Losing private key with tens of thousands of BTC

[STT]

One day people will mine old landfills for hard drives like they mine gold   (just kidding )


This could relate to the float of a stock.   They only count the shares often traded, the fact that bill gates has 10% held of microsoft for years is not counted in the worth of the share so far as I know.   If he sold them then its included in the market capitalisation

I think the marketcap site started doing this partly, excluding premine and other coins that have not yet released the coins properly

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[btcsup]

Market prices mainly manipulated by few big capital. 10k btc is not enough to make a big impact.

[jbrnt]

There is no sure way of confirming the Bitcoin are really lost forever. Coins which are sitting in an address for a long period, could be a cold wallet, not lost. Besides, the amount is so low, it will not affect the market at all.

[Charlie Prime]

One day people will mine old landfills for hard drives like they mine gold   (just kidding )

Don't laugh.  I can envision people in the future actually forming ventures to do exactly what you describe.

The team would go into old landfills and look for hard drives from the period 2005 - 2012 and scan them for Bitcoins.

People form ventures today to find old pirate gold hoards in the Caribbean and around the Gulf of Mexico.

[redwhitenblue]

Say someone lost their private key containing 10000+ BTC... How long would it take for that to affect the market price of bitcoins since there will be less of a supply of bitcoin and more demand?

It would not have any effect.

The only way this would change the price of BTC is if this person were to buy more BTC to replace his/her holdings.

[freedomno1]

Say someone lost their private key containing 10000+ BTC... How long would it take for that to affect the market price of bitcoins since there will be less of a supply of bitcoin and more demand?

Because such a small amount of the bitcoin supply is on all the exchanges combined there would be no effect on the market.

I think less than 1% of the supply of Bitcoin is on every exchange in the world.

You could loss 100,000 and it wouldn't even get priced in.

That said if it was on an exchange like Mtgox again and the private key and Bitcoin supply were claimed loss it would have an immediate chilling effect on the marketplace.

However to my knowledge there are no Bitcoin exchanges that have that much volume left and only Dooglus has a significant stash of reserves.

[negafen]

I do feel for people who lose this much.

[Harley997]

Say someone lost their private key containing 10000+ BTC... How long would it take for that to affect the market price of bitcoins since there will be less of a supply of bitcoin and more demand?

It would not affect the market price. It would be impossible for anyone to know for sure that you had truly lost your private keys as it is impossible to prove a negative like that. It would also be very difficult to prove that you even ever held the private keys to that BTC address. Although someone considered trustworthy could potentially sign a message saying that the address does in fact belong to you.

[Ron~Popeil]

I might start scouring ebay and craigslist for old hard drives. 

[Bit_Happy]

This does not help my mourning of the 6 bitcoins I threw away several years ago because they weren't worth my time to back-up when I reformatted my hard drive. 

I wonder if any companies who recycle computer parts check the hard drives for old BTC wallets? (especially the ones from ~2010)
The odds of finding a good one would be low, but the "hidden treasure" could be worth millions.

[DrG]

Probably more coins were destroyed during reformats, reinstalls, and wallet corruptions than HDs tossed into landfills.  How many of us nerds actually toss HDs.  I end up pulling them apart and my job has nothing to do with PCs

[Jabbatheslutt]

Well since that 10,000 btc wasn't on the market anyway and was stored away "safely" in your wallet no one would be the wiser except yourself.

[Bit_Happy]

Well since that 10,000 btc wasn't on the market anyway and was stored away "safely" in your wallet no one would be the wiser except yourself.

Long-term there will be a severe shortage of BTC*
*Bitcoin will be able to function as a currency (i.e. "Here is your payment for 0.0000123 BTC"), but people who want to own at least 1 whole Bitcoin will find there are not many for sale. 

[odolvlobo]

Well since that 10,000 btc wasn't on the market anyway and was stored away "safely" in your wallet no one would be the wiser except yourself.

Since the 10,000 BTC would eventually have been spent, it's loss will have an effect.

[Ron~Popeil]

Well since that 10,000 btc wasn't on the market anyway and was stored away "safely" in your wallet no one would be the wiser except yourself.

Long-term there will be a severe shortage of BTC*
*Bitcoin will be able to function as a currency (i.e. "Here is your payment for 0.0000123 BTC"), but people who want to own at least 1 whole Bitcoin will find there are not many for sale. 

That is something that will have to be addressed at some point. The fact that it is divisible helps, but maybe a POS system in the future can help keep us around 21 million coins in existence.

[DurbanPoison]

Is there a list anywhere of Bitcoins that are known to be "lost"?

[Ron~Popeil]

Is there a list anywhere of Bitcoins that are known to be "lost"?

There is a thread somewhere on this site about the biggest bit coin losses. It includes fraud losses as well. It is an interesting read if you have the time to search for it.

[Harley997]

Is there a list anywhere of Bitcoins that are known to be "lost"?

Not if you are speaking to as being "lost" as in someone lost the private keys.

Most of the time "lost" private keys are not publicly reported and is often not discovered for a significant time after they are "lost"

[freedomno1]

Say someone lost their private key containing 10000+ BTC... How long would it take for that to affect the market price of bitcoins since there will be less of a supply of bitcoin and more demand?

It depends on if it is made public or not, take Mtgox those bitcoins were lost and then refound and the price reacted with downward pressure since it was the largest exchange.
Then there are Satoshi's coins which are not used but do exist and the market accepts those ones are around as well but it doesn't affect the price
So it depends

[JessyMatt]

Did you ever recover your bitcoin private key? If so, how did you do it?