How many BTC is in circulation?

[RapTarX]

From Coinmarketcap, there are 17,530,775 BTC available in circulation. But what is the actual amount excluding the lost BTC? How much BTC have been lost until now? Is there any reported/proofed list of lost BTC amount/addresses?

[1714757067]

1714757067

[OmegaStarScream]

I managed to find this but I would say It's probably far from being accurate because losses are not always reported, and you can't really make the difference between a wallet not being touched in purpose (hodling) or a wallet that has funds that can be accessed anymore.

[boyptc]

I've searched for the same articles and most of them says that it was around 4 million bitcoins.

This latest article said around 20%  of bitcoin's supply --> https://www.newsbtc.com/2019/01/10/bitcoin-supply-lost-forever/

[karman383]

We cannot know the exact number of bitcoins that have been lost or not in circulation, but we can estimate from the total supply and circulating in the coinmarketcap. Thank you.

[gentlemand]

The only ones we can be 100% certain of are those sent to burn addresses which is a few thousand. Beyond that we have to take everyone's word for the others.

I don't buy these figures of 20-25% of the supply being lost. I'm sure it's plenty. I'm also sure there are many coins that haven't moved for several years that are fully accessible. For some reason not moving for a while is enough for others to declare them lost.

[Kopyleft]

It is impossible to know the exact figures of lost bitcoins, you would get estimates if you search it up, but they would be off and likely inaccurate.
Not all losses are reported. Some lost coins could be recovered in the future.
You can only go with the reported cases of lost bitcoins

[figmentofmyass]

I don't buy these figures of 20-25% of the supply being lost. I'm sure it's plenty. I'm also sure there are many coins that haven't moved for several years that are fully accessible. For some reason not moving for a while is enough for others to declare them lost.

i guess there's only so much analysis you can do on a public ledger. at some point, it becomes a guessing game.

20-25% definitely sound like an overstatement, but honestly it sounds possible a couple decades from now. we're still at a stage when users are largely not securing coins properly. after every bear cycle ends and a new bull cycle begins, i feel like lots of old investors come back to find their coins are lost. that's easy to do after a multi-year bear when you thought bitcoin was dead---forget a password, reformat a computer, chuck out that old hard drive that's on the fritz anyway. like this guy: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/bitcoin-value-james-howells-newport-landfill-hard-drive-campbell

[btyco]

Even if there wasn't any lost 21 million is a small amount considering the demand that is going to follow as it goes mainstream. 1 million is locked by satoshi, and a few million lost when it was worthless. 4 million sounds about right for number of unclaimable bitcoins

[VitKoyn]

From Coinmarketcap, there are 17,530,775 BTC available in circulation. But what is the actual amount excluding the lost BTC? How much BTC have been lost until now? Is there any reported/proofed list of lost BTC amount/addresses?

There's no way to figure out how many Bitcoins are still in circulation and how many are lost or stuck on an address that are non accessible anymore. In this article https://www.ccn.com/6-million-bitcoin-is-lost-or-stolen-should-the-real-value-of-btc-higher it says that there are 4 million lost and 2 million stolen Bitcoins but I doubt that this is accurate because there's no possible way to to accurately know the amount of Bitcoins that are stuck forever, and not all lost and stolen Bitcoin are being reported on news or being featured on articles. Also we cannot conclude that Bitcoins are lost if it hasn't been moved from an address to another for a very long time.

[Halmater]

A wallet that is rarely processed and a lost wallet cannot be fully distinguished, so they may be hesitant to say something about it. I don't think anyone has a clue about the number of lost wallets.

[miropp]

If we consider lost wallets for which there was no transaction since the first serious growth of the exchange rate (01.03.2013), then in total these wallets contain about 3 million bitcoins. This is important to consider when assessing the situation in the market: actually in circulation at the moment is about 14 million bitcoins to 7 milliard people population, not 17 million, as they say on the crypto-exchanges. But this cant be considered reliable data. The exact number of lost bitcoins no one knows.

[boled]

Total Bitcoins in circulation:                                             17,531,188
Total Bitcoins to ever be produced:                                        21,000,000
Percentage of total Bitcoins mined:                                        83.48%
Total Bitcoins left to mine:                                               3,468,813
Total Bitcoins left to mine until next blockhalf:                          843,813
Bitcoin price (USD):                                                       $3,692.60
Market capitalization (USD):                                               $64,735,697,136.04
Bitcoins generated per day:                                                1,800
Bitcoin inflation rate per annum:                                          3.82%
Bitcoin inflation rate per annum at next block halving event:              1.80%
Bitcoin inflation per day (USD):                                           $6,646,684
Bitcoin inflation until next blockhalf event based on current price (USD): $3,115,863,682
Total blocks:                                                              562,495
Blocks until mining reward is halved:                                      67,505
Total number of block reward halvings:                                     2
Approximate block generation time:                                         10.00 minutes
Approximate blocks generated per day:                                      144
Difficulty:                                                                6,061,518,831,027
Hash rate:                                                                 41.44 Exahashes/s

_{source: Bitcoin Block Reward Halving Countdown
numbers keep changing every second, to see the latest status please visit the source website.}

[OuterHeaven_]

Wow, there's alot of good information in this thread. Gonna keep a close eye on this further.

[kxz1498]

Total Bitcoins in circulation:                                             17,531,188
Total Bitcoins to ever be produced:                                        21,000,000
Percentage of total Bitcoins mined:                                        83.48%
Total Bitcoins left to mine:                                               3,468,813
Total Bitcoins left to mine until next blockhalf:                          843,813
Bitcoin price (USD):                                                       $3,692.60
Market capitalization (USD):                                               $64,735,697,136.04
Bitcoins generated per day:                                                1,800
Bitcoin inflation rate per annum:                                          3.82%
Bitcoin inflation rate per annum at next block halving event:              1.80%
Bitcoin inflation per day (USD):                                           $6,646,684
Bitcoin inflation until next blockhalf event based on current price (USD): $3,115,863,682
Total blocks:                                                              562,495
Blocks until mining reward is halved:                                      67,505
Total number of block reward halvings:                                     2
Approximate block generation time:                                         10.00 minutes
Approximate blocks generated per day:                                      144
Difficulty:                                                                6,061,518,831,027
Hash rate:                                                                 41.44 Exahashes/s

_{source: Bitcoin Block Reward Halving Countdown}

This doesn't count coins lost/missing/stolen/etc.

[squatter]

I remember Jameson Lopp (of statoshi.info) said he did a study on this and came to similar numbers as Chainalysis.

I don't buy these figures of 20-25% of the supply being lost.

It's worth noting that Chainalysis put the estimate at 2.78 million - 3.79 million. "Nearly 4 million" is what made the headlines. They also included the early "Satoshi" coins in those numbers, which they estimate = about 1 million bitcoins.

If we take the low end and table the Satoshi discussion, that's around 10%.

[gentlemand]

It's worth noting that Chainalysis put the estimate at 2.78 million - 3.79 million. "Nearly 4 million" is what made the headlines. They also included the early "Satoshi" coins in those numbers, which they estimate = about 1 million bitcoins.

If we take the low end and table the Satoshi discussion, that's around 10%.

What was their criteria beyond the coins not having moved? Beyond burner addresses and publicly known events like that Polish exchange that deleted its private keys that's all they have to go own in most cases. I've got coins that haven't moved for over five years. They certainly ain't lost.

[jerrison]

apart from the young man who said his girlfriend threw away his hard drive containing about seven thousand five hundred encrypted bitcoin there has not been anyone i know of in the world or the media space i know that has complained of missing bitcoin in any part of the world. so i will say the total bitcoin in circulation is actually the current total minus the missing 7500 that is missing.

[denzkilim]

I managed to find this but I would say It's probably far from being accurate because losses are not always reported, and you can't really make the difference between a wallet not being touched in purpose (hodling) or a wallet that has funds that can be accessed anymore.

You're correct, there is no actual proof or evidence about those lost Bitcoins that are stagnant in an untouched wallet and no one knows the actual number of lost Bitcoins in wallets, people just calculate it with any data that they gather and it is not accurate. Even if we get the information about the exact amount of those lost Bitcoins in wallets there is no way to recover it and it will still be lost forever.

[figmentofmyass]

What was their criteria beyond the coins not having moved? Beyond burner addresses and publicly known events like that Polish exchange that deleted its private keys that's all they have to go own in most cases. I've got coins that haven't moved for over five years. They certainly ain't lost.

have you ever moved the bcash or other forks associated with your keys? apparently they mined a lot of data from that:

Chainalysis’s overall methodology is confidential, but a spokesperson shared certain details about how the company assesses which bitcoins are lost. An important clue comes when there is a “fork” in the blockchain, such as the one this summer which led to the creation of a bitcoin clone known as Bitcoin Cash. Such events can lead to the owners of wallets that have been inactive for years to conduct a transaction, providing an opportunity for statistical analysis.

These sort of clues help inform the Chainalysis figure for the “hodler” category—wallets belonging to people who got into bitcoin before it hit the big time, and which represent the biggest source of uncertainty as to whether bitcoins are lost or just being hoarded.

they also mention "scraping the Internet for reports of lost coins" and things like that. logically, there should be some model to account for death and things like that too, but i don't know how they'd begin building it.

[boled]

Total Bitcoins in circulation:                                             17,531,188
Total Bitcoins to ever be produced:                                        21,000,000
Percentage of total Bitcoins mined:                                        83.48%
Total Bitcoins left to mine:                                               3,468,813
Total Bitcoins left to mine until next blockhalf:                          843,813
Bitcoin price (USD):                                                       $3,692.60
Market capitalization (USD):                                               $64,735,697,136.04
Bitcoins generated per day:                                                1,800
Bitcoin inflation rate per annum:                                          3.82%
Bitcoin inflation rate per annum at next block halving event:              1.80%
Bitcoin inflation per day (USD):                                           $6,646,684
Bitcoin inflation until next blockhalf event based on current price (USD): $3,115,863,682
Total blocks:                                                              562,495
Blocks until mining reward is halved:                                      67,505
Total number of block reward halvings:                                     2
Approximate block generation time:                                         10.00 minutes
Approximate blocks generated per day:                                      144
Difficulty:                                                                6,061,518,831,027
Hash rate:                                                                 41.44 Exahashes/s

_{source: Bitcoin Block Reward Halving Countdown
numbers keep changing every second, to see the latest status please visit the source website.}

This doesn't count coins lost/missing/stolen/etc.

of course not, we never know the exact number is missing, the blockchain only records everything in the chain, but it seems that it doesn't record when someone loses bitcoin because of forgetting passwords, private keys, system market errors or stolen balances, then the bitcoin remains in the blockchain, just move wallet or even just stay in the same wallet. If at this time many do research, they only have approximate numbers, not the right number.