Can lost Bitcoins be traced?

[Abiky]

How is it possible to track lost or stolen Bitcoins? While public addresses are not directly linked to a person's identity, the Blockchain itself is widely transparent. Knowing how many Bitcoin are lost is key towards establishing a correct circulating supply of the cryptocurrency.

As such, there might be a slight miscalculation on the total number of Bitcoin in circulation. If it's a lot more less than what's circulating, then I believe that Bitcoin's price should be higher due to its highly-limited supply.

Nonetheless, do you think it's widely possible to track lost Bitcoins? Your thoughts about this would be highly appreciated for educational/learning purposes.

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[franky1]

no bitcoins are ever 'lost' 'deleted' every coin still exists and is trackable on bitcoins ledger

however there are reasons where some UTXO's (unspent balances) are not moved, used, circulated between users regularly.

all bitcoin can be tracked. there is nothing secret or special. so tracking bitcoins is not a question.
the question should be judged as which bitcoins should be deemed as unusable currently, meaning what defines 'lost'

many come up with different lists such as:
UTXO's linked to public keys which have an obvious sign that the key does not have a private key someone knows of
UTXO's with dust amounts so small,, to move/spend them would cost more than the value of the UTXO
UTXO's coin-age is more than 6 year old

however even these cases are not 100% proof of those coins being 'lost'. thus when tracking the bitcoins that meet the criteria list of what most would deem as 'lost' should not be treated as a guaranteed lost value, but more of a idea/suggestive stat/estimate.

after all some UTXO's are of only 1sat. meaning people dont bother including them in spends. but in a few years if 1 sat is worth more than a chewing gum. people might want to spend it. thus bringing it back into regular use

[CryptoBry]

How is it possible to track lost or stolen Bitcoins? While public addresses are not directly linked to a person's identity, the Blockchain itself is widely transparent. Knowing how many Bitcoin are lost is key towards establishing a correct circulating supply of the cryptocurrency. As such, there might be a slight miscalculation on the total number of Bitcoin in circulation. If it's a lot more less than what's circulating, then I believe that Bitcoin's price should be higher due to its highly-limited supply. Nonetheless, do you think it's widely possible to track lost Bitcoins? Your thoughts about this would be highly appreciated for educational/learning purposes.

I am not expert on the technical aspects of Bitcoin or cryptocurrency for that matter but based on what I read and heard, yes all transactions in the Bitcoin ecosystem can be tracked as the records can easily be found and mined if you have the time. This is the reason why Bitcoin can be considered as transparent but also the reason why this is not so private and anonymous.

[Yakamoto]

How is it possible to track lost or stolen Bitcoins? While public addresses are not directly linked to a person's identity, the Blockchain itself is widely transparent. Knowing how many Bitcoin are lost is key towards establishing a correct circulating supply of the cryptocurrency.

As such, there might be a slight miscalculation on the total number of Bitcoin in circulation. If it's a lot more less than what's circulating, then I believe that Bitcoin's price should be higher due to its highly-limited supply.

Nonetheless, do you think it's widely possible to track lost Bitcoins? Your thoughts about this would be highly appreciated for educational/learning purposes.

I mean you could technically trace lost or stolen Bitcoins provided that you know they were lost/stolen in the first place. If you had to just guess at what transactions involved stolen Bitcoin, then I'd have to say you're SOL for the most part. You can watch any transactions that occur on the network as they happen, with exact sending/receiving information which can be tracked in a spreadsheet. Eventually, it might simply be too difficult to maintain a record of which addresses are actually involved with the original theft, in the case of stolen Bitcoin, but if they're just "lost" then there won't be anything to track aside from watching the public address and it's infinite static movement. At least, until someone can find the private key. Which, statistically, will likely never happen.

[pooya87]

As such, there might be a slight miscalculation on the total number of Bitcoin in circulation. If it's a lot more less than what's circulating, then I believe that Bitcoin's price should be higher due to its highly-limited supply.

whatever the price is at any moment is the result of that real circulating supply, whatever the number is. calculating it isn't going to magically change that. for example if we know for 100% sure the circulating supply is 17 million or if we knew it is 10 million in both cases price would have still been $5448 as it is right now!

[dothebeats]

There's really not a single definite way of knowing which coins are irretrievable and which coins are still in active circulation. There are a lot of cold storages that seemed to be inaccessible but that's just the nature of them, and from face value one cannot tell if it's something that can still be accessed or not. With the tricky nature of how bitcoins work when they are stored, I believe there will never be a tool to know if coins can be considered as an active part of coins in current circulation.

[schyter]

I've seen a calculation of it somewhere with an explanation as to how it was derived.
I will find it and post the link here

[Haunebu]

How is it possible to track lost or stolen Bitcoins? While public addresses are not directly linked to a person's identity, the Blockchain itself is widely transparent. Knowing how many Bitcoin are lost is key towards establishing a correct circulating supply of the cryptocurrency. As such, there might be a slight miscalculation on the total number of Bitcoin in circulation. If it's a lot more less than what's circulating, then I believe that Bitcoin's price should be higher due to its highly-limited supply. Nonetheless, do you think it's widely possible to track lost Bitcoins? Your thoughts about this would be highly appreciated for educational/learning purposes.

I am not expert on the technical aspects of Bitcoin or cryptocurrency for that matter but based on what I read and heard, yes all transactions in the Bitcoin ecosystem can be tracked as the records can easily be found and mined if you have the time. This is the reason why Bitcoin can be considered as transparent but also the reason why this is not so private and anonymous.

I disagree with your statement about privacy. While it is true that all TX on the Bitcoin blockchain can be traced in some way or another, this does not necessarily mean that the user behind those transactions can effectively be traced.

It depends on whether that person filled in his/her KYC etc. Basically, the extent of anonymity comes down to the user at the end of the day.

[Bitinity]

In short, bitcoin transaction can be traced as it is recorded on the network but we cant know who are the one who do the transactions. Even if the one use an exchange then we have no rights to ask to the exchanges to ask who are the one who owns the address as I believe exchanges would reveal the owner of the address unless the police/FBI/NYPD/Government or any legal institution ask about it to the exchanges.
It is obviously complicated to know the person, as the person could use bitcoin mixing services to make it harder to be traced.

[traderethereum]

How do you know if that is a stolen bitcoins?
When bitcoin is sent into one wallet address, you can see the amount of bitcoin. And when that amount is sent to another wallet, you can track in the blockchain, and you will know the wallet address.
But you don't know if that is a stolen bitcoin or not because you don't know who owns that bitcoin.
We could only see the total amount of bitcoin in every wallet address, and that is out of the bitcoin circulation.
Maybe the only thing you can do is you need to find the wallet address with the privkey's so you can access the wallet and use the bitcoin.
But maybe I am wrong because I am not a specialist in bitcoin, so I am sorry.

[Pursuer]

I've seen a calculation of it somewhere with an explanation as to how it was derived.
I will find it and post the link here

there is no updated version of it created by anyone. in early years that the number of users was small, someone started a topic here asking everyone to add what they know is truly lost. most of the comments were from people who lost their private keys which is not "truly lost".

[franky1]

As such, there might be a slight miscalculation on the total number of Bitcoin in circulation. If it's a lot more less than what's circulating, then I believe that Bitcoin's price should be higher due to its highly-limited supply.

whatever the price is at any moment is the result of that real circulating supply, whatever the number is. calculating it isn't going to magically change that. for example if we know for 100% sure the circulating supply is 17 million or if we knew it is 10 million in both cases price would have still been $5448 as it is right now!

17mill or 10mill or 5mill coins regularly moving through the network based on UTXO set stats has nothing to do with the supply/limited supply/demand of coins on the markets that give coins the price.

firstly most exchanges daily volume is only a few hundred thousands. which is usually a false stat in itself as many times its the same coins day traded, arbitraged, rinsed and repeated multiple times, so the actual coin numbers involved in market prices can be just a few thousand coins a day.

secondly the price of an order at any minute is not judged on the thousands/millions of coins of a market. but the number of coins of just a few orderlines near each other, which is normally only a few coins

[KonstantinosM]

Every single satoshi can be traced. There is a small amount of bitcoin that has been "burned" and it's provably un-spendable.

Only about 2,500 Bitcoins have been burned.

Then you can add to these coins, coins which people have claimed they've lost the keys to. I suppose a lot of people mined and lost a lot of bitcoin in the early days, without backing up the key. Many cases being trashed hard drives and even deleted wallets.

I'm sure the second number is huge in comparison.


You can probably get an estimate with coinage. Or by making a best of by estimating the rate of lost coins.

And finally there is dust. Bitcoin amounts so small that to move them would cost more satoshis than there are in the UTXO.


All in all I'd say the number is at least 1,000,000.

[The Cryptovator]

You could trace bitcoin until its mixed by any mixer. But you can't trace the person who is holding real time if you don't know the owner of address. Person can't be traced. If you know my bitcoin address then you will able to trace me otherwise its not possible. That's why bitcoin is most popular and black market encourage to use it. And that's the one of most important reasons why world's government don't want to accept it officially.

[ice18]

You can traced every bitcoin transactions because its on a public ledger and everyone can see it via blockchain explorer however if you want to calculate the circulating supply including the lost/stolen bitcoins to make it more accurate how many the current supply is I think its pretty hard considering we do not know if a particular bitcoin is lost or stolen.

[richminded]

Well you can track stolen bitcoin by looking at the blockchain record and looking which address was it moved. However, the problem is there's no way to reveal who have stolen it, you can only track the activity.

That's the best part of blockchain technology and also a worst scenario that can happen to you. It can be tracked but it can never be recover not unless you know who owns the wallet. A lots bitcoin is a totally lost and already part of history, that can also help the price to go up high as the supply gets limited every year. Don't lose your bitcoin, protect it as you can and treasure it because the best value of bitcoin is yet to come.

[jak3]

some part of these transactions can be tracked with some analysis but if they are not being taken into real-world then no, there is no end and bitcoins are still in the chain and are not considered to be lost. only those coins which can not be touched and their owners lost their accesses to their private keys are real lost coins. but what if someone actually tried to crack into one of these private keys no matter how much time it takes for a high powered beast to crack these, they still have lots of BTC in them. these locked addresses can be like the future treasure hunt for kids.

[funchiestz]

I know that in theory all BTC's can be traceable from at the beginning to today. Because the Bitcoin network has a fully transparent and traceable structure. All hash storing miners computer. If someone joins the network now, then that computer starts to work first downloading that history completely. So if you want to track any BTC moves for example at the second block, you can track it with blockchain block explorer easily. But don't forget there are a lot of transactions.

[rijaljun]

The blockchain brings anything in and out, everything that have been done in the past is always traceable. A lost money form hack or scam can be traced by anyone. Therefore, and exchanges that provide local fiat deposit/withdawal always implement KYC process to avoid money laundering. It's just about time for scammer or hacker to be in jail.

[gilangIDR]

How is it possible to track lost or stolen Bitcoins? While public addresses are not directly linked to a person's identity, the Blockchain itself is widely transparent. Knowing how many Bitcoin are lost is key towards establishing a correct circulating supply of the cryptocurrency.

As such, there might be a slight miscalculation on the total number of Bitcoin in circulation. If it's a lot more less than what's circulating, then I believe that Bitcoin's price should be higher due to its highly-limited supply.

Nonetheless, do you think it's widely possible to track lost Bitcoins? Your thoughts about this would be highly appreciated for educational/learning purposes.

Some events can be tracked because transactions can be seen in full in the chain. But now there are a lot of Bitcoin mixer services, so transactions cannot be done. This kind of thing happens naturally because basically a system is not perfect. As a layman, I will agree that a lost or stolen Bitcoin transaction will be quite difficult to track if the transaction has gone through various processes.