Let's add up the KNOWN lost bitcoins

[SgtSpike]

Could it be possible to send coins to an unused address, so that someone gets a surprise when they generate a new address? hmm...

No.  It would take longer than the life of the universe to accidentally generate an address with coins already in it.

[1714464993]

1714464993

[payb.tc]

Could it be possible to send coins to an unused address, so that someone gets a surprise when they generate a new address? hmm...

Yes. But it may take longer than the life of the universe to accidentally generate an address with coins already in it.

[Piper67]

Well, you can add the 25 I sent to what I THOUGHT was my instawallet address about a year ago. There, I made you all a bit (albeit a tiny, little, almost insignificant bit) richer.

[jl2012]

Well, you can add the 25 I sent to what I THOUGHT was my instawallet address about a year ago. There, I made you all a bit (albeit a tiny, little, almost insignificant bit) richer.

You lost the coins, but the coins were not lost

[Piper67]

Well, you can add the 25 I sent to what I THOUGHT was my instawallet address about a year ago. There, I made you all a bit (albeit a tiny, little, almost insignificant bit) richer.

You lost the coins, but the coins were not lost

I agree, they're still there. But if instawallet works as advertised, they might as well not be. No one will ever be able to get to them... they're effectively gone.

In fact, they're not there, because there's no THEM. Bitcoin is an accounting system, not a series of defined monetary units. There's a record of a transaction in which I sent 25 BTC to an address... but damned if I know how to get them back.

[jl2012]

Well, you can add the 25 I sent to what I THOUGHT was my instawallet address about a year ago. There, I made you all a bit (albeit a tiny, little, almost insignificant bit) richer.

You lost the coins, but the coins were not lost

I agree, they're still there. But if instawallet works as advertised, they might as well not be. No one will ever be able to get to them... they're effectively gone.

In fact, they're not there, because there's no THEM. Bitcoin is an accounting system, not a series of defined monetary units. There's a record of a transaction in which I sent 25 BTC to an address... but damned if I know how to get them back.

Instawallet is a shared wallet. The operator holds all private keys

[dree12]

Well, you can add the 25 I sent to what I THOUGHT was my instawallet address about a year ago. There, I made you all a bit (albeit a tiny, little, almost insignificant bit) richer.

You lost the coins, but the coins were not lost

I agree, they're still there. But if instawallet works as advertised, they might as well not be. No one will ever be able to get to them... they're effectively gone.

In fact, they're not there, because there's no THEM. Bitcoin is an accounting system, not a series of defined monetary units. There's a record of a transaction in which I sent 25 BTC to an address... but damned if I know how to get them back.

Instawallet is a shared wallet. The operator holds all private keys

The operator does not know that the coins are lost, so treats them as any other coins—the operator will not spend the coins. So the coins are effectively lost.

[jl2012]

Well, you can add the 25 I sent to what I THOUGHT was my instawallet address about a year ago. There, I made you all a bit (albeit a tiny, little, almost insignificant bit) richer.

You lost the coins, but the coins were not lost

I agree, they're still there. But if instawallet works as advertised, they might as well not be. No one will ever be able to get to them... they're effectively gone.

In fact, they're not there, because there's no THEM. Bitcoin is an accounting system, not a series of defined monetary units. There's a record of a transaction in which I sent 25 BTC to an address... but damned if I know how to get them back.

Instawallet is a shared wallet. The operator holds all private keys

The operator does not know that the coins are lost, so treats them as any other coins—the operator will not spend the coins. So the coins are effectively lost.

Just like depositing cash to a bank, coins in instawallet are mixed so you can't say which particularly coins are lost. Also, instawallet may change their TOS and charge service fee in the future, or they may get hacked, and those "lost coins" will be circulated again.

[SgtSpike]

Well, you can add the 25 I sent to what I THOUGHT was my instawallet address about a year ago. There, I made you all a bit (albeit a tiny, little, almost insignificant bit) richer.

You lost the coins, but the coins were not lost

I agree, they're still there. But if instawallet works as advertised, they might as well not be. No one will ever be able to get to them... they're effectively gone.

In fact, they're not there, because there's no THEM. Bitcoin is an accounting system, not a series of defined monetary units. There's a record of a transaction in which I sent 25 BTC to an address... but damned if I know how to get them back.

Instawallet is a shared wallet. The operator holds all private keys

The operator does not know that the coins are lost, so treats them as any other coins—the operator will not spend the coins. So the coins are effectively lost.

For now, anyway.  The operator could choose to shut down his service, and give everyone 6 months to take their coins off his site.  He could claim the remainder as his.

Or, he could simply up and run away with everyone's funds.

These coins are not lost - they are still controlled by someone.  They should not be added to the list, since they could re-enter circulation at some point in the future.  This thread is only for coins that cannot re-enter circulation.

[Rassah]

He could also claim (rightfully) that instawallet is not a long-term wallet storage, and should not be used for such, and declare that any accounts that have not moved coins over the last two years will be considered "lost" and emptied within the next however many months. I would actually totally expect instawallet to do that, since it's in their best interest to keep their hot wallet as small (and thus as small of a target) as possible, and accumulating lost coins only increases their risks, and thus costs.

[lenny_]

I have lost:
3.14482421 BTC
31.22782779 BTC

Because of bug in MultiBit wallet 

[jl2012]

I have lost:
3.14482421 BTC
31.22782779 BTC

Because of bug in MultiBit wallet 

Do you lose the private keys to the addresses?

[lenny_]

I have lost:
3.14482421 BTC
31.22782779 BTC

Because of bug in MultiBit wallet 

Do you lose the private keys to the addresses?

Yes. My bitcoins are still here:
https://blockchain.info/address/15ZMCFvj6LBnNPufa97LEo6544XScqETP6
https://blockchain.info/address/1BdE3uE4xLqWHfrjuPWmAywshfBX8v7xA2

But my MultiBit wallet lost keys for these addresses. I made several copies of my wallet, but private keys were wrong from the beginning.

[foo]

+150

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=153514.msg1629650#msg1629650

[RoxxR]

I have lost:
3.14482421 BTC
31.22782779 BTC

Because of bug in MultiBit wallet 

Do you lose the private keys to the addresses?

Yes. My bitcoins are still here:
https://blockchain.info/address/15ZMCFvj6LBnNPufa97LEo6544XScqETP6
https://blockchain.info/address/1BdE3uE4xLqWHfrjuPWmAywshfBX8v7xA2

But my MultiBit wallet lost keys for these addresses. I made several copies of my wallet, but private keys were wrong from the beginning.

This sucks hard. Have you contacted the developer? Has the bug been fixed?

[lenny_]

I have lost:
3.14482421 BTC
31.22782779 BTC

Because of bug in MultiBit wallet 

Do you lose the private keys to the addresses?

Yes. My bitcoins are still here:
https://blockchain.info/address/15ZMCFvj6LBnNPufa97LEo6544XScqETP6
https://blockchain.info/address/1BdE3uE4xLqWHfrjuPWmAywshfBX8v7xA2

But my MultiBit wallet lost keys for these addresses. I made several copies of my wallet, but private keys were wrong from the beginning.

This sucks hard. Have you contacted the developer? Has the bug been fixed?

Yes that's sucks really hard. I am not using Multibit anymore, it's too risky. Of course I contacted Jim (developer) and he made all effort to recover my Bitcoins but without success. Bug has not been identified so it's still in the wild. If you using Multibit, please be careful, always add all your private keys to different wallet and compare addresses after.

[deeplink]

Bug has not been identified so it's still in the wild.

What? That sounds very disturbing. There is no mention of a critical issue that could destroy all your coins on the Multibit website. Since when has this issue been known and what steps have been taken by the developers?

[lenny_]

I discovered this bug in December 2012 but I didn't realize back then that my Bitcoins addresses are gone forever. I was discussing problems with sending Bitcoins from my wallet with Multibit main developer, jim618. But we both wasn't aware how serious this problem is, and my reported issue has been put away to his queue.
In February 2013 I checked again all my private keys and all adresses and realized that two private keys not match my Bitcoin addresses. Keys were for different address, but wallet still thought that they match and kept trying to do my transactions using wrong private keys, which was of course unsuccessful. Then I contacted Jim again, I sent him my wallet with some backups from past, but all of them contained wrong private keys and recovery failed completely.
This is a really serious bug. Everytime you create new receiving address you should check it triple times on different wallets like Satoshi Client of Blockchain that private key match Bitcoins address - otherwise any payment sent to these addresses will be gone forever.

[dree12]

Could it be possible to send coins to an unused address, so that someone gets a surprise when they generate a new address? hmm...

No.  It would take longer than the life of the universe to accidentally generate an address with coins already in it.

This is also assuming that RIPEMD is reversible.

[dooglus]

Do we include this?

My developer friend was paid 500 bit coin for a $200 project by some Russians a few years ago. He took then off the exchange and forgot about them. A year ago, he gave his mac to his brother. Because of the bitcoin craze of the past month, he checked his old computer. It has been completely reformatted and replaced with Windows. $45,000 gone, just like that.