation is lost!

the fact is, we have no way of measuring how much bitcoin is lost for sure. there are cases that you can be 100% sure like when that miner didn't pay himself the block reward, that block reward is 100% sure lost. but other cases are never sure like coins of Satoshi, or those who claim have lost the private key...

[oddwh]

There is this study where they calculated the amount of lost coins : http://fortune.com/2017/11/25/lost-bitcoins/

But I don't really agree with their percent lost on long time holders and this is only an estimation. Anyway if we follow their study, we have ~13m BTC in circulation, which gives a market cap of 104bn$ at 8000$ per coin.

[Kakmakr]

Bitcoins do not have to be lost to be out of circulation. Every coin that are hoarded and not available at any given time, should be regarded as not in circulation. Millions of people are storing coins in cold storage <paper wallets> and these coins are not in circulation. <compare that to people storing physical coins in a jar>

The total coins in circulation cannot be determined, because you have people that are trading coins on a person to person basis. These coins are not going through centralized services, like exchanges or payment processors and cannot be recorded at any given moment.

[VitKoyn]

The total number of supply is around 16M nowadays

Despite the lost and locked up, the real circulation is around 6-8M? Am I right?

Please advice!

Thank you very much!

6-8 million Bitcoin in circulation? where did that come from? There is no possible way that we can calculate accurately how many Bitcoins are lost and locked up in different addresses/wallet because even we found all inactive addresses with Bitcoins on it, we can't say that those coins are now lost because it is possible that the owner of that coins are just holding it and have no plans to sell it any time soon. And for me, we don't have to worry about those coins that cannot be access anymore because Bitcoin can be divided in eight decimal places which is satoshi.

[Harri Wolter]

Interesting Calculations came up to this:
we have known that their are 210,420 blocks that had been launched. For every block some new bit coins are introduced, and after every 4 years this introduction is halved. Initially 50 bitcoins were introduced;

#On July,2010 the bitcoins released were 10,512,000 (i.e.=120240 *50)

#In 2014, the bitcoins released were 5,256,000 (i.e.=120240*50/2)

#In 2018, the bitcoins released were 2,628,000 (i.e.=120240*25/2)

so ,in present day there are 17,396,000 bitcoins in circulation, out of
all 21,000,000 which are to be launched in future.

[brontosaurus]

The total number of supply is around 16M nowadays

Despite the lost and locked up, the real circulation is around 6-8M? Am I right?

Please advice!

Thank you very much!

The amount of btc in circulation that you see on the coinmarketcap or coingecko is just the amount in trade that day or the transfer done by exchanges. There is no good way to make account of all the transactions involved using the private key wallets.

[Essaint56]

Bitcoins do not have to be lost to be out of circulation. Every coin that are hoarded and not available at any given time, should be regarded as not in circulation. Millions of people are storing coins in cold storage <paper wallets> and these coins are not in circulation. <compare that to people storing physical coins in a jar>

The total coins in circulation cannot be determined, because you have people that are trading coins on a person to person basis. These coins are not going through centralized services, like exchanges or payment processors and cannot be recorded at any given moment.

Yeah, I do believe in this logic. Just like on stocks exchanges, stocks that are not circulating are those that are being held. If we mean by circulating, it's being used as payment, being transacted, etc.

[Mark Sherman]

There are a couple of sites where you can see near live data:

Bitcoin Charts - Blockchain.info

As you can see from the chart, it’s very smooth, because there is a consistent and steady release of Bitcoin into the market every 10 minutes (roughly), which is halved every 4 years… as can be seen in the charts.

This means it’s not hard to calculate or track

[batang_bitcoin]

Despite the lost and locked up, the real circulation is around 6-8M? Am I right?

That's too low, this is just your guess right? Where have you got this number for the circulation of bitcoin? The lost you are referring to the burned bitcoins? No one knows on how many were burned but regarding the real circulation of bitcoin in the economy no one really knows.

so ,in present day there are 17,396,000 bitcoins in circulation, out of
all 21,000,000 which are to be launched in future.

Possibly including the burned ones.

[pooya87]

we have known that their are 210,420 blocks that had been launched.

this sentence doesn't make any sense! i think you have confused bitcoin with an altcoin that has a premine and "launches" some blocks prior to its actual release!
it was not like this with bitcoin!

For every block some new bit coins are introduced, and after every 4 years this introduction is halved. Initially 50 bitcoins were introduced;

the "halving" is not every 4 years it is every 210,000 blocks which happens to be nearly 4 years.

#On July,2010 the bitcoins released were 10,512,000 (i.e.=120240 *50)
#In 2014, the bitcoins released were 5,256,000 (i.e.=120240*50/2)
#In 2018, the bitcoins released were 2,628,000 (i.e.=120240*25/2)

so ,in present day there are 17,396,000 bitcoins in circulation, out of
all 21,000,000 which are to be launched in future.

i don't even know where you are getting these dates and numbers from!!!
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply
the first halving happened on block 210000 in 2012-11-28
the second halving on block 420000 in 2016-07-09
the third one will happen in the future on block 630,000

(210000*50) + (210000*25) + ((508338¹-420000 +1)*12.5) = 16,854,237.5BTC
^1. current block height

[nc50lc]

Interesting Calculations came up to this:
we have known that their are 210,420 blocks that had been launched. For every block some new bit coins are introduced, and after every 4 years this introduction is halved. Initially 50 bitcoins were introduced;

#On July,2010 the bitcoins released were 10,512,000 (i.e.=120240 *50)

#In 2014, the bitcoins released were 5,256,000 (i.e.=120240*50/2)

#In 2018, the bitcoins released were 2,628,000 (i.e.=120240*25/2)

so ,in present day there are 17,396,000 bitcoins in circulation, out of
all 21,000,000 which are to be launched in future.

Close, but wrong, you've done a great effort though.
Or just take a look at this: https://blockchain.info/charts/total-bitcoins There are 16.9m BTC generated since the start.
The OPs question was about the circulating amount, not the current total, which is roughly about 3 quarter of that or more.

With that much supply, those locked up and lost BTC may be fewer than most of us anticipated, most are just in cold-storage.
It's just that the noise from persons who lost their bitcoin is louder than the usual.

[HabBear]

The total number of supply is around 16M nowadays

Despite the lost and locked up, the real circulation is around 6-8M? Am I right?

Good questions, lots of information can be gained to help you answer such questions from the charts on the Blockchain.info.

You can look up transaction volume by many, many metrics.

Specific transaction volume can be measured in USD volume hitting the exchanges. If you divide this amount for a single day by the price of Bitcoin for that same day you will get the number of bitcoins circulated through the day.

For Feb 7th, $2.33 billion hit the exchanges, and the price of bitcoin was ~$7,500. That equals 310,666 Bitcoin being transacted on Feb 7th. I'll admit that this is probably a low in the range, but the high end isn't nearly 6-8M.

The only unknown is what time period you were thinking of for your question. Obviously I'm using 1 day. It would take 25 days at the daily transaction volume I cited to reach 8M Bitcoin transacted.

Source: https://blockchain.info/charts/trade-volume

[bernashka]

Every day about 3,600 coins are added to the common currency network. New arrivals cost users more and more difficult. According to certain data, now users have already received 13 million coins.

[timerland]

The total number of supply is around 16M nowadays

Despite the lost and locked up, the real circulation is around 6-8M? Am I right?

Please advice!

Thank you very much!

This number constantly fluctuates. And there is pretty much no way to accurately measure it at the moment at least.

The thing is, bitcoin holders are only identified by its address. And obviously the contents of an address could be lost or the owner could pass away or something like that. Any one of many things could happen to cause bitcoins to be taken out of circulation.

However, it is hard to distinguish inactive bitcoins from bitcoins that are just being held in cold storage for the long term by the owner.

And with the number of people holding bitcoin on the rise, the actual amount of bitcoin in circulation is probably getting less and less, and is one of the reasons why price has been increasing as well.