How many Bitcoins are left?

[aardvark15]

There have been almost 18 million Bitcoins created. We know that some have been lost over the years and can’t ever be recovered except potentially with quantum computers. 

18 million - lost coins = ?

My question is how many Bitcoins are left, which is really a question of how many have been lost?

[OmegaStarScream]

According to Chainalysis (A blockchain analysis company), it's 4 Million coins (2017). This is clearly an estimation though. There is no way to know the accurate number.

[Lucius]

Almost is not an exact expression, at any given moment we know the exact number of mined Bitcoins, this is public data available on lots of websites, and it says that there is 18,067,062 BTC at the moment.

Here's a little task for you if you want to know how many Bitcoins are left - 21 000 000 - 18 067 062 =?

And as for the lost coins, we can only guess at that, but the higher the number, the better it is for all of us. Satoshi says about lost Bitcoins that they “make everyone else’s coins worth slightly more”, one should not look at it from the negative side (except those who lost coins/private keys).

[POM]

That is an interesting question... and I happened to read an article about that last week.

According to Coinmetrics on their article (https://coinmetrics.substack.com/p/coin-metrics-state-of-the-network-d2e), by block 600,000 there were at least 1,500,000 coins lost... and that can happen for several reasons, in different magnitudes: you have the 50 genesis coins, stolen or zombie coins, duplicate transactions (yes, duplicate), unclaimed rewards and so on...

It is hard to say for sure, of course. We don't know if the zombie coins are just being strongly hodled or if they are in fact lost.

One way or another... interesting read. Highly recommend! 

[mohamadreza bagheri]

18,067,075

[aardvark15]

According to Chainalysis (A blockchain analysis company), it's 4 Million coins (2017). This is clearly an estimation though. There is no way to know the accurate number.

If that estimate is close to accurate, then effectively there are only about 14 million Bitcoins in circulation or that can be put in circulation.  This is beneficial to know because it supports the idea of Bitcoin scarcity.

[ReiMomo]

This is an interesting topic but no one really knows the accurate answer.
According to this analyst article about this year, there are 2,932,937.5 bitcoins left to be mined, and there are currently 18,067,062.5 bitcoins in existence. https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/how-many-bitcoins-are-there/. They are estimated that there are 3-4 million of Bitcoin has been lost forever. But this is still guessing and nobody knows what is the perfect answer.

[seoincorporation]

...
18 million - lost coins = ?

My question is how many Bitcoins are left, which is really a question of how many have been lost?

...
Here's a little task for you if you want to know how many Bitcoins are left - 21 000 000 - 18 067 062 =?
...

Op is talking about the lost coins, not about the total bitcoins less the mined bitcoins. So, your little task is wrong,

So, as OmegaStarScream say, around 4M bitcoins are lost, and one of those millions are satoshi coins. And satoshi gives us some words about the lost coins:

“Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone.”

[MrCrank]

Given the information about bitcoins, mined and lost + coins that are on the whale's purses (which are motionless + 1 million Satoshi Nakamoto)
very few coins are widely used by BTC fans

[BitcoinsGreat]

...
18 million - lost coins = ?

My question is how many Bitcoins are left, which is really a question of how many have been lost?

...
Here's a little task for you if you want to know how many Bitcoins are left - 21 000 000 - 18 067 062 =?
...

Op is talking about the lost coins, not about the total bitcoins less the mined bitcoins. So, your little task is wrong,

So, as OmegaStarScream say, around 4M bitcoins are lost, and one of those millions are satoshi coins. And satoshi gives us some words about the lost coins:

“Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone.”

No one can give how many exact coins are lost by now but i think with the bitcoin adaption increases the lost coins ratio will also increase and i have a valid reason for this.

Currently everyone is using Paper currencies stored at home or banks. If a person dies, the banks can easily hand over the cash to his belongings on valid verification but if a bitcoin holder dies and he did not tell anyone the secret key, then those bitcoin will be lost forever. I know few of the people will give the access to siblings etc, but most of them won't and consider everyone having some portion of bitcoin and people dying in accidents etc will make bitcoins lost number increase to a greater extent.

I expect this lost number increases as more people hold or get access to bitcoins.

[YuginKadoya]

...
18 million - lost coins = ?

My question is how many Bitcoins are left, which is really a question of how many have been lost?

...
Here's a little task for you if you want to know how many Bitcoins are left - 21 000 000 - 18 067 062 =?
...

Op is talking about the lost coins, not about the total bitcoins less the mined bitcoins. So, your little task is wrong,

So, as OmegaStarScream say, around 4M bitcoins are lost, and one of those millions are satoshi coins. And satoshi gives us some words about the lost coins:

“Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone.”

No one can give how many exact coins are lost by now but i think with the bitcoin adaption increases the lost coins ratio will also increase and i have a valid reason for this.

Currently everyone is using Paper currencies stored at home or banks. If a person dies, the banks can easily hand over the cash to his belongings on valid verification but if a bitcoin holder dies and he did not tell anyone the secret key, then those bitcoin will be lost forever. I know few of the people will give the access to siblings etc, but most of them won't and consider everyone having some portion of bitcoin and people dying in accidents etc will make bitcoins lost number increase to a greater extent.

I expect this lost number increases as more people hold or get access to bitcoins.

Well, that is one fact on how Bitcoin can be lost, but there are some lost coins that have dump with no reason,
particularly yes we can not estimate the exact amount of Bitcoin that still not mined yet, because it is continuously moving and there are consistently losing coins every hour or so.

That is why for OP we can only give you an estimation of 18,067,000 BTC near to this number for now, but the part that I always keep on thinking is what will the real thing that may happen if there are no Bitcoin's to mine anymore.

[Ryker1]

18 million - lost coins = ?

Well, we assume that the number of bitcoin's existence was 18 million in circulation and it will less to those who lost their Bitcoin forever.
The answer was still unknown and no one knows the exact number, but as what have said above it is estimated 4 million Bitcoin has been lost including the Bitcoin to be mined. You guys don't bother too much how many left and lost in Bitcoin because nobody gives an exact answer.

[TinaK]

Since I checked in Google I have noticed 4 to 5 million Bitcoins are remaining in the market.
But unfortunately we do not have any tool to trace the the Bitcoins which is lost or stolen and kept somewhere.
If you ask me what is my left Bitcoin it is around 0.04 BTC alone.

[fuguebtc]

The only way on how to find how many BTC are lost or missing is if all BTC holders announces how many each of them have and then subtract that number from total BTC mined till date. In short that's not possible.

[Dabs]

I think it is more relevant to talk about percentages of mined coins per reward era, roughly translated to a year.

So, with that in mind, 99% of all coins will have been mined by the year 2030-ish. The last one percent will take another hundred years. Literally more than a hundred years.

It's the decade after we hit 99% and are mining the last 1% where we find some true price discovery about the value of each coin, and while past performance is no guarantee of future returns and history does not necessarily repeat itself, but it rhymes.

Just look at traditional stock markets. S&P or DOW Jones...

[DreamStage]

This question has been answered multiple times already

Anyway you can think of those coins that were lost during transactions.

Those accounts that will never be recovered and have bitcoins that will never be used whatsoever.

These and many more could make bitcoin amount increase if they were "cleaned" from the system.
Based on that we could make a new estimation with a more precise number rather than speculating.

[amyshek1979]

We can't find the exact numer coz we just can't control it. I've heard something about 6 million lost bitcoins, but it's just a rumor.

[Leonardo7]

While about 18million plus has been mined so far and mining keeps going on. I doubt if anyone can tell the total number of currently lost bitcoin since most persons usually do not come out to declare their loss bitcoin, and there are some wallets that have never been touched before. 

[DannyHamilton]

There are two types of "unspendable" bitcoins.

There are those where someone has permanently lost their private key, and there are those where the transactions themselves are structured in such a way as to make the bitcoins permanently unspendable.

It is impossible to know how many bitcoins there are of the first type (permanently lost private key).  People who say they lost their private key might be lying. Private keys could turn up later on someone's old hard drive or on a piece of paper somewhere. Any attempt to calculate the number of "lost" bitcoins due to permanently lost private keys is just a guess and is likely to be very wrong.

The other type (transactions structured to make the bitcoins unspendable) are all publicly visible in the blockchain.  These can be counted right down to the exact satoshi.  These are known PROVABLE lost bitcoins that we can all be CERTAIN are gone.

Here is an analysis from 2014 of the 2,745.22283996 BTC that were PROVABLY LOST at that time.  I haven't seen a more recent similar analysis.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=675321

[goaldigger]

The only way on how to find how many BTC are lost or missing is if all BTC holders announces how many each of them have and then subtract that number from total BTC mined till date. In short that's not possible.

Will take too much effort on this and of course those who are dead already can no longer say how much bitcoin they have. Its not easy to know the accurate supply for now but one thing is for sure, the supply is getting smaller every year and the halving next year will make it more limited. We still need to have a better demand, and a better adoption to enjoy the price of a limited supply.