What happens to my two Bitcoins (just for example) if I lose my security key?

[Wokebeast]

What happens to my two Bitcoins (just for example) if I lose my security key? I do not have any Bitcoin at the moment. But, I am quickly learning about Bitcoin as I want to very soon make my very first purchase of some amount of it. My question has to do with there being a finite amount of Bitcoin in circulation. Today about 17,000,000 (17 million) Bitcoins are in existence. By year 2140 as I understand it there will be no more than 21,000,000 (21 million) Bitcoins in existence. Furthermore, my understanding is that I am the only person with access to my Bitcoin through my private security key. Now, my question is. If I lose my security key to, let's say, one of my Bitcoin wallets that has maybe 2 Bitcoin in it. Then, what happens to that 2 Bitcoin in the context of the 17 million Bitcoin currently in existence. Who can find and use those 2 Bitcoin that I "lost". Or, do those 2 Bitcoin get lost forever, because I'm presuming no one ever will find/guess my lost security key? An analogy is, if I lose a hundred dollar bill, someone will likely find it and be able to use it to put it back into market circulation. However, if the hundred dollar bill gets flushed down a sewer drain, then it gets permanently removed from market circulation. So, I'm wondering, do the 2 Bitcoins in my example that I "lost", do they permanently get removed from market circulation. And, if so, then does that mean that in 2140 there will be 2 Bitcoins fewer in the total market circulating, for example, 21,000,000-2 would make it 20,999,998 Bitcoins in circulation. Or, can those 2 lost Bitcoins be *replaced* by Bitcoin mining over time so that the market has the full 21 million in circulation.

[xhomerx10]

What happens to my two Bitcoins (just for example) if I lose my security key? I do not have any Bitcoin at the moment. But, I am quickly learning about Bitcoin as I want to very soon make my very first purchase of some amount of it. My question has to do with there being a finite amount of Bitcoin in circulation. Today about 17,000,000 (17 million) Bitcoins are in existence. By year 2140 as I understand it there will be no more than 21,000,000 (21 million) Bitcoins in existence. Furthermore, my understanding is that I am the only person with access to my Bitcoin through my private security key. Now, my question is. If I lose my security key to, let's say, one of my Bitcoin wallets that has maybe 2 Bitcoin in it. Then, what happens to that 2 Bitcoin in the context of the 17 million Bitcoin currently in existence. Who can find and use those 2 Bitcoin that I "lost". Or, do those 2 Bitcoin get lost forever, because I'm presuming no one ever will find/guess my lost security key? An analogy is, if I lose a hundred dollar bill, someone will likely find it and be able to use it to put it back into market circulation. However, if the hundred dollar bill gets flushed down a sewer drain, then it gets permanently removed from market circulation. So, I'm wondering, do the 2 Bitcoins in my example that I "lost", do they permanently get removed from market circulation. And, if so, then does that mean that in 2140 there will be 2 Bitcoins fewer in the total market circulating, for example, 21,000,000-2 would make it 20,999,998 Bitcoins in circulation. Or, can those 2 lost Bitcoins be *replaced* by Bitcoin mining over time so that the market has the full 21 million in circulation.

 Your Bitcoin (whole or part) are stored in an address; those addresses are accessible via private keys (one per address).  If you lose the private key to any particular address, you lose whatever amount of Bitcoin in it.
Your Bitcoin can be contained in multiple addresses within a wallet - wallets can be backed up using a passphrase which will give you access to the entire wallet and all keys in it (provided they were generated by the same wallet software and not imported).  If lose the passphrase to the wallet, you will lose all addresses associated with the wallet and all Bitcoin associated with each address.

 Lost Bitcoins will never be replaced.

[BitMaxz]

What happens to my two Bitcoins (just for example) if I lose my security key? I do not have any Bitcoin at the moment. But, I am quickly learning about If you lost the private key or backup of your bitcoin wallet they are lost forever unless someone knows your backup wallet. They can get your bitcoin inside the backup wallet but if they are lost they are totally lost forever.

About the market circulation, your lost bitcoin will be out of the market circulation but it still exists in Bitcoin circulation.
If someone luckily guesses your lost private key someone can get the lose BTC but there's only a little chance that you can guess the backup key. So your BTC is lost forever.

[moviebuff777]

If you lose the private keys, then the Bitcoins are gone forever. No one can claim them without the private keys. That’s why it’s so important for you to protect the keys.

[pooya87]

"lost coins are like a donation to others" since it makes bitcoin more scarce.

you should keep in mind that 21 million bitcoin also has 8 decimal places so the total supply is 2100000000000000 satoshi and people have to lose a lot more for it to start becoming any kind of problems. as we can see from the past 11 years not that much coins have been truly lost. the worst estimate (which is mostly wrong) has come up with the number 1 million. which is still not a big deal.

[tambok]

This will be one of your memorable day if that happens to you, that's why you need to be extra careful or else you will lose your future (your Bitcoin holdings) and worst is you will be very frustrated that you will forget and quit crypto anymore, with that you will lose more opportunity, so be ready when that happens or please be very extra careful.

[joinfree]

Well if you lose your security keys to your wallet holding your bitcoins then they are lost forever which is quite unfortunate. Just as you were concerned about how that affects the market then the reality is that they more we keep losing bitcoins they in tend make prices go higher.
One thing i have learnt in this industry is to save your private keys on several storage disks and save them at different locations but make sure you keep them at very safe places.

[mk4]

Think of it like dropping 2 gold coins in a place that's like a million times deeper than the Mariana Trench(deepest trench in the world). While it's technically possible for a certain person to find those 2 gold coins, the chances of someone actually finding them is extremely extremely unlikely(or next to impossible). Same thing with your bitcoin wallet. If you lost the keys, while technically the bitcoin still exists and technically not removed from the total supply, the chances of other people generating a wallet with the exact same keys that you had are almost next to impossible(though technically not entirely impossible).

[Pffrt]

They are lost forever. In theory, they will on circulation but if we look technically, they are out of circulation since no one other than the private key holder can access that. However, lost bitcoins are a blessing to the existing bitcoin as per satoshi. Each lost bitcoin increase the value of BTC.

[pakhitheboss]

What happens to my two Bitcoins (just for example) if I lose my security key? I do not have any Bitcoin at the moment. But, I am quickly learning about Bitcoin as I want to very soon make my very first purchase of some amount of it. My question has to do with there being a finite amount of Bitcoin in circulation. Today about 17,000,000 (17 million) Bitcoins are in existence. By year 2140 as I understand it there will be no more than 21,000,000 (21 million) Bitcoins in existence. Furthermore, my understanding is that I am the only person with access to my Bitcoin through my private security key. Now, my question is. If I lose my security key to, let's say, one of my Bitcoin wallets that has maybe 2 Bitcoin in it. Then, what happens to that 2 Bitcoin in the context of the 17 million Bitcoin currently in existence. Who can find and use those 2 Bitcoin that I "lost". Or, do those 2 Bitcoin get lost forever, because I'm presuming no one ever will find/guess my lost security key? An analogy is, if I lose a hundred dollar bill, someone will likely find it and be able to use it to put it back into market circulation. However, if the hundred dollar bill gets flushed down a sewer drain, then it gets permanently removed from market circulation. So, I'm wondering, do the 2 Bitcoins in my example that I "lost", do they permanently get removed from market circulation. And, if so, then does that mean that in 2140 there will be 2 Bitcoins fewer in the total market circulating, for example, 21,000,000-2 would make it 20,999,998 Bitcoins in circulation. Or, can those 2 lost Bitcoins be *replaced* by Bitcoin mining over time so that the market has the full 21 million in circulation.

If you loose your private key then you still can get access to your Bitcoin if you had
setup back-up phrases for your wallet. You can reclaim your private key using those phrases as your Bitcoin are still stored on the Blockchain.

If you have not set up back up phrases or do not remember them then I am afraid you loose your Bitcoin access. Therefore always setup back-up phrase and keep them safe.

[buwaytress]

A digital commodity that is already scarce, with a finite number already hard coded into the system, becomes even scarcer. As pointed out by pooya though, I've never really bought the scarcity impact from bitcoins lost or taken out of circulation. If we believe the stats from custodial services like BitGo who between them keep a huge portion of the total existing supply, and we believe Glassnode stats that show people have been holding more and holding longer, than we should be seeing scarcity impact like no other.

But because 1 BTC is 100 million units called satoshi, and with Lightning theoretically each of those satoshi can even be divided, then we don't worry if we can only get 1 btc or 1 satoshi down the line, we'll always divide into subunits (and rising price will even allow for that, to the time we stop comparing it in USD value).

[xvids]

It would justbe gone with your private key it would just lessen the circulating supply.
There are so many lose BTC right now due to early adopter of BTC that choose to quit and forgot their own security key or their wallet file.
We shouldn't be worried about the supply since BTC could be used in small decimals and we don't need a whole number to send or use it.

[blckhawk]

The supply is fixed. Your analogy is right. This type of scenario is similar to the burning process made by some altcoins to control their supply and inflation. Essentially, this coins would be locked out of existence. As of this moment, these coins are considered locked, but if quantum computers would be more powerful, the hashing used in Bitcoin might not be sufficient to protect those coins and crack their private key to bring those coins back.

[hatshepsut93]

Bitcoins are never lost in a way that dollar bills are lost - they exist on blockchain and stay there forever. The private key (what you call a secret key) gives access to those coins, so when this key is lost, no one can access anymore. However, there's no way to prove that you indeed lost your coins - it's impossible to prove that you don't know something, hence there will never be a system for replacing lost coins.

What can happen in the future is if some powerful quantum computers will be developed, they might be able to crack private keys of old addresses, especially if those addresses were reused and hold coins, but no one knows if it will actually happen or not.

[samuraijin]

This is also an interesting question, if I am not mistaken as some bitcoin experts say, that almost nearly millions of bitcoins have been lost and cannot be accessed because of user carelessness or neglect, plus Satoshi's, almost about how many million bitcoin cannot be accessed, remember it cannot accessed can not even be called lost from circulation supply reduce it from 21 million BTC, they still remain on the blockchain network and that they are recorded there so it is not the same as banknotes lost and removed by market circulation, bitcoin that cannot be accessed has not been said to be lost because we don't know that users can get access to bitcoin at any time

[Zeke_23]

Losing your private keys or passphrase means losing your bitcoin.

if the hundred dollar bill gets flushed down a sewer drain, then it gets permanently removed from market circulation.

The same as what you have mentioned above.
However, what differs them is that your bitcoin is still there, more like sleeping inside your wallet. But sadly to say, there is no other way to use or move it.

If you are still able to find your private key or you have found a copy of it, then you are really lucky.
If you don't, then that would be it.

[Darooghe]

To crack a private key, whether you lost it or want to try to solve it, would take billions of years with current super computing power. unless there are incredible improvements in quantum computing in the near future, it's not going to happen. so if you lost your private key, the coins are lost forever. That’s a possible downside to bitcoin. People have to take responsibility and act as their own banks in this way. Keeping the recover phrase and private key safe is super important, and it is frightening to know some people can’t handle that.

[gabmen]

Well it's likely your second scenario. Sadly, there' no way for you to retrieve lost bitcoins if you lose your security key. It's like keeping your money in a private safe box and then dropping the safe box in the ocean. And i agree that it will, of course, not be a part of the circulation, but will be a stagnant part of the supply.

[bitcoindusts]

If you lose your key of an address that is holding your two Bitcoins then that Bitcoin will be lost until such time that someone had invented a machine that can decode public key and get the private key of that address.  So before that time your Bitcoin will be inaccessible.

[ragavancoin]

If you lose the prevate key of your bitcoins that will be lose forever. Because nobody can access the Bitcoins without prevate keys. And bitcoin total supply will be remaining same there is no changes can happen in the total supply. I think you have to take care about your prevate key otherwise it will cost you so much.