how Bitcoin will deal with lost tokens?

[ConnerDalfino]

What happens to all the coins in lost wallets in the Bitcoin system? If there are only a finite number of coins, won't they become increasingly scarce as people lose them over time?

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[franky1]

it just means less coin in active circulation..

bitcoin should do anything about it.
the point of bitcoin is no one can just steal someones coins for any greedy reason of thinking coins need to be redistributed if not moved after 10 years.

no one should dare declare coins dead and remove them from that address

if they are lost then they are lost. that is it.

bitcoin needs to do nothing.. PEOPLE need to actually take care of their assets and prevent forgetton/losing their keys.

[NeuroticFish]

What happens to all the coins in lost wallets in the Bitcoin system? If there are only a finite number of coins, won't they become increasingly scarce as people lose them over time?

The lost coins are.. well.. lost. Forever.
And indeed, the remaining ones will become increasingly scarce. Which is a good thing, since this makes them increasingly more valuable.
And you should not be too much worried about this, since bitcoin works with 8 digits after the decimal point, so the real total amount of coins is 2 100 000 000 000 000 (satoshi).

[Charles-Tim]

What happens to all the coins in lost wallets in the Bitcoin system? If there are only a finite number of coins, won't they become increasingly scarce as people lose them over time?

People lost bitcoin more in the past because they did not believe the price can increase as it increased abruptly and significantly. Any bitcoin user should make sure he does all possibilities to make sure he protect his/her seed phrase or private key which is the most important as backup. But even if 20 million of bitcoin supply is lost, that will make even 1 sat to become more valuable. But, the bad side of lost bitcoin is that people that lost it lost it forever unless they later see the backup like seed phrase or private key, but the good side of it is that the scarcity it will create will later make people hodling bitcoin before it happens to have more money as the price of bitcoin will increase.

[lovesmayfamilis]

We cannot even give the exact number of lost wallets. Some wallets have not been active since 2013, and it is difficult to even call them lost, as people can just keep them in storage. And of course, because the amount of bitcoins is limited to 21 million coins, its value will increase. Today there are many hunters to recover lost bitcoin treasures, and people go to various tricks, including even hypnosis, to remember their private keys, but there are very few lucky ones who could recover the lost ones.

[mk4]

What happens to all the coins in lost wallets in the Bitcoin system? If there are only a finite number of coins, won't they become increasingly scarce as people lose them over time?

..which is actually kinda a good thing. While the 21 million supply cap is really really attractive, the supply cap is somewhat actually smaller because of all those lost coins (though I totally feel bad for those who lost their coins early on).

[dkbit98]

What happens to all the coins in lost wallets in the Bitcoin system? If there are only a finite number of coins, won't they become increasingly scarce as people lose them over time?

This coins are lost and nothing will happen with them.
Bitcoin total supply is fixed at 21 million coins, circulating supply is around 18,684,000 but some research with FreeFloat supply is showing that 4 million bitcoins may be gone forever, and this can only be good for overall value and Bitcoin price.
Note that we can't know exact number of lost coins and some of them may be recovered and found in future, but people will probably lose more coins in future and bitcoin will be more scarce.

[so98nn]

What happens to all the coins in lost wallets in the Bitcoin system? If there are only a finite number of coins, won't they become increasingly scarce as people lose them over time?

The lost coins are.. well.. lost. Forever.
And indeed, the remaining ones will become increasingly scarce. Which is a good thing, since this makes them increasingly more valuable.
And you should not be too much worried about this, since bitcoin works with 8 digits after the decimal point, so the real total amount of coins is 2 100 000 000 000 000 (satoshi).

Yeah, it should become more and more scarce to get more value. The crypto coins which are limited, in our discussion the BTC, is taking whole lot of energy to produce (mining) and it is costing more and more day by day. The coins which are lost forever are the security of bitcoin’s stagnant economy. Whether you call it indirect effect or direct contribution, it’s anyway healthy for us.

 I don’t think developers would do anything about it and also they won’t break the laws of blockchain by breaking into it. So yeah even best for that matter. 

[aysg76]

What happens to all the coins in lost wallets in the Bitcoin system? If there are only a finite number of coins, won't they become increasingly scarce as people lose them over time?

The Bitcoin lost cannot be recovered at all if you don't have access to your wallets or say you lost private keys for your coins. It's not that someone else will find them and take advantage of your funds unlike fiat btc lost simply reduce the total supply of 21 million coins.We have list of dormant bitcoin address with thousands of Bitcoin in them but we can't say they are lost or not because they are not active from past few years.Some people like German programmer who lost his 7002 bitcoins which are worth more than $220 million.Many in the past also has done the same mistake as they were not aware that btc will cross high level prices soon.

"The Times reported that about 20% of Bitcoin existing supply appeared to be lost otherwise in stranded wallets"

This is indeed making Bitcoin really scare and if people keep losing their private keys we might see actual suplly to be around 15-16 million only instead of 21 million.This will push the prices further high as demand will surpass supply with huge numbers as nobody will be willing to sell at that time.So if you are holding Bitcoins at this time keep your keys safe in cold storage and funds in hardware wallets to safeguard your future.

[kryptqnick]

What happens to all the coins in lost wallets in the Bitcoin system? If there are only a finite number of coins, won't they become increasingly scarce as people lose them over time?

Yes, you are right about that. 21 million coins is not the real amount of coins which can truly be used as many coins were lost and probably won't ever be a part of the ecosystem anymore. However, there's nothing that can be done with it, we'll just have to live with whichever is still accessible. And it's not necessarily a big problem because we can just switch from thinking in Bitcoins to talking about mBTC or Satoshis more as the price grows. However, the fees will become very challenging as more people own smaller bits of BTC and the price gets higher.

[yazher]

Yeah! things are not how you see it because the more it lost the more the value of each satoshi will increase and you cannot doubt that because a lightning network is developed for that kind of features. When people only sending satoshis in the future instead of the full amount of one bitcoin, you will realize that nothing has gone wrong. everything seems going to the right courses since it will give us good news and the price is our main concern here because the more we lost those total supplies, the more the price will reach its another all-time high.

[Fundamentals Of]

Bitcoin does not deal with lost tokens. What is lost is lost forever until it is recovered by the owner or whoever gets hold of the private keys. Apart from that, lost Bitcoins will remain outside the access of anybody. Bitcoin is not an exchange or a central authority which could do something about them.

Bitcoin will remain to grow scarcer and scarcer each day not only because the demand is rising but also because the circulating supply is decreasing partly because of lost coins.

[int03h]

Bitcoins are not lost, they just sleep in the system. The total supply of Bitcoin has always been 21 million coins. Fewer Bitcoins in circulation means an increased scarcity of Bitcoin. In my opinion, many Bitcoins have been sleeping in wallets in the past because users forgot the security phrase, wallet password ...
Bitcoin is more scarce after each halving.
Thus, it can be seen that there are fewer Bitcoins while the demand for Bitcoin increases over time, which drives the value of Bitcoin to increase. We can be confident that Bitcoin will be worth $ 1 million in the future.

[acener]

What happens to all the coins in lost wallets in the Bitcoin system? If there are only a finite number of coins, won't they become increasingly scarce as people lose them over time?

Just think of it as a burn token like most of the new alt-coin does.
But for me it is better that way since it would still be the max supply but lesser circulating coin that would fetch a higher price in the future.
No need to worry about those coins since we couldn't do anything about it.

[androyster]

I said earlier that there is no way to know how many bitcoins are lost.  Anything else is pure speculation.

Why was this post deleted verses other replies here?

[Swordsoffreedom]

Bitcoin has been created so that you can manage your own funds without any intersection from others. So, if you lose control of your funds for any reason, it is completely unreasonable to expect someone else to control it. The coin you have lost control of is completely out of control, and will remain useless in the blockchain network for life. No one is able to recover the coin from your lost wallet if there is no private key / seeds backup.

[Ucy]

What happens to all the coins in lost wallets in the Bitcoin system? If there are only a finite number of coins, won't they become increasingly scarce as people lose them over time?

If the coins will never be accessed or moved again, that lessens the number of bitcoins that will ever be in circulation , increases scarcity and price (assuming  demand for the coin outweighs supply).

[mk4]

I said earlier that there is no way to know how many bitcoins are lost.  Anything else is pure speculation.

Why was this post deleted verses other replies here?

Because the main question in the OP was specifically concerning what will happen with the lost coins, not how many are lost. Whereas the latter(your response) was kinda unrelated to the main question.

[isaac_clarke22]

What happens to all the coins in lost wallets in the Bitcoin system? If there are only a finite number of coins, won't they become increasingly scarce as people lose them over time?

I remember a thread here before asking how would one recover Bitcoins from a deceased person.
Thing is unless one is holding it from like a web or online wallet that offers it, there could still be a chance but good luck complying with requirements to prove relations and connections.
Well if it is something held wherein the owner himself holds the private key then there's no hope unless s/he left a private key somewhere written.

[BlackHatCoiner]

What happens to all the coins in lost wallets in the Bitcoin system? If there are only a finite number of coins, won't they become increasingly scarce as people lose them over time?

Yes, they will!

Part of this brilliant creation is that the coins become scarcer over time. I remember reading a study saying that the daily burned bitcoins are more than the freshly mined ones. This means that every single minute passing on average, bitcoins become slightly scarcer. 

Despite the ones that lost their old wallet.dat files and the purposely burned coins, you should consider the future losses from those who will pass out. If they haven't planned to inherit them, they're also gone forever.

Also, bitcoins are not tokens! They're coins!