How much bitcoins was lost permanently?

[djmcg]

Hello
The current number of bitcoins generated today is about 18730000 .  I wonder how much of it has been completely lost,
I mean mostly bitcoin which were not transferred for example 10 or 8 may be 6 years.
I am also sure that many people have lost their private keys to their wallets and also do not have access to them.
Can you please suggest or refer me to some site what percentage value we can assume how much of the 18M is currently in circulation

[YOSHIE]

You will find the answer in the topic below.

Topic: Let's add up the KNOWN lost bitcoins

Topic: Lost large number of bitcoins

I hope you are happy to know the missing Bitcoin.

[remotemass]

That depends on whether or not Satoshi Nakamoto is alive.

[NeuroticFish]

I mean mostly bitcoin which were not transferred for example 10 or 8 may be 6 years.

Some topics were already listed, however they will most likely not meet this "requirement" of yours.
I will only add that the fact that certain coins were not moved, it doesn't mean (at all) that they are lost.

Some can very well stay in someone's cold storage, especially the older exchanges'.
Others will be locked inside funded collectibles.
And these are only the first examples that came into my mind.
Imho the "not transferred" rule, although interesting, can give you greatly inaccurate results (although all the other ways to "count" such coins are also inaccurate).

[djmcg]

I completely agree with you . There's a lot of unknowns.
But you have to make some assumptions if there is no hard data
I believe that the wallet that belonged to satoshi will not be released (unless someone "mining" priv key).
I guess with blockchain it is possible to extract such data which is why I repeat my question, do you know if there is a site where I can find these "cold wallets" not moved for 10, 8 or 6 years for example?

[Harper32]

This is an unknown number. Someone may have forgotten their password or remembered their password again someday in the future. There is no data to consider.

[Kittygalore]

This is an unknown number. Someone may have forgotten their password or remembered their password again someday in the future. There is no data to consider.

Not entirely unknown because I am pretty sure that people have keep track of bitcoin supply.  Although, it's not really worth worrying about it because there's no point because they have no way of knowing if that bitcoin that they label as lost was just frozen for a decade and will be opened when the time it was supposed to be opened is reached.

[KaliLinux]

This is an unknown number. Someone may have forgotten their password or remembered their password again someday in the future. There is no data to consider.

True and it could very well be that where the password was stored have been located by the owner and now s/he can re-access their wallets again. I have read in this Forum where some people will say that that have never moved their bitcoin since they bought them, all this can also lead to miscalculation of what you intend to know. So it might not be that because it is up to 6 or more years that some Bitcoin wallet have been idle means that those Bitcoin have been lost.

[sherryDEFI]

According to the statistics of professional organizations, the total number of bitcoins in bitcoin wallets that have been inactive for more than 5 years is about 4 million-it is not certain that these wallet keys are lost, but it is reasonable to guess that most of the keys are lost Up!

[Lorence.xD]

That depends on whether or not Satoshi Nakamoto is alive.

I think that he is still alive although, I do believe that he isn't just one person because bitcoin is far too complex for only one person to create alone, satoshi might have some help.

[toast]

We are still not sure about it, some people might hold a large amount of money to be sell on the peaks or if some people died while holding it and no one can access the wallet. There's really no assurance about it so it is not known how much Bitcoins were permanently lost. Just like what people said it still depends if Satoshi is still alive he holds the largest share of Bitcoin in the world.

[Pmalek]

Like other users have said, the sole fact that certain coins haven't been moved for 5, 6, or more years, can't be used to argue that those coins are lost or inaccessible. But my guess would be that at least half of the addresses that haven't seen any activity in the last 10 years can be considered out of reach somehow. Bitcoin has had several bull runs in the last decade, and it's hard to imagine that so many people didn't cash in at least a little bit.

I do remember reading a Chainalysis report from the beginning of the year where they estimated that at least $100-$200 billion worth of coins are forever lost. That's the value the bitcoin had half a year ago, it's much more now.     

[kryptqnick]

There are some estimates about lost BTC, and the number is around 3-4 million Bitcoins. But it's important to understand that it's impossible to know the real number and how far off the real number and the estimate are. If bitcoins aren't moved for years, they can be presumed to be lost, but it doesn't mean that this is truly the case. After all, people can have access to them and simply hodl them all this time. Then there are Satoshi's bitcoins which might be lost but are possibly not. And even when people claim to have lost access to their wallets where they had big sums, there's a chance they'll find their passphrases at some point. The only truly lost bitcoins are those sent to burn addresses to which nobody has access, but I'm not sure that even all of those were counted properly, and they make up a very small amount out of these millions anyway.

[dimonstration]

 There  are people who already forget they  have bitcoin account some already lose their access on their accounts and already forgotten their passwords or keys. There will be many lost bitcoin which cannot be analyze Unless the owner knew about how much they have save. They may not consider the fact that  this loss in the market but a sellers or the person who owns it but never have a chance to access it again will consider it as their loss unless there are people who are going to try to have their accounts and use them. They will be keep as holding for the market.

[Obito]

We are still not sure about it, some people might hold a large amount of money to be sell on the peaks or if some people died while holding it and no one can access the wallet. There's really no assurance about it so it is not known how much Bitcoins were permanently lost. Just like what people said it still depends if Satoshi is still alive he holds the largest share of Bitcoin in the world.

Exactly what I was thinking, the exact number can't really be determined like census because we don't have an exact knowledge of how many lost their coins this day or yesterday. I don't think that satoshi will spent those bitcoins or probably he have already we just didn't know about it.

[leea-1334]

Asked countless times already and there is no true way to know except those coins regularly sent to burn address. Those that are physically lost you can always predict someone finds it again one day like that guy digging the trash for his old hard drive:) I think it does not really impact us overall.

[BITCOIN4X]

We never know for sure how many bitcoin are permanently lost and can no longer be recovered. Meanwhile you can find out from various site that there are currently 18,731,712 bitcoin circulating in the market out of a total of 21 million bitcoin. There are approximately 2.268.288 bitcoin currently missing from circulation and it is likely that the number will increase or decrease as they can still be recovered and lost due to user error. You can monitor it live anytime here.

[abel1337]

This will be hard to determine since untouched bitcoin from many years doesn't mean it is lost. Even the near-accurate estimates of permanently lost bitcoin are hard to determine because not everyone is publicly declaring that they have lost a private key that could result in being permanently lost.

[BlackHatCoiner]

The only “gone for good” bitcoins are the burned and the OP_RETURN outputs. There isn't any other way to be sure that the private key of an address is lost by mistake and isn't known to anyone. Sure, there were old incidents like the guy who threw away a USB containing a private key whose address had 7,500 BTC, but you can't be sure that it ain't a lie. When we're looking in the blockchain we want proof.

I wouldn't call Satoshi's bitcoins lost. They have their own category.

[virtualdn]

According to the statistics of professional organizations, the total number of bitcoins in bitcoin wallets that have been inactive for more than 5 years is about 4 million-it is not certain that these wallet keys are lost, but it is reasonable to guess that most of the keys are lost Up!

Between these are mine as well and I can tell you they are not lost. They are just inactive for many years, 7 or 8. A lot are like these. One day these addresses will be used. I'd say at least half of those keys are still valid.