Around 4 Million Bitcoins lost forever!!

Patatas

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Quote from: ahmad21 on November 26, 2017, 01:57:31 PM

Just came across this article today says that 4 million out of the total supply of 21 million have already been lost due to various reasons. The most popular reason are the HODLers who are holding it for quite long. These people have reduced the supply of bitcoins in market which has upsurged the price of bitcoin so much. Satoshi surely is the biggest HODLer himself.

Here is the article : http://fortune.com/2017/11/25/lost-bitcoins/

Interesting.Satoshi is the biggest holder for various reasons.The day his bitcoins are moved will pave the way for the useless critics to sink bitcoin or claim they'e satoshi.He definitely can't move the bitcoins on an exchange for privac .4 millions are still less in what is being lost in the addresses used solely for the lost bitcoins.Forgetting the keys and losing access to own bitcoins should count to another 4 million I guess.

Andre_Goldman

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I wondering if there is a research about those "dust" satoshis lost here and there ... Huh

khaled0111

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I think the number of lost bitcoins is more than 4 million. And as you said these lost coins are affecting the market but are they lost forever!!

Maybe someday someone will figure out a way to restore bitcoins that remain in wallets for a long time and reinsert them in the market again.
After all, 4 million is 1/5 the total supply which is not a negligible amount.

That can be considered as one of bitcoin disadvantages. After all, being anonymous is not always an advantage.

Lampaster

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Quote from: CryptoParadigm on November 26, 2017, 07:59:57 PM

Quote from: brushtooth on November 26, 2017, 07:48:08 PM

Quote from: 2fresh on November 26, 2017, 01:58:54 PM

Quote from: ahmad21 on November 26, 2017, 01:57:31 PM

Just came across this article today says that 4 million out of the total supply of 21 million have already been lost due to various reasons. The most popular reason are the HODLers who are holding it for quite long. These people have reduced the supply of bitcoins in market which has upsurged the price of bitcoin so much. Satoshi surely is the biggest HODLer himself.

Here is the article : http://fortune.com/2017/11/25/lost-bitcoins/

But holding bitcoin doesn't mean they are lost forever or out of circulation?

My immediate thought, they are not lost, they are just simply not in circulation at the moment. Lost would be those coins that can no longer be accessed by anyone. I would expect that to be a much much smaller number, probably around 1% of the 21m coins at most.

Actually there are some unknown numbers lost forever. As you could loose all your BTC holdings by forgetting password to your BTC wallet, and those coins are not be recovered... therefore there never are as many BTC out there as they are accounted as mined. One of disadvantages of decentralized aspect of all Cryptocurrencies.

In order not to lose the passwords for the wallets I keep bitcoins in online wallets. I am sure that it is more secure than storing your coins on a computer or on paper. I think that people themselves come up with challenges and then courageously overcome them. It seems to me that these 4 million coins is the money of those who do not believe in bitcoin and brought him back in 2010.

Dexion

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this goes back to bitcoin holders, because that is their principle. we can not force them to sell bitcoin today, but maybe they have their own calculations. I do not know how long they hold, but they definitely want to make a big bang for their wallets.

chenwdzw

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I saw this article yesterday and what I figured out is I think now most people just hold a little bitcoin due to its scarcity. So for my opinion, whoever hold the bitcoin not to sell them easily. Btc is just like gold in real world. Hold is the most safe way to make your monry.

salihno71

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Those bitcoins are not lost, just not accessible. They are in the blockchain and anybody check the balance and the transactions related to them, just nobody can spend them. The number will probably slowly grow over the time for a various reasons like various mistakes. And forever part is probably true.

jvangeest001

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BTC will only go up in value the the less bitcoin is out there on the market.

IF you ask me I hope more btc gets lost Cheesy

dogandogru

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I don't think this article has any authentication with its facts.
Its true that some people has lost their private key at very early stage but 4 million is hard to believe. I feel that maximum BTC that could be lost till now would be around 1.5million. $4k is very big amount to amount which is hard to believe.

kimochidesh

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Amazing Fact to know. Estimate BTC mined till now is about 16.5Milliion that means 25% of the current supply is dead and only 12.5M is in circulation. I think this is the further increase BTC value as demand keeps on increasing and actual supply is less than we estimate to have.

RodeoX

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Quote from: Adinalini on November 27, 2017, 11:50:57 AM

OMG! Thanks for sharing the article. There should some way to delete bitcoin from accounts that are not being used and be put again in circulation.

Ok, let's start with your bitcoin. I don't think you are spending them fast enough. I'll just take them so I can circulate them.
Cheesy

This is Taboo. There is a 0% chance of this happening.

Quote from: digaran on November 27, 2017, 01:31:07 PM

... we still don't know if Satoshi was really jumped-killed by crypto jumper-killer Gavin and friends. Satoshi is waiting for $50,000 to dump every coin he has...

So even though you have never met either of these guys you know their most guarded secrets? How?

arseaboy

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Quote from: HashFace on November 27, 2017, 02:41:08 PM

How do they tell long term holders from people who have lost their wallets/passwords? I know some people are saying Satoshi is sitting on 1 million BTC, and if he is dead and didn't share his keys, then those are out of circulation ... but no one can say for sure the status of those BTC.

Good argument mate, if that million of coins who allegedly holds by satoshi is no where to find since its claimed that he's already dead
that numbers will no longer exist in any circulation but who knows the truth behind that, if this coins still exist it can be a big threat
to this current value since it can affect the price if this coins will be dumped.

MSdosOutput

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I don't know whether your provided information is true or not. But if bitcoin is out of circulation, it does not mean that it has lost forever.

CryptoParadigm

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Quote from: 1Referee on November 27, 2017, 04:18:57 PM

Quote from: HashFace on November 27, 2017, 02:41:08 PM

How do they tell long term holders from people who have lost their wallets/passwords?

It's impossible to tell. They dumbly assume that if a coin hasn't moved for a certain period of time, that it is lost, which is something even noobs here seem to disagree with. Large holders nowadays are sitting on a decent chunk of BCC, which they very likely have claimed, or plan to claim. In order to do so, they first send their Bitcoins to a new address, and this means that these coins have been moved. In their eyes it means that they are back into circulation again, while these coins will probably keep sitting in their wallets for plenty of more years. These articles are rubbish.

Quote from: HashFace on November 27, 2017, 02:41:08 PM

I know some people are saying Satoshi is sitting on 1 million BTC, and if he is dead and didn't share his keys, then those are out of circulation ... but no one can say for sure the status of those BTC.

People blindly assume that Satoshi was the only entity minting back in the days, but there might have been several people having done so. The only way to almost accurately claim that these coins belong to Satoshi, is that he first signs from the address the genesis block reward was sent to, and then do so with every address (thousands and thousands of addresses) each containing 50BTC block rewards.

And no one knows if Satoshi is made up by actual creator, or who is he? I guess he/she like to avoid assassination...

littlewizard

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It is difficult to say they are lost just because they havent been moved for a long time. They could be in cold storage that can be transferred anytime.
On the other hand, it is certain many bitcoin in the early days are lost forever, so maybe a wild guess is 1/2 of the four million is lost.

Emerge

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If they are lost that means a less volume wich result a higher price.

1Referee

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Quote from: HashFace on November 27, 2017, 02:41:08 PM

How do they tell long term holders from people who have lost their wallets/passwords?

It's impossible to tell. They dumbly assume that if a coin hasn't moved for a certain period of time, that it is lost, which is something even noobs here seem to disagree with. Large holders nowadays are sitting on a decent chunk of BCC, which they very likely have claimed, or plan to claim. In order to do so, they first send their Bitcoins to a new address, and this means that these coins have been moved. In their eyes it means that they are back into circulation again, while these coins will probably keep sitting in their wallets for plenty of more years. These articles are rubbish.

Quote from: HashFace on November 27, 2017, 02:41:08 PM

I know some people are saying Satoshi is sitting on 1 million BTC, and if he is dead and didn't share his keys, then those are out of circulation ... but no one can say for sure the status of those BTC.

People blindly assume that Satoshi was the only entity minting back in the days, but there might have been several people having done so. The only way to almost accurately claim that these coins belong to Satoshi, is that he first signs from the address the genesis block reward was sent to, and then do so with every address (thousands and thousands of addresses) each containing 50BTC block rewards.

CryptoParadigm

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Quote from: Adinalini on November 27, 2017, 11:50:57 AM

OMG! Thanks for sharing the article. There should some way to delete bitcoin from accounts that are not being used and be put again in circulation.

Are you asking to centralize bitcoin which means no BTC value... unless they wright a code if an account is untouched for so many years for that wallet empty out in a given wallet. Can you guess who or which country would want control of that? Most likely world war 3 be on the way.

Maren

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Quote from: Marucya on November 27, 2017, 02:35:46 PM

I do not think that those bitkoyny, access to which for various reasons lost, that is, lost the digital keys to the purses, where they are, are lost to us forever. Technologies are now developing at a very high rate, and the lost bitcoins remain encrypted in the blockchein block chain and may someday be decrypted and returned for future use. So, many people are already talking about the possibility of quantum computers to decipher such large digital codes and that they will appear in a few years. True, such opportunities pose a serious threat to the security of all the crypto currency.

Quantum processing isn't really good for breaking sha256. Maybe they will figure out another way to do it, but it will always be way easier for the good guys to change the algo than for a malicious entity to crack it.

HashFace

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How do they tell long term holders from people who have lost their wallets/passwords? I know some people are saying Satoshi is sitting on 1 million BTC, and if he is dead and didn't share his keys, then those are out of circulation ... but no one can say for sure the status of those BTC.

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