Bitcoin Lost Coins: Approximate Number That Cannot Be Retrieved

[JollyGood]

Does anybody have a URL/link to any statistics showing approximately how many Bitcoins might be lost because of lost passwords, hard drive failures/losses and so on...

As of today (8th July 2018) there are approximately 17,138,425 Bitcoins listed on CMC as in "circulation" but that means those that have been mined to be more precise but approximately how many of those have been lost?

[pixie85]

17 million is not really in circulation because this number includes coins that were never used like those owned by Satoshi.
There are research that estimate the number of lost coins. It's possible that the number of lost coins is close to 4 million.
https://www.rt.com/business/414782-millions-bitcoins-lost-for-good/

[JollyGood]

17 million is not really in circulation because this number includes coins that were never used like those owned by Satoshi.
There are research that estimate the number of lost coins. It's possible that the number of lost coins is close to 4 million.
https://www.rt.com/business/414782-millions-bitcoins-lost-for-good/

Interesting information from the link you provided. The article was written in January 2018 so can be considered far more acurate than several from years before.

The estimated numbers involved show that the number of lost Bitcoins per annual basis is around 2% of all coins, that is a lot when keeping in account the value of Bitcoin. Probably most of those losses are down to newbies learning the ropes trial-by-error basis.

The other thing to note would be the number of addresses that have a balance but have not been touched for years. Of the many reasons included could be that passwords or keys have been lost/forgotten.

Here is the list: https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html

[JollyGood]

Anybody have information or links they can provide?

[Bervelukan]

No one knows the certainty of bitcoin loss due to paswod loss or forget paswod, but I think a lot of bitcoin is missing and I think it's almost 1 million bitcoin.

[amacar2]

No its hard to exactly measure the total number of lost coin but we can assume atleast 30-40% of the coin that were mined during early days were lost because many of the miners at that time have just mined with their computer for few days and left it without properly backing up their bitcoin wallet.

In overall 10% of total mined coin till now might been lost, but these are just my approximate figures.

[JollyGood]

No one knows the certainty of bitcoin loss due to paswod loss or forget paswod, but I think a lot of bitcoin is missing and I think it's almost 1 million bitcoin.

If that is true then represents 1 out of 17 Bitcoins, I would have though the figure much higher

[jademaxsuy]

Does anybody have a URL/link to any statistics showing approximately how many Bitcoins might be lost because of lost passwords, hard drive failures/losses and so on...

As of today (8th July 2018) there are approximately 17,138,425 Bitcoins listed on CMC as in "circulation" but that means those that have been mined to be more precise but approximately how many of those have been lost?

Well this could be hardly traced because all of the transactions being done and people involving on it could not be identify if that bitcoin is lost even if it is being hold for a long time it does not mean that bitcoin is loss already. However, I think it could be recorded if there are individuals to report about their lost on bitcoin holdings.

[pooya87]

The other thing to note would be the number of addresses that have a balance but have not been touched for years. Of the many reasons included could be that passwords or keys have been lost/forgotten.

that's the problem with these estimates, they are purely guesswork.
there is an equal chance (if not higher) that the early adopters who own these funds are still holding it and more. for instance someone from 2009 can have one address with 1000BTC in it as his cold wallet and a hot wallet with 1-10BTC in it using THAT for his hot wallet spending,trading,...

for instance i started with bitcoin in 2014 and i have funds in an address from that time that i have not touched yet and won't touch it for another 10 years probably. so far it is about 4 years of them not being touched, that doesn't make them "lost".

[JollyGood]

Well this could be hardly traced because all of the transactions being done and people involving on it could not be identify if that bitcoin is lost even if it is being hold for a long time it does not mean that bitcoin is loss already. However, I think it could be recorded if there are individuals to report about their lost on bitcoin holdings.

Yes lost coins could not be traced but we are talking about estimates.