Is anybody tracking lost bitcoins?

[Twinkledoe]

It was two years back. I checked my asset in my wallet but did log out. Just forgotten. Later i checked my wllet few hours back and found  my wallet being emty. Was reallly shocked, but did not understand how that disappeared. No transaction was seen. This was the lost. Around $100 was hacked. from then on, i am bit safe activating 2FA authentication

That might be a very good hacker.

And since the OP said that he has no intentions of recovering those lost bitcoins, I don't think it is smart move to calculate those number because his data will always be incomplete. Maybe he will get a portion of it but not really the entire picture.

[1714612698]

1714612698

[mich]

I would imagine this being a very tedious task.
Thete are so many satoshis being sent around the clock. 
Would be tough to monitor all of these transactions. 

[nc50lc]

-snip-
Was reallly shocked, but did not understand how that disappeared. No transaction was seen. This was the lost. Around $100 was hacked. from then on, i am bit safe activating 2FA authentication

Wait, what? What client was it?
If there's no transaction listed in the history or from blockexplorers when you entered your address(es), there's a chance that you're not hacked. Could be another wallet file or something else.

Even today, you can double check if you're really hacked or not by checking that particular wallet's addresses in any blockexplorer website,
try it.

[valta4065]

there are also cases, other than the owner holding it for a long time, maybe the owner has died but does not pass on the private key to anyone. of course we cannot access it without knowing the private key. and it seems to reduce supply

Exactly. Which is exactly why it is impossible to know how many bitcoin is lost or moved out of circulation. Some said 1 million, another said 3 million. It's not worth the effort to know it imo, let's just assume 21 million as the max circulating supply. It doesn't matter how many coins were lost because Bitcoin is still going to be valuable even if all 21 millions are in circulation.

Difference between 1 and 3 million lost bitcoins is significant. Supply does have impact on value so when you try to evaluate how much one bitcoin should be worth, you shoud take supply into account. And 3 million lost coins reduces available supply by 17% of what is official supply (17.5M).

[shesheboy]

I would imagine this being a very tedious task.
Thete are so many satoshis being sent around the clock.  
Would be tough to monitor all of these transactions.  

and why the heck would you do that ? you are not being paid tracking lost bitcoins  .  you will only track bitcoins if its lost in your own account because you are concern if who really done to you but its impossible to unmask its identity by only basing on its wallet addresses  . in the online world anyone can pretend to be someone else  . hacker will just use different names and profiles  but most of all you cannot recover your coins anymore no matter how you investigate  because btc transactions are i reversible  .

[Kakmakr]

Well, you can track some of the coins that was "burned" on purpose. Those Burn addresses are public knowledge, so you can have a centralized website with links to all the burn addresses. Here are one article that dealt with "lost" bitcoins.   http://fortune.com/2017/11/25/lost-bitcoins/

These are just a small fraction of the known losses and I think there are a lot more that was simply not reported. <People who are too ashamed to admit it>  

[fauzan Ichsan]

I would imagine this being a very tedious task.
Thete are so many satoshis being sent around the clock.  
Would be tough to monitor all of these transactions.  

and why the heck would you do that ? you are not being paid tracking lost bitcoins  .  you will only track bitcoins if its lost in your own account because you are concern if who really done to you but its impossible to unmask its identity by only basing on its wallet addresses  . in the online world anyone can pretend to be someone else  . hacker will just use different names and profiles  but most of all you cannot recover your coins anymore no matter how you investigate  because btc transactions are i reversible  .

indeed this is as if the deed is in vain, after the account is hacked, of course the fate is over. I think their identity is indeed not genuine, if we do not have the authority like the police, it certainly will not produce results

[PlusOne88]

I think many are doing the same work. But should you do it as well then it is most appreciated. I know how hard it is to make a good list of all lost bitcoins but I think you can do good on this. Just keep the research going and don't worry about the same threads. Your work will serve as a confirmation or an additional information to the previous works about lost bitcoin keys.

[sheenshane]

Try to check the MarketPlace section and Web wallets, they actually post their wallet with a number of lost bitcoins. But usually, lost bitcoin will not be able to be retrieved and usually been stolen by someone. But as the Bitcoin had a very volatile market, it is nearly impossible to know how much people have lost in their wallets and that is very obvious.

Technically speaking, bitcoin's price was very small and the market skyrocketed so that is the reason why it is hard to know how much a person lost.

[awawo]

hi,

i am just collecting info about lost bitcoins.

i want addresses with lost private keys / no private keys / or any other addresses with unavailable bitcoins

is anybody can point me if such data set is already exist or just post such addresses here.

thank you

You can find it on the services section, often users used to post their bitcoin addresses from which they've lost bitcoin and the receiver end. The owner of the respective bitcoin address will provide with certain percentage of the lost funds if you were able to recover it. Till day no successful recover have got posted in the forum.

tanks for it. i will try this section.
i have no intention to recover lost bitcoins. i just want to calculate unavailable bitcoins and probably write public report about it.

Writing public report about lost bitcoin is it for research purpose because no one have been able to recovered lost bitcoin in history so venting into that may be an efforts in futility. You can visit the service section some users use to post they wallet with lost found in there looking for help. Good luck

[kkaroul4]

I would imagine this being a very tedious task.
Thete are so many satoshis being sent around the clock. 
Would be tough to monitor all of these transactions. 

absolutely right and there has been a lot of loss of bitcoin but it can't be found anymore because every day the transaction is so many that it makes it difficult for us to track

[el kaka22]

People talking about how it is impossible to hack a wallet probably don't know the power some hackers have that does such things. Of course it doesn't worth it to hack someones account if it is protected by double or even triple layers or even if it moves so having a ledger nano prevents almost all hackers unless its a social hack where they learn many things about it and hack it easily instead of the brute hacking.

Moreover, if a wallet is out there and not touched and not moved and not looking like it will be moved and the control is on no one (lost) than a hacker can try it and I know it would require too much computation but have seen people hack places like pentagon and fbi so I doubt it would be any harder than that, it will of course take too much time and effort but it is not "impossible", it may take maybe 19 months (number is made up) but still can be doable.

[daarul50]

Services that use blockchain technology are all anonymous. When we lose bitcoin, maybe we can trace the recipient's bitcoin address, but we can't know the owner of the address because of the anonymous nature. It's hard for us to track the owner of a bitcoin wallet address if we don't know the private key of the owner of the wallet and we can't report the loss because none of the authorities investigated and supervised the transaction of cryptocurrency.

[slackcryptoz]

I keeps track of my bitcoins which weren't useful anymore. It got caught in a wallet that was taken control by a scammer who cheated me getting the recovery phrase. Whenever I go to the wallet I used to track the funds that I missed, but now it has crossed several wallets. We can have an eye, but missing the recovery phrase lets the wallet go under someone's control.

[finaleshot2016]

What are you gonna do? You will breach the account to have an access to it?

It's theoretically can do/possible to have an access to a lost address but it's hard to encrypt this address and it may take more brute force action. Technically there's called bit in each addresses; 256, 160, 32 and the difficulty of encryption it depends on the passphrase. According to some records, 256bit is more easier to be encrypted and it's very vulnerable.

[mersal]

hi,

i am just collecting info about lost bitcoins.

i want addresses with lost private keys / no private keys / or any other addresses with unavailable bitcoins

is anybody can point me if such data set is already exist or just post such addresses here.

thank you

yes a lots of previous investors especially when Bitcoin has invented to this world at that time so many Bitcoins will not be valued and then they are not care about them but still now it's being developed a huge so many people searching for their wallets and private keys so definitely it needed to make some changes about finding them easily.

[Whosdaddy]

i am just collecting info about lost bitcoins.

i want addresses with lost private keys / no private keys / or any other addresses with unavailable bitcoins

is anybody can point me if such data set is already exist or just post such addresses here.

There is nothing you can do about lost bitcoins and I don’t think there is anything you can do about them. There is no services or such that tracks lost bitcoins and you can’t know it’s lost until the owner of the address admits that it is lost and they no longer have access to it, and even after that, there is no way to recover those lost bitcoins as long as the owner cannot remember the key they used to lock it.

there has been a lot of loss of bitcoin but it can't be found anymore because every day the transaction is so many that it makes it difficult for us to track

The funniest thing is that there is no way to tell if the Bitcoin in an address is lost or being saved for a rainy day. The only way you can know they are lost is that the users comes open about it. Just like that of James Howells of Wales that lost about 7,500 bitcoins (damn!)and there was no way for him to recover it. That would he worth a lot of money by now. I also see a lot of people at the services section of the forum that post their addresses with lost bitcoins in it and there haven’t been any success in recovering those coins till date.

[Crypdon]

There is the guy that lost millions of dollars worth by throwing his computer in the trash. The dead guy owner of an exchange lost a lot, and a million locked in satoshi's wallet. I think only satoshi's wallet is being monitored so see if it really is inactive

[whirlcoin]

I would imagine this being a very tedious task.
Thete are so many satoshis being sent around the clock. 
Would be tough to monitor all of these transactions. 

yes you are right and lots of it kind where to be in this world without any support because they are lost by someone so finding all of them will be very difficult and making it again as a new currency will not be possible in many times.

[shoreno]

There is the guy that lost millions of dollars worth by throwing his computer in the trash.

ouch that was sad but thats a cool story at the same time  . the guy might be rich enough because his been able to throw away his computer on the trash but the worst part is he forgot that he store his bitcoin on it  but that can still be recoverable if he will only trace up the garbage collector and claim his computer's hardware atleast .

The dead guy owner of an exchange lost a lot, and a million locked in satoshi's wallet. I think only satoshi's wallet is being monitored so see if it really is inactive

the wallet will be inactive if the guy is already dead but if he share's his wallet to someone ( ex. his family ) then its possible for it to become active as they will open and make a transaction with it .