Lost, Forgotten Bitcoin. How many are there?

[Jamal Aezaz]

Exactly, regrets like that will often happen, but what we did in the past if we didn't do it, we know whether it will still survive today. As you have said, the past must be used as a very important lesson to become better than before.

Everyone makes mistakes but that is a real person who learn something beneficial from those mistakes and if someone did no take the matter of security as a serious concern then he will surely loss his coins but due to such loss he will not do these faults again as every mistake gives us a lesson.

A person's mind is not so sharp to remember all the keys therefore it is necessary to note every single key for the privacy of your coins because to regret for past will not provide your lost money back to you.

[Cantsay]

I have not got any accurate data for the total Bitcoin that have been confirmed lost but at least it's for the better 

The analysis might not be accurate but I still feel that 15 years is a long time for someone to still be holding something has has risen in value exponentially since they bought it. If it was around five to six years I might consider them still holding but above that I would classify as part of those that can no longer remember their secret phrases to their wallet.

By the way, as you said it is for the better - the more that’s being lost the better for us.

Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more.  Think of it as a donation to everyone.

[MrSpasybo]

I believe that nothing is actually lost in the literal sense, because if I remember correctly, at some point in the future technology will reach a point where it will be able to save all those coins that are somehow stuck. I would speculate that today we cannot count on at least 2 million BTC, of which supposedly half of what was mined by Satoshi, and at least that much was "locked" or lost in the first years.

Some will say that in the beginning Bitcoin was practically worthless, but it was also quite easy to mine - and in the first 4 years alone, 10+ million BTC were mined, which is almost half of everything that will ever exist. I think that the key is in those first 4 years, because in my opinion the most BTC was "lost" right then.

I don't think we'll have that technology anytime soon: it could be a machine that can identify the private key of a BTC address by trying trillions of times, or a quantum computer that can reset the entire Bitcoin ledger. I don't expect we'll have to face such things, that will be the quantum resistance problem we've mentioned many times when talking about the security of Bitcoin's SHA-256 encryption algorithm.

I think the disappearance of about 30% (estimated) of all BTC is not entirely meaningless. Although it creates regret for unlucky owners, it helps to reduce the actual circulating supply, thereby increasing the scarcity of BTC and sharing value to other BTC holders at the present. It is similar to the token burning that many projects are doing right now.

[Lucius]

I don't think we'll have that technology anytime soon: it could be a machine that can identify the private key of a BTC address by trying trillions of times, or a quantum computer that can reset the entire Bitcoin ledger. I don't expect we'll have to face such things, that will be the quantum resistance problem we've mentioned many times when talking about the security of Bitcoin's SHA-256 encryption algorithm.
~snip~

Maybe it's not a question of when we will have such technology, but that we will have it at some point - and most agree that that moment will come, and maybe much sooner than many think. Then we will have a real test of how much BTC is actually "lost", because all those who will not transfer their coins to safe addresses will be left without them.

What should be pointed out is that the technology for the masses is not always the same as the one that those who deal with such things have. In other words, maybe we will find out that such technology exists only when some strange "hacks" start happening.

[Stompix]

I believe that nothing is actually lost in the literal sense, because if I remember correctly, at some point in the future technology will reach a point where it will be able to save all those coins that are somehow stuck. I would speculate that today we cannot count on at least 2 million BTC, of which supposedly half of what was mined by Satoshi, and at least that much was "locked" or lost in the first years.

What do you mean by stuck coins?
Because no matter the technology advance, coins that have been mined by somebody and he has thrown away or truly lost the keys will never be recovered no matter what, this would be the same as hacking random address and if that would be indeed possible at one point then the value of all coins will be zero!

Recovering from damaged drives, encrypted wallets they can't remember the pass, wallets where the person has lost 2-3 words of the seed, other types of storage that have gone bad maybe, but outright lost coins with nothing to link them I don't see that happening.

[philipma1957]

I have heard

2 mil
4 mil
6 mil

A simple fork would let you learn make an abandoned address rule come into effect in 2059.

any address 50 years old that has not had coins removed forfeits the coins which go back into recirculation as rewards.

no other method reveals if a coin is lost or held.

You could place the abandoned coins in a special abandoned coin wallet  which would track just how many coins are placed in it.

[vegasus]

Defective hardware, forgotten-lost passwords or private keys etc... I recently read somewhere that around 4 million Bitcoins are considered lost due to similar reasons.
Is there any approximately precise analysis of how many such, forever-locked Bitcoins there are?

I don't think there will be such limit on how much probably Bitcoin loss will be. Moreover, some of the reasons are because of human error, as the main reason. Commonly, some of them are losing the private keys, or other important data to access the wallet. Or even, they also lost the devices of hardware wallet or other devices for  storing the Bitcoin itself. I read this article, it actually shows that around 7.8M Bitcoins were lost.

Link:
https://coingape.com/blog/approximately-7-8m-bitcoins-have-been-lost-can-they-be-recovered/

[Z-tight]

I read this article, it actually shows that around 7.8M Bitcoins were lost.

This is just guesswork, we cannot know the mumber of BTC's that are lost and i have been reading that it is ~ 4m BTC lost and now you say this article claims it is ~ 7.8m. Neither of them is accurate, there are so many addresses that coins have not moved out from for a long time, and people think the coins are lost, but the owners still have their keys and are just storing it for the long term. There would never be an accurate number of lost BTC's.

[examplens]

A simple fork would let you learn make an abandoned address rule come into effect in 2059.

any address 50 years old that has not had coins removed forfeits the coins which go back into recirculation as rewards.

This is an excellent proposal, I don't know how technically feasible it is, but it is definitely worth considering.

[GxSTxV]

The development of Bitcoin's ecosystem over the past 15 years has indeed changed and became better due its perspectives on the finite supply. While 21 million Bitcoins initially seemed huge at the beginning, but with time and factors like increased institutional interest and technological challenges have changed everything.
I think the biggest quantity of bitcoin lost was in the first years due to various reasons like hardware failures with cold wallets, forgotten passwords, or dissaving private keys, and all of this was due the value of Bitcoin those days.

Personally, despite different analysis mentioned by some sources trying to estimate a close number of the lost Bitcoin forever, I cannot definitively assert that a wallet without transactions for many years is primarily considered forgotten or lost. The owners of these wallets may be intentionally holding them for some reasons, or there will be a chance for them to recover it with the technology development.

[Stompix]

A simple fork would let you learn make an abandoned address rule come into effect in 2059.

any address 50 years old that has not had coins removed forfeits the coins which go back into recirculation as rewards.

This is an excellent proposal, I don't know how technically feasible it is, but it is definitely worth considering.

It will never happen!
Even if you increase the age, even if you decrease the amount taken by 50 or 90% no such proposal will ever be accepted.

The main problem is not what it does itself but the fact that everyone will see it as opening Pandora's box, if this happens then what's next? And people's imagination will run wild, what if next it's a mandatory annual tax of 0.1% on all coins?
Furthermore, you have Satoshi's own opinion, lost coins are a donation, he had no plan to recycle them.

[tranthidung]

This is an excellent proposal, I don't know how technically feasible it is, but it is definitely worth considering.

I don't think so because it breaks the core value of Bitcoin Protocol. It's your private key, it's your bitcoin.

It will never happen!
Even if you increase the age, even if you decrease the amount taken by 50 or 90% no such proposal will ever be accepted.

The main problem is not what it does itself but the fact that everyone will see it as opening Pandora's box, if this happens then what's next? And people's imagination will run wild, what if next it's a mandatory annual tax of 0.1% on all coins?
Furthermore, you have Satoshi's own opinion, lost coins are a donation, he had no plan to recycle them.

I agree with you.

Bitcoin is our own banks, with private keys, or mnemonic seeds. If there is a term like this in the Protocol, and a code to refund our bitcoins after 50 inactive years, people will lose their faith in Bitcoin.

The threshold is hard to define too. 50 years, people have longer lifespan that it and even threshold is 100 years, there are people can live longer than that. More important, Bitcoin can be used as inherited asset for our children and family members, from generation to generation.

This idea breaks all of good core value of Bitcoin Protocol.

It is a Pandora box we never want to open similarly to increase Bitcoin total supply.

[taufik123]

-snip-
The threshold is hard to define too. 50 years, people have longer lifespan that it and even threshold is 100 years, there are people can live longer than that. More important, Bitcoin can be used as inherited asset for our children and family members, from generation to generation.

50 years or 100 years is just going to be the maximum number or threshold that we think we're going to get there.
But it could be even shorter, and no one knows when it will happen.

Making Bitcoin a legacy of digital valuable assets and will not be regulated by the government though, it will be a legacy for all time.
Even the legacy that will be passed down from generation to generation is getting bigger, but are we ready with it and can hold it for the long term.

Because the target to hold the long term is always determined by how much profit can be obtained.

[Lucius]

I believe that nothing is actually lost in the literal sense, because if I remember correctly, at some point in the future technology will reach a point where it will be able to save all those coins that are somehow stuck. I would speculate that today we cannot count on at least 2 million BTC, of which supposedly half of what was mined by Satoshi, and at least that much was "locked" or lost in the first years.

What do you mean by stuck coins?
Because no matter the technology advance, coins that have been mined by somebody and he has thrown away or truly lost the keys will never be recovered no matter what, this would be the same as hacking random address and if that would be indeed possible at one point then the value of all coins will be zero!

Recovering from damaged drives, encrypted wallets they can't remember the pass, wallets where the person has lost 2-3 words of the seed, other types of storage that have gone bad maybe, but outright lost coins with nothing to link them I don't see that happening.

I meant in general all the BTC that for one reason or another are currently not available to those who once had them, be it lost or forgotten keys. Maybe I misunderstood, but there were often discussions on BTT about the fact that with the advent of quantum computers, such coins might still be "saved".

I actually wouldn't want that to ever happen, because as you say, it would do more harm than good.

[Z-tight]

The owners of these wallets may be intentionally holding them for some reasons, or there will be a chance for them to recover it with the technology development.

What technological development? I get it that it is not possible for us to know the exact number of lost BTC's, as there might be long term investors that have not spent any of their sats and people may think the funds are lost. However, if you have lost your keys, there is no way to recover them, even with any development in technology.