how can we know that a wallet is lost

[Outhue]

There is no way to know, some inactive Bitcoin wallets from 2017 became active in 2021 and they are once believed to have been lost or the owners dead or something, I read this online and I don't know how accurate it is, there is no scanner or software anyone can use to know how many Bitcoin is lost.

Why would anyone care about the lost Bitcoin though? It's not as if you will be able to help get them back, or have OP find a way out? I believe it's impossible to get a lost bitcoin back even if you have the fastest computers alive, because private keys will be long lost and without the private keys you can't get the Bitcoin back.

[o_e_l_e_o]

it's so low amount that we doesn't will see any big effect on market, some website said arround 4million btc are lost, is it a speculation?

Complete speculation. We have no idea how many coins are truly lost, and many coins which are indeed lost will be able to be retrieved in the future with advances in quantum computing and reenter circulation, so shouldn't be considered lost at all. All the estimates you see of 2 million, 4 million, etc., are simply based on how long it has been since some coins have moved, but this is a very poor indicator of coins being lost.

For example, a few years ago 145 address containing over 7,000 bitcoin which have not been active in 10+ years woke up to sign a message calling CSW a fraud. Many of these addresses still haven't moved the coins on them, which have been there since 2009, but we know for a fact they are not lost.

[xSkylarx]

It is impossible to know if the wallet is lost because there are Bitcoins that even 10 years old and no movements will be transferred to another wallet because there are times that we thought we lost our seed phrase  but turns out we found it after 10 years and also having a website with list of lost wallet is not reliable because anytime soon those wallets can be transferred and we don't have basis that the wallet is already lost unless it was like 2009 but again it is just all about speculation unless that owner will say he lost it really.

[Assface16678]

there are many threads and news about people losing access to their wallets and forgetting or seed phrases,
and it's better for scarcity of bitcoin,  but how can we know or speculate that the wallet is lost, and it is out of the supply? is there any platform where we can find lost wallets, if no, then it's a good idea to start a website and list every lost wallets.

There's no chance to lost your wallet, you will lost your wallet if you don't remember your password and seedphrase and you cannot retrieve your wallet if you don't remember your seedphrase. Save your password and seedphrase in your file, notebook or some stuff that has a security in it incase someone took your phone or notebook, just be careful my guy .

[vv181]

We don't know how much of the supply is in this state of limbo, but coins that weren't moved for the last 10 years will most likely be put in this group.

Bold of you to assume a ten year dormant wallet is categorized to be lost. Especially it is already noted that a decade wallet was recently activated,

The certain way to calculate inaccessible coins is the one that is sent/burnt into OP_return output. Attempting to list a coin that is claimed to be lost is meaningless. Even if you decide to go that way and speculate to categorize that some address is the lost one, what are you going to do? recirculate it back? That would be a catastrophe because the mechanism is faulty in essence.

That's why I said "will most likely be put in that group", instead of "are lost".
This is the way blockchain analytics operate. These companies make probable statistics and predictions and a 1 year old address with no outputs is going to be put in a group they suspect to be lost.
It sometimes happens that an old address wakes up, but as they say, exception proves the rule. The fact that 1 address woke up, doesn't change the fact that other 100 did not and many analysts will label much younger addresses lost.

Please direct me to which blockchain analytics companies that use that kind of methodology, I would like to see about it

IIRC, I do aware such kind of method is used, and their claim is an "educated guess" to track lost coins. Welp, I can't stand with their reasoning and rather question their motive. Besides, I don't think there is even any statistical and prediction that significantly affect the probability of a lost coin if what they are doing are merely using a metric of an inactive wallet since X amount of time.

A claim that incorporates unprovable ways to calculate lost coins, will likely be an attempt mainly for publicity.

[Crypto Library]

there are many threads and news about people losing access to their wallets and forgetting or seed phrases,
and it's better for scarcity of bitcoin,  but how can we know or speculate that the wallet is lost, and it is out of the supply? is there any platform where we can find lost wallets, if no, then it's a good idea to start a website and list every lost wallets.

In my own views I think there was no trick or way to see that the wallet is lost but I think based on some basic facts we can guess whether the wallet is actually lost.
And the one big fact can be that there has been no transaction from that wallet for a long time. And it can be easily understood by looking at the recent transaction in blockchain.
But ultimately it depends entirely on the private key of that wallet. Now if the owner of that wallet gets the private key again, then the wallet can be activated again, so it is almost impossible to understand that the owner of the private key of that wallet has been lost.  Whether or not he is a big whale who has put his bitcoin on holding.

[GeorgeJohn]

there are many threads and news about people losing access to their wallets and forgetting or seed phrases,
and it's better for scarcity of bitcoin,  but how can we know or speculate that the wallet is lost, and it is out of the supply? is there any platform where we can find lost wallets, if no, then it's a good idea to start a website and list every lost wallets.

Lost wallet is not detectable by any other person except the rightful owner of the wallet, I believe from my perspective that the only way you can know that you wallet has been lost is when you don't have access to your wallet, so I believe that another person cannot know that this particular wallet is a stolen wallets. That's while it's very good to let people know the important of seed phrase, and how to secure your seed phrase to avoid stolen of wallet, because when it lose its not detectable.

[mendace]

It is impossible to know for sure that a wallet is lost. Even by analyzing the blockchain or with other tools, you cannot assume that that wallet is truly lost. Also even if the funds haven't moved for years you can't tell the owner has lost the keys.

[coinerer]

there are many threads and news about people losing access to their wallets and forgetting or seed phrases,
and it's better for scarcity of bitcoin,  but how can we know or speculate that the wallet is lost, and it is out of the supply? is there any platform where we can find lost wallets, if no, then it's a good idea to start a website and list every lost wallets.

By simply scanning a wallet with a blockchain explorer, there is no way to know which wallet is lost. We only know that the wallet is lost when the owner of the wallet reveals it.  Very few users report that their wallets are lost. so I think creating a list of lost wallets is not possible at all. Since it is not possible to memorize the wallet key, many users keep losing their wallets. I don't think there is any way to turn it off or find out.

[RealMalatesta]

It is impossible to know if the wallet is lost because there are Bitcoins that even 10 years old and no movements will be transferred to another wallet because there are times that we thought we lost our seed phrase  but turns out we found it after 10 years and also having a website with list of lost wallet is not reliable because anytime soon those wallets can be transferred and we don't have basis that the wallet is already lost unless it was like 2009 but again it is just all about speculation unless that owner will say he lost it really.

At that point you may consider that as "lost" when trading, that's the point. I mean if it is not touched for 10 years, then it should not be calculated for the market, it is also true that some of the many years long held coins are not in the market neither. Could they suddenly become active and be sold? Sure, but if it hasn't been touched for 10 years, then when you are buying or selling, you shouldn't be considering that as a threat or a benefit.

I personally believe that just do whatever you want to do ignoring that they exist, and you will be able to do a lot better trades. If you keep on thinking that it could be sold any minute now, then you are going to be worried about something that hasn't happened and that's called anxiety.

[so98nn]

there are many threads and news about people losing access to their wallets and forgetting or seed phrases,
and it's better for scarcity of bitcoin,  but how can we know or speculate that the wallet is lost, and it is out of the supply? is there any platform where we can find lost wallets, if no, then it's a good idea to start a website and list every lost wallets.

List all the addresses? Seems lot of data to be merged at one place and it could also breach the security of other addresses which are active and has got nothing to do with the lost wallets. I mean imagine, one day or another those lost wallet addresses might have transacted with the active addresses thus there will be raiding of those addresses by hackers and trying to trace the original destination for Satoshi/bitcoin. 

I’m not saying that Website would be threat directly. But you never know what sort of ideas a data collection center may generate.

Perhaps, there is other use than that. One can just watch the addresses having the balances and sitting as it is forever.

[witcher_sense]

The main advantage of Bitcoin is that it gives you full control over the funds to which you have "unlocking" keys. You are the sole owner of the particular data in the blockchain, and you are the only person who actually knows whether the funds can be transferred to another address or not. Other people observing activity in the blockchain may only speculate on what is actually occurring, and their conclusions may differ significantly because there are no fully deterministic links when it comes to the Bitcoin blockchain. As for the owner of the funds, he knows precisely which addresses belong to him and which part of the blockchain is no longer available as a circulating supply.  It also applies to so-called "burn" addresses, that is, addresses without corresponding private keys: if you create your own burn address, you will be the only person who can verify that keys don't exist.

[kryptqnick]

I remember estimates from Vice News that if coins weren't moved at all for 5 years, they are presumed to be lost. Maybe others have different time frames, but aside from people who at some point claimed losing access to certain coins of their, we can't truly know whether the coins are lost or just left untouched for a while. But if the coins haven't been moved for years, they're effectively out of the circulating supply, so that metric is still important, even if the coins aren't really lost forever and might be used at some point.

[SquallLeonhart]

I remember estimates from Vice News that if coins weren't moved at all for 5 years, they are presumed to be lost. Maybe others have different time frames, but aside from people who at some point claimed losing access to certain coins of their, we can't truly know whether the coins are lost or just left untouched for a while. But if the coins haven't been moved for years, they're effectively out of the circulating supply, so that metric is still important, even if the coins aren't really lost forever and might be used at some point.

I wouldn't say 5 years is enough, that is amount of time that could change and I think it is totally possible that people could hold for 5 years and sell, plus that 5 years depends on which 5 years as well, in 20 years people who held for 5 years would be common, but now we are at the start so it is harder to hold for 5 years since that would be nearly half of bitcoins life.

For example, I consider 10 years today as a good case of "probably lost" to me, because that is the earliest days of bitcoin, time when it was 100 bucks or lower, and people who still haven't sold should be considered lost, but 5 years? That seems a little less, and even 10 years will be normal in a few decades as well because it would become a lot more common.

[darkangel11]

This is the way blockchain analytics operate. These companies make probable statistics and predictions and a 1 year old address with no outputs is going to be put in a group they suspect to be lost.

Sorry, but this is a nonsense metric. Even addresses which are dormant for 5-10 years cannot be assumed to be lost, but only 1 year? Given that the general knowledge regarding importance of back ups and seed phrases is continually increasing, and given we know that more and more people are holding for the long term, then the vast majority of coins which have not moved in one year are simply being held.

I was responding to this post and somehow I did a typo with 1 instead of 10.
Here's what I wrote about it earlier.

 

/snip/
We don't know how much of the supply is in this state of limbo, but coins that weren't moved for the last 10 years will most likely be put in this group.

I agree that we cannot be sure which wallets are lost and which are not, but the statistics are made anyway. We could use the example of that guy in the UK who lost his hard drive. The coins are like that Schrodinger's Cat, which is dead and isn't at the same time. They are probably lost forever, but there's a small chance that someone will one day find that hard drive.
You guys say that old wallets sometimes wake up, of course they do. People pronounced dead sometimes come back to life, but how often does it happen? Does it happen often enough for us to consider 10 year old wallets as active? How many of these wallets will eventually wake up? 1% maybe? 2%?

[o_e_l_e_o]

We could use the example of that guy in the UK who lost his hard drive.

And there is absolutely no proof whatsoever that he actually lost those coins. Every claim of a lost wallet could simply be an unfortunate boating accident. I know I lose all my coins in an unfortunate boating accident frequently!

You guys say that old wallets sometimes wake up, of course they do. People pronounced dead sometimes come back to life, but how often does it happen? Does it happen often enough for us to consider 10 year old wallets as active? How many of these wallets will eventually wake up? 1% maybe? 2%?

I do not doubt that some 10 year old dormant coins are indeed truly lost, but it is impossible to put even a ballpark estimate on it. CSW was so sure that a bunch of early dormant addresses from 2009 had been lost that he claimed they belonged to him in court, and then the true owner signed a message out of the blue calling him a fraud. And even if we say all these coins are truly lost, they will likely be recovered in the future as and when quantum computers are able to break the ECDLP, and so the number cannot be removed from the total available supply.

[BVeyron]

there are many threads and news about people losing access to their wallets and forgetting or seed phrases,
and it's better for scarcity of bitcoin,  but how can we know or speculate that the wallet is lost, and it is out of the supply? is there any platform where we can find lost wallets, if no, then it's a good idea to start a website and list every lost wallets.

I assume the list of lost wallets is quite a good idea, but there is a problem with legal aspects. Just for example: wife and husband are in hard divorce process, several children, several court visits etc... Wife declares husband's wallet lost, and starts blackmailing him, then police joins the deal, one more court case... Then this situation continues with similar actions taken by both sides and so on and so on... That's why it's quite hard to verify the wallet as lost.

[Agbe]

there are many threads and news about people losing access to their wallets and forgetting or seed phrases,
and it's better for scarcity of bitcoin,  but how can we know or speculate that the wallet is lost, and it is out of the supply? is there any platform where we can find lost wallets, if no, then it's a good idea to start a website and list every lost wallets.

When you can't login to you wallet after trying all possible way to login to the account. Them there are some times you might even received a message that you have successfully changed your password and username then as an understanding person you supposed to notice that you account has be comprised and you have to take immediate action to avert it back immediately.