Lost, Forgotten Bitcoin. How many are there?

[Agbe]

Base on misplacement of seed phrase, forgotten of passwords, and other negligence of the security details of different users in the cryptocurrency many bitcoins have lost and placed or hacked and every week people lost bitcoin either they sent it to a wrong address and others and with all those there is no accurate data for the total number of bitcoins that has lost in the space. Some people stored their bitcoins in a wallet that is not well secured so they also lost it from there and also in exchange which is not a good place to save or store coins. And I don't think anyone can give the accurate bitcoins that have been lost.

[SmartGold01]

If I am not mistakenly I think have came across post like that either here or other forum where a total number of bitcoin address with their holdings were Sum up, okay.. How do we consider a lost bitcoin; To me any bitcoin that is stored inside a wallet for about 4 years to 15 years or above can be considered lost bitcoin because the wallet is dead and hence no transaction has been carried out for these numbers of years is considered lost. Maybe whenever I comes across that post again I will come here to edit and update my post.

Could you tell me what your reasoning is for choosing a time range of 4 to 15 years?. Is it for any specific reason or is it random?. I have wallets (not Bitcoin) with funds for 10 years and I have not moved a single coin/token, not because its value is 0, but because I have decided so, although I must also say that the value in $ is small. I think no one can define (unless the owner of that wallet says so publicly and can prove ownership) when funds in a wallet are lost or not.

I still think no one can define something like that just by looking at when the last outgoing transaction was, if there was one. I think trying to interpret something like that is a waste of time, and depending on who (I'm not saying it's you) it's just an excuse to try to extract the funds if possible.

I could be wrong in my perspective but sometimes it's also the way we can use to judge if the wallet is dead, like we can easily view them since there is probability that if a wallet remain inactive then is either the owner lost complete access or wallet has been misplaced. Any wallet that has not perform transactions for long can be considered lost since the wallet is not making any more, now there are some wallet that needs regular updates and changes are being made over the time. That's just my own way of analyzing a lost Bitcoin.

[ABCbits]

Does anyone believe that if SHA-256 could be hacked, the NSA (for example) wouldn't have done it already?. And before anyone asks, no, AI can't hack SHA-256 either. Let's use common sense.

Not today, but just look back in history.
All encryptions get cracked at some point even the best ones, but nsa already have backdoor access for many encryptions, so they don't even need to crack them at all

Or require far less time to crack them .

Exception is one encryption used for bitcoin, that makes you wonder if Satoshi had any connection with this agency when he made code for bitcoin.

As reminder, Bitcoin doesn't use encryption cryptography, but rather hash and signature cryptography.

[dkbit98]

As reminder, Bitcoin doesn't use encryption cryptography, but rather hash and signature cryptography.

Cryptography is encryption by it's definition.
Satoshi used encryption public-private key encryption that was created as solution for double-spending problem.
That is why we can make trustless transaction without using third parties.

Encryption is a method of securing data by converting it into a code that can only be deciphered by someone with the correct key or password

https://www.bitcoinlearning.org/bitcoin-encryption/

[EluguHcman]

You are very correct. It is obvious that the ETF does not care about enhancing a more and solid security interfaces in the Bitcoin blocks.
All they cares most is channeling as much Bitcoins to themselves selfishly but meanwhile they are not concerned to align with the miners and the developers in other to frame better security outlets or maybe considering alternatively how those Investors who has lost their wallets assets could recover it.
I totally wonders where those claimed dormant Bitcoins in the enactive wallets goes?

[UNIVERSE]

Base on misplacement of seed phrase, forgotten of passwords, and other negligence of the security details of different users in the cryptocurrency many bitcoins have lost and placed or hacked and every week people lost bitcoin either they sent it to a wrong address and others and with all those there is no accurate data for the total number of bitcoins that has lost in the space. Some people stored their bitcoins in a wallet that is not well secured so they also lost it from there and also in exchange which is not a good place to save or store coins. And I don't think anyone can give the accurate bitcoins that have been lost.

This often happens, which is quite unfortunate, because sometimes, I personally am careless when it comes to storing some important assets or data. Moreover, the loss of data that is important to us is not only due to our carelessness which might happen to us but also due to other factors, such as unexpected things due to theft or natural disasters. But at least, if we can make some backups, this might help a little. But indeed, caution must be prioritized when we invest in crypto. It cannot be isolated, because after all, crypto is a digital product, and it will be very risky when we lay all things digitally only. For this reason, there are many tips and suggestions for us to store our assets in the form of hardware and offline, and for us to secure the data and devices truly safely and with a fairly strong backup.

[ABCbits]

As reminder, Bitcoin doesn't use encryption cryptography, but rather hash and signature cryptography.

Cryptography is encryption by it's definition.
Satoshi used encryption public-private key encryption that was created as solution for double-spending problem.
That is why we can make trustless transaction without using third parties.

Encryption is a method of securing data by converting it into a code that can only be deciphered by someone with the correct key or password

https://www.bitcoinlearning.org/bitcoin-encryption/

That website is bad learning source. Here's somewhat better source for explaining difference between cryptography signature, hash and encryption in general, https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/security/cryptographic-services.

[Freemind]

down the road a new harder to crack blockchain wallet may be needed.

this is why I feel the old frozen wallets may be transferred out of their stale easier to crack wallets.

It is possible that what you say happens, but it is something that I have already contemplated in my previous posts. When I say that technology (old and new) works in both directions, I mean precisely what you say about the new wallets. I know there is more computing power available every day to crack codes and algorithms, but that same computing power can be used to protect software, and make it more secure against new attacks and tools.

Bitcoin developers are aware of new advances, so I believe that when the time comes there will be new wallets with greater protection against these possible (and still distant) attacks. I don't think we should worry about AI or quantum computing when we talk about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. I think it would be better to worry about the security with which we take care of our wallets as users to avoid problems and possible theft of our funds.

[LUCKMCFLY]

This often happens, which is quite unfortunate, because sometimes, I personally am careless when it comes to storing some important assets or data. Moreover, the loss of data that is important to us is not only due to our carelessness which might happen to us but also due to other factors, such as unexpected things due to theft or natural disasters. But at least, if we can make some backups, this might help a little. But indeed, caution must be prioritized when we invest in crypto. It cannot be isolated, because after all, crypto is a digital product, and it will be very risky when we lay all things digitally only. For this reason, there are many tips and suggestions for us to store our assets in the form of hardware and offline, and for us to secure the data and devices truly safely and with a fairly strong backup.

Backups have worked a lot for me, in fact in 2017 When I started in this world of crypto, or what I did most was look for good crypto projects and I got to have many coins , when I started to see the taste for it one day My Altcoin wallet was Damaged , but I had Saved the file that I made and Backed up and this was enough for me to Recover my coins , I can't deny it, I was very scared, because the Truth is that it had cost me a lot of Effort to get some of these coins and I had bought too, but basically the things I did were too big for this , and from there I Started to see the backup copies and everything to save money with great care, in bitcoin things can also be like that, although I I kept Everything in various places pro sui perhaps something else would Fail.