About 20% of all Bitcoin (BTC) in circulation was lost – Study shows

[mamamu111]

The New York Times, referring to a study by Chainalysis, writes that about 20% of the mined 18.6 million BTC worth approximately $ 140 billion are lost or are in wallets to which investors have lost access (forgot passwords, etc.)  Read the full Article here: https://worldpublicityblog.com/index.php/2021/01/17/about-20-of-all-bitcoin-btc-in-circulation-was-lost-study-shows/

[hd49728]

The chart was not updated since March 2020 but you can look at the hodlwave chart and there are about 4 million lost bitcoin. The lost bitcoin contributes to the scarcity of bitcoin and help the price when demand increases and more entities, institutes join the bitcoin market.

The lost amount is estimated from UTXOs and it can be not 100% correct but there is due diligent reasons that if one UTXO is not move more than 5 years, it is highly lost. I  say it is not 100% correct as sometimes you will see whale aler bots announce big bitcoin transactions that was mined in 2009 or 2010.

https://hodlwave.com/#

[hatshepsut93]

I would take such statements with a grain of salt, we have seen addresses that weren't used for 10 years waking up. It would be interesting to hear about their methodology, because all these news and blogs with such statements rarely mention it, and they name different numbers every time.

[erikoy]

Is there a way to calculate how much the btc market price knowing that 20% of the btc are lost or forgotten? I wanted to know the bitcoin market price. Actuay it has been said here a million times about demand and supply for btc that determine its market price. But it never did disclose how it was done. Anyway, hopefully I can get some answers in the replies or maybe I should start a thread in regard to this matter.

[Tytanowy Janusz]

I would take such statements with a grain of salt, we have seen addresses that weren't used for 10 years waking up.

Yep this is a point that decrease this 20% but there are also tones of lost BTC in recent 5 years. This 20% cotains only BTC's that was not moved for 5 years, so if i'll die tomorrow and bury my keys with me, you guys will add them into "lost BTCs" after 5 years. So this can as good be 10% or 30%.

[bryant.coleman]

The figure of 3.6 million BTC sounds right for me. Even my initial days I was careless with some of my wallets. I believe that I would have lost at least BTC0.10 due to carelessness in backing up the wallets. Back then, it was not a big amount. Bit now the same amount of coins are worth $3,500. I lost most of these coins, when I failed to backup Instawallet addresses. I had the option of contacting Instawallet admin, but I was too lazy to do that in 2013.

[Sirait]

The figure of 3.6 million BTC sounds right for me. Even my initial days I was careless with some of my wallets. I believe that I would have lost at least BTC0.10 due to carelessness in backing up the wallets. Back then, it was not a big amount. Bit now the same amount of coins are worth $3,500. I lost most of these coins, when I failed to backup Instawallet addresses. I had the option of contacting Instawallet admin, but I was too lazy to do that in 2013.

^ also saddened with your loss, friend. before Bitcoin make a record ATH of up to $ 20k the first time, many Bitcoin holders did not care and were serious about storing their passwords and private keys as a result many lost their Bitcoin because it was locked in their private wallets. 0.1 BTC right now is really very valuable.

[best123]

They might be right because many never believed that Bitcoin will be this great. I met someone that said that he lost over 3,000 BTC on gambling sites. He said, he was just having fun with it because the value was nothing then.
Back then many were not treating with seriousness because of it price then. Just like some of us are treating some of our altcoins now. No body saw this coming.

[Asuspawer09]

Probably it's lower than 20% and there might be no actual way to know if the Bitcoin is already lost or the owner still got the bitcoin or still holding it in the wallet.

Most of it or most of the bitcoin wallets are not move at all so it was probably assuming all of the bitcoin that was not move was considered as lost already.

Either if it is already lost I think it will have a good effect on the market price of bitcoin because it just limits the overall supply of bitcoin making the market price of bitcoin pump.

[CarnagexD]

Quite a huge amount, imagine if those were at least put back into circulation or better yet, burned. Bitcoin's price could jump even more which could lead to greater things. Hopefully someone volunteers or Satoshi comes alive and does something under the effect, or maybe at least input a feature that will help bitcoin's problem with scalability to be solved which is it's biggest problem up to date, causing millions of dollars in transaction fees.

[jonval21]

The New York Times, referring to a study by Chainalysis, writes that about 20% of the mined 18.6 million BTC worth approximately $ 140 billion are lost or are in wallets to which investors have lost access (forgot passwords, etc.)  Read the full Article here: https://worldpublicityblog.com/index.php/2021/01/17/about-20-of-all-bitcoin-btc-in-circulation-was-lost-study-shows/

Yes, this is very true, but when analyzing this scenario it is beneficial because automatically the price and value of bitcoin increases notably, those who do not have access is very difficult or almost impossible to access without losing their private keys, it is sad for them, but beneficial to us, this is where the deflationary economy is shown to be superior to any other that comes before Bitcoin.

[TimeTeller]

Quite a huge amount, imagine if those were at least put back into circulation or better yet, burned. Bitcoin's price could jump even more which could lead to greater things. Hopefully someone volunteers or Satoshi comes alive and does something under the effect, or maybe at least input a feature that will help bitcoin's problem with scalability to be solved which is it's biggest problem up to date, causing millions of dollars in transaction fees.

This is why we don't need burning in bitcoin anymore.
The considered lost bitcoins are more than enough to reduce the actual number of circulating supply of bitcoin.
I don't think we will ever see those lost bitcoins again. This also aids in making bitcoin more scarce throughout the years.
How many old btc owners lost their passwords and such? And those that forgotten they had btc holdings in their wallets?
So even if the transaction fees are getting expensive, still people are patronizing the number 1 cryptocurrency.

[pixie85]

Burning is always a bad idea because you're estimating that those coins are lost and making a centralized decision about something that could be someone's life savings.

Estimations like this 20% will always be largely off because you can't really say how many addresses are inactive because people lost access to them or died and how many of them are purposely held or held by people who temporarily lost access but in time will remember their passwords or come out of a coma or something and want their money back.

[ranochigo]

The actually number is probably much lower. Counting lost Bitcoins without any evidence that they're lost other than the fact that it hasn't been moved for a long time is not accurate.

The only Bitcoins that are truly lost are those sent to provable burn addresses or those which were lost by miners or through OP_return. It is fair to assume that the bulk of Bitcoins mined in 2009 would probably not be moved unless Satoshis resurfaces.

[DaveF]

There are funded physical coins that have funds that not moved and will probably not move for a long time.
There are many people who stuck funds in cold storage and they are still sitting there.
Would be interesting to see how many of these "lost" have signed for airdrops. Or have had other forks moved off.

How many are sitting just waiting for BTC to hit price "X" before they are moved to sell.

-Dave

[Trinx01]

I have seen the chart and it is not updated, so for sure that lost bitcoin would be more than 20% for now. Way back in 2010-2013 when the bitcoin's value is too low, that time a lot of investors bought bitcoin that, time and most probably that 20% lost bitcoin came from that year. Maybe they just underestimate the bitcoin so they didn't even protect it or save their private seed, Most probably one of the reasons why they have lost access to their bitcoin is because of forgetting the private seed of their wallet and that is so sad thinking that you have wasted huge money because of a simple private seed. Hoping that this case won't happen again and I don't think that this would happen for those who are holding a huge amount of bitcoin.

[pooya87]

And 100% of the article you posted from a website you have been advertising (it's all over your post history) is pure crap. You are basically rehashing the same arguments in a new "article" then posting the link here to get traffic to your site.
The fact is (as always) you can't measure how many coins were lost. And "not moved" has never been equal to "lost".

[Sithara007]

And 100% of the article you posted from a website you have been advertising (it's all over your post history) is pure crap. You are basically rehashing the same arguments in a new "article" then posting the link here to get traffic to your site.
The fact is (as always) you can't measure how many coins were lost. And "not moved" has never been equal to "lost".

Agree mostly with this post. Just because an address hasn't seen any activity since 2010 or 2011 doesn't mean that all the coins that are stored in it are lost. Similarly, there may be wallets with activity from 2019 or 2020, but after that there is a chance of the coins getting lost due to the death of the owner or carelessness in handling. Coins getting lost due to the death of the owner is a serious issue in cryptocurrency sector. The best example is obviously that of Gerald Cotten, which made the funds of Canadian cryptocurrency platform Quadriga inaccessible (the lost coins in Quadriga are reported to be worth more than $800 million).

[Kittygalore]

Did they account on the article that those wallets might be just inactive to the point because the owner is a hardcore hodler? 20% is a lot of bitcoin and to think that they will be forever lost means that the supply ceiling is getting lower which means that bitcoin can get more expensive along the way.

[dkbit98]

This is probably true according to coinmetrics and their FreeFloat supply chart that is showing around 4 million Bitcoins less than current Bitcoin supply and if we count that in percentage it would be around 20%.
This is not precise math and we can't have exact numbers here but if some coins have not moved for many years than they are most likely lost but there is still chance some people are holding them long term.
We know for sure that many Bitcoins are lost forever and this is just one more positive case for rising Bitcoin price.


https://network-charts.coinmetrics.io/#661