There are not even 21M BTCs, I'd say max.17M BTCs available at a given time

[BlackHatCoiner]

I can't really find the methodology

There's no methodology. It's completely assumable. In a way, it does make sense, but as said by tranthidung, I guess that people will be aware of their keys and protect them in the distant future.

[aysg76]

What many people forget is that many bitcoins were already lost, some aren't mined yet and others will be lost in the future.

So scarcity is a great factor, but 21M Bitcoins is not even the true number, we will probably never have more than 17M active coins at a given time for >8 billion people! Imagine what owning 1 single BTC will mean in the next years, owning a single Bitcoin will mean a lot, it's gonna be huge. There are >51M people who are millionaires right now, they won't even be able to own 1 BTC each. So having values like $500K per BTC will seem pretty normal, people will dream for $40K per BTC in the future.

The supply of Bitcoin is fixed to 21 million coins which will all be mined till 2140 based on halving rewards.At current more than 18 million coins have been mined and nearly 2-3 million coins have been lost due to loss of private keys or death of wallet holders.You can check a list of dormant btc address for clarification.And yes all these are jointly decreasing the circulating supply of Bitcoin with increased demand which can further push the prices even higher.But we can't exactly say that there will be 17-18 million Bitcoins because we can't figure it out whose lost keys recovered like the German programmer who has 7-8k btc in hard drive.But one thing which is fixed is that supply cannot be changed above 21 million.

[bitterguy28]

What many people forget is that many bitcoins were already lost, some aren't mined yet and others will be lost in the future.

So scarcity is a great factor, but 21M Bitcoins is not even the true number, we will probably never have more than 17M active coins at a given time for >8 billion people! Imagine what owning 1 single BTC will mean in the next years, owning a single Bitcoin will mean a lot, it's gonna be huge. There are >51M people who are millionaires right now, they won't even be able to own 1 BTC each. So having values like $500K per BTC will seem pretty normal, people will dream for $40K per BTC in the future.

This same theory i have in mind and always being annoyed reading that 21 million bitcoin when we are surely known that there are tons of bitcoin lose in the air from the beginning , I even Knew a early adopter that losses their coins when the price climb back in the 2020 pump.

[ranochigo]

Models are not perfect and many factors in models will be changed.

Yup.

There's no methodology. It's completely assumable. In a way, it does make sense, but as said by tranthidung, I guess that people will be aware of their keys and protect them in the distant future.

I'm referring to the article that you've linked, which references the research paper for the value.

Based on our own methodology used in prior research, we were able to relate the difference in Calculated Market Capitalization and Price to lost coins. We can estimate that since 2010, about 4% of the Available Supply of bitcoin has been lost each year. This puts the current Available Supply at about 13.9 million coins, well below the 18.3 million Total Supply figure publicized. This means that about 28% of all bitcoins have been Irretrievably Lost.

[slaman29]

The reason why we still use the 21 million cap when talking about bitcoin is the same exact reason why you use the word "probably" when talking about the 17 million cap assumption. While I think something like 17-18m is more probable due to the lost BTC, 21m is simply just a more factual metric. While 17m-19m is likely, we really don't have data on how much BTC are actually lost. We only know that they ain't moving, but not necessarily "lost".

Yeah, in the very unlikely event we forever lose some of those BTC, some of those other missing 4 million could very easily wake up one day. And since we don't know the specifics of this, it's okay for me to think of 21 million. I don't know what the issue is, it's cool to happen, so what. Pedantic behavior is usually pointless with Bitcoin:)