Lost Bitcoins

[Dudeperfect]

Yes, there are many people out there who lost their private keys/hard disks/backup phrases including the guy who threw away his hard disk containing 7500 Bitcoins in it. There is literally no way to recover those keys and hence funds will remain in the network but since no one would have the keys, no one would be able to spend those funds, thus those funds are lost forever.

[Kadot amoh]

bitcoin will never disappear, bitcoin will add forward and also grows

[Quidat]

It is highly unlikely that every owner of Bitcoins will all loose access to them,
and thats 21,000,000 bitcoins which wont be fully mined for about another 100 years
and it is true that the lower the circulating supply the higher the value, provided people want to buy it.

The critical amount of Bitcoins lost is hard to compute before it gives diminishing returns but its all subjective and hypothetical at this stage really.

In November 2017 this report came out that just under 4,000,000 coins have been lost forever but the rate of loss will slow down.
http://fortune.com/2017/11/25/lost-bitcoins/

I dont know on whats their basis when it comes to the total of bitcoins that is lost or just floating into the voin. 4M bitcoins is too much but well its possible. Imagine that we do only have 21M coins minus with that 4M and counting upto these days. There would really be a supressed supply which means if demand would still continue to rise up with less supply then expect we would really see high prices but minding these things wont really be relevant because we didnt even mined the last piece of bitcoin.It wont really happen in our lifetime then why we should care?

[Neutrality]

Lost wallets are not a big deal. The major point is that the Bitcoin supply is not changing dramatically. And we still have 18 decimal point.

[Thirdspace]

Lost wallets are not a big deal. The major point is that the Bitcoin supply is not changing dramatically. And we still have 18 decimal point.

bitcoin has 8 decimals not 18 as you said. decimal is a fraction of a whole number.
we do have 2.1 quadrillion raw units as in 2,100,000,000,000,000 satoshi
which represented in 21 million BTC units with 8 digits decimal precision 21,000,000.00000000 BTC
the bolded part is what we called decimal numbers

Lost bitcoin is inevitable but will not destroy bitcoin value and usage
when there are fewer bitcoin in circulation, we can make a consensus by moving the decimal separator
the total raw units still the same but we will change how we use the standard unit
we might use mBTC instead as a standard bitcoin unit, as we know currently 1 mBTC = 0.001 BTC

[RenegadeMind]

When will we hit a critical point at which there's just too many lost bitcoins due to someone loosing their wallets, dying or corrupted hard drives and etc? At some point this is bound to happen right?
I know that for the time being, low circulating supply means that the coin will increase in value but how low can it get before it starts to give diminishing returns and actually inflict damage to the system? What would happen to crypto in general if all of the coins and altcoins will suffer the same ending?

You've got an ill-founded concern there.

Once you learn more about the crypto economy, it will make more sense.

People losing their coins simply isn't a very large issue.

[boboking]

Yes, there is a lot of Bitcoin that is lost forever specially in the early year of its creation but remember back then the price was $.001 and they can mine Bitcoin very easily. People who have mined Bitcoin was basically not that concern on their mined Bitcoin but nowadays since a Bitcoin costs a fortune people who actually have it are protecting it with their lives. People are very careful now with their wallets. With that said I do not think there will come a time that the lost Bitcoin will not effect us.

[DJCanh]

In the future, BTC can be a dead coin
Like some social networks, when too many users died here

[MrZ28s]

In the future, BTC can be a dead coin
Like some social networks, when too many users died here

Is that so? So why are you here then if you think BTC won't have a good future? Or you are expecting some of these altcoins will take over bitcoin at the top? Very possible though while crypto currencies are still struggling to make it into mainstream.

[pendekar cinta]

It will definitely make a person frustrated and difficult to gain an advantage but the risk the merchants fear is the loss of an asset in large numbers so that this event will make them bad luck.

[Hell-raiser]

When will we hit a critical point at which there's just too many lost bitcoins due to someone loosing their wallets, dying or corrupted hard drives and etc? At some point this is bound to happen right?
I know that for the time being, low circulating supply means that the coin will increase in value but how low can it get before it starts to give diminishing returns and actually inflict damage to the system? What would happen to crypto in general if all of the coins and altcoins will suffer the same ending?

In effect, we are already there. Really, how do you know that a few million bitcoins sitting in wallets without movement aren't already lost? We don't know that and they may not in fact be lost, but for the market they are lost if they don't move for some time as the market treats them as lost. These coins aren't being traded which pretty much means they don't participate in the process known as market price discovery. Also, you can look at this matter from another angle or even from the other side of the equation altogether. As the maximum number of bitcoins to be mined doesn't change, you can think of rising demand as effectively diminishing the number of coins at the same price.

In this way, you can think of altcoins (including wannabe Bitcoins like Bitcoin Cash, Gold, etc) as expanding the supply of real bitcoins.

[biuifyus]

The lost bitcoins are like gold bars that sink to the bottom of the ocean, banknotes will burn down, and bitcoin will disappear forever from the Internet. By 2040, the total number of bitcoins will reach 21 million, but the number of bitcoins that can be traded and used will be much lower.

[tothanhtuan]

I really relate to this. I bulged a disk in my next last year and narrowly avoided surgery. At its worst I slept 10 hours in a week. Chronic nerve pain turned into a useless arm from a completely atrophied tricep. It was terrifying and gave me an entirely new appreciation for being able to sleep a full night, open a door with my right arm, let alone do anything physical that I love like ski, workout, or play soccer.

[MyIdeas]

When will we hit a critical point at which there's just too many lost bitcoins due to someone loosing their wallets, dying or corrupted hard drives and etc? At some point this is bound to happen right?
I know that for the time being, low circulating supply means that the coin will increase in value but how low can it get before it starts to give diminishing returns and actually inflict damage to the system? What would happen to crypto in general if all of the coins and altcoins will suffer the same ending?

Right now not mush people are losing their bitcoin because of losing access to their bitcoin wallets as they are now more careful for their coins so it means that not much of the bitcoins will be lost. Only in the past many coins were lost as in that time it was not much valuable and so in that time people not cared much for their coins but now they care much more.

[Gozie51]

When will we hit a critical point at which there's just too many lost bitcoins due to someone loosing their wallets, dying or corrupted hard drives and etc? At some point this is bound to happen right?
I know that for the time being, low circulating supply means that the coin will increase in value but how low can it get before it starts to give diminishing returns and actually inflict damage to the system? What would happen to crypto in general if all of the coins and altcoins will suffer the same ending?

First, with my little knowledge so far, I don't think corrupted hard drive can lead to lose of bitcoin. If you have your wallet seed or password, all you need do is to login via another gadgets.

Then for the lose of bitcoin either because of death etc, it will lead to continue shortage.

[rickadone]

When will we hit a critical point at which there's just too many lost bitcoins due to someone loosing their wallets, dying or corrupted hard drives and etc? At some point this is bound to happen right?
I know that for the time being, low circulating supply means that the coin will increase in value but how low can it get before it starts to give diminishing returns and actually inflict damage to the system? What would happen to crypto in general if all of the coins and altcoins will suffer the same ending?

You've got an ill-founded concern there.

Once you learn more about the crypto economy, it will make more sense.

People losing their coins simply isn't a very large issue.

Large issue is even quantitative as that means there could still be some issue even though little, but for the bitcoin space at large, there is no issue at all and could only be an issue, probably an emotional one for those who misplaced theirs knowing how wealthy they would have been till date only if they ended up keeping their share of the global cake.

The only thing here is over time, we will end up having a few in circulations which is going to be minus the lost ones and those ones are simply gone forever unless the owner or someone luckily bumps into any of the private key.

[futuret]

When will we hit a critical point at which there's just too many lost bitcoins due to someone loosing their wallets, dying or corrupted hard drives and etc? At some point this is bound to happen right?
I know that for the time being, low circulating supply means that the coin will increase in value but how low can it get before it starts to give diminishing returns and actually inflict damage to the system? What would happen to crypto in general if all of the coins and altcoins will suffer the same ending?

Right now not mush people are losing their bitcoin because of losing access to their bitcoin wallets as they are now more careful for their coins so it means that not much of the bitcoins will be lost. Only in the past many coins were lost as in that time it was not much valuable and so in that time people not cared much for their coins but now they care much more.

People were more careless with bitcoin. Most of the holders had an attitude of ignorance regarding bitcoin. They didn’t believe in his strength so not bothered themselves with taking mature steps. Now that everyone has its true strength, nobody wants to lose their bitcoin out of their sloppy and casual nature. But the bitter and sad truth is, we have lost many coins and they can’t be recovered.

[naidray]

bitcoin will never disappear, bitcoin will add forward and also grows

No one is talking about bitcoin disappearing here bro. We are talking about the bitcoins that have been lost in the sense that the owners either threw them away without knowing how much the value is going to be in the future or they just could not find their private key or what they stored it as. Obviously, bitcoin is here to stay but those coins are gone and gone forever and the only way to ever get them is to be able to get the private keys to such wallet which we all know it is not something that can be retrieved once it is lost.

[gambitcoin53]

When will we hit a critical point at which there's just too many lost bitcoins due to someone loosing their wallets, dying or corrupted hard drives and etc? At some point this is bound to happen right?
I know that for the time being, low circulating supply means that the coin will increase in value but how low can it get before it starts to give diminishing returns and actually inflict damage to the system? What would happen to crypto in general if all of the coins and altcoins will suffer the same ending?

One, it is imperative to think that loosing bitcoin at the same time is impossible,  it is unlikely to happen, it will not affect the overall status of bitcoin, if the supply of bitcoin is diminishing, it maybe due to less mining and maybe some big whales are hodling it. Im sure they are setting their limits by doing so, for bitcoin not to exceed to the lowest. We all know what will happen if the supply is low, the price will go high. And when it happen, the price is so high that no one can buy it. So it must be balanced by silling from time to time.

[almersyn]

When will we hit a critical point at which there's just too many lost bitcoins due to someone loosing their wallets, dying or corrupted hard drives and etc? At some point this is bound to happen right?
I know that for the time being, low circulating supply means that the coin will increase in value but how low can it get before it starts to give diminishing returns and actually inflict damage to the system? What would happen to crypto in general if all of the coins and altcoins will suffer the same ending?

this is bad news if things happen. The protection to save the bitcoin wallet needs to be upgraded because otherwise we will lose our bitcoin wallet