Topic: [DISCUSSION] What will happen to the "lost" bitcoins? (Read 467 times)

It is true if you say "It's not your keys, it's not your bitcoins" but it can turn to be untrue if you say "It's not your keys, it's not your crypto".

Because altcoins with smart contracts can help governments, developers to seize your altcoins, tokens in your own non custodial open source wallets too. They can use smart contracts for doing this. So with altcoins, if you have private keys, mnemonic seeds, it does not mean you own altcoins.

https://chainsec.io/nyknyc/
Bitcoin Q&A: Not your Keys, Not your Coins
PSA: Most Stablecoins Can Be Frozen, Even in Your Own Wallets

Those coins are lost. As the term says, unless the owners of those Bitcoins manages to find the keys to their wallet and retrieve those coins, then it's gone forever. Bitcoin isn't just some small network that can be forked off to retrieve all lost coins. If anything, those lost coins reduces the supply which most economists will agree that is good for the tokenomics and demand.

The popular phase — "Not your keys, not your crypto" can be rephrase to me "Your crypto, your responsibility". So if you lose it, it's not the chain's fault.

I don’t think anything will happen to lost bitcoin, as long as your bitcoin is lost, then it’s going to be lost, and I don’t think there is any means by which lost bitcoin can be recovered. That’s why we are supposed to properly secure our bitcoin, we should make sure we make use of the right wallet to store our bitcoin, and we should properly secure our wallet private key.
 
There are some scammers that do claim they can recover lost bitcoin. If you lose your bitcoin, it’s better you just move on, but don’t even try to pay anyone to recover your lost bitcoin for you because they are just going to scam you, and your loss will be more. There is nothing like a bitcoin recovery service after losing your bitcoin.

This is a FAQ
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Help:FAQ#But_if_no_more_coins_are_generated,_what_happens_when_Bitcoins_are_lost?_Won't_that_be_a_problem?

I wouldn't really put it in this way, despite the fact that as Satoshi said: they make everyone's coins worth slightly more. However, you cannot call it a good cause when people lose their private keys or seed phrase and cannot recover their funds, or when people lose their hard drive, like James Howells did, and can no longer recover their coins, it is sad for the victims and unfair on them to call it a 'good cause'.

A PKH address is a ripe160 hash of a sha256 hash of a pubkey, with a one-byte prefix and a 4-byte checksum suffix  
But the prefix and the checksum are not stored in the TXO. Only the 20-byte RIPE hash is stored


Correction. An OP_RETURN TXO does not have an address, so it's not "sent to a burn address"

The short answer is... nothing will happen to the lost Bitcoins. They will remain untouched unless someone finds the wallets and restores the forgotten passwords/seed phrases. Just like Satoshi once said "all lost Bitcoins are a donation to the community", which means that lost BTC make Bitcoin more scarce and increase it's value. If we add quantum computing to the equation, things become a little bit different. Maybe someone could use quantum computers to brute force the passwords and seed phrases of all BTC wallets. This would make Bitcoin worthless, but I'm sure that the BTC developers will find a way to make Bitcoin quantum resistant.

They are lost to a good cause, basically.
I wonder what if d5000's concept would come to life eventually, never heard or dug into some quantum and how they would be able to make something impossible - possible, but it's sure a ride to be interesting.

That's actually true, lost coin can not be recovered but it add value to the market. Because one good quality of anything is scarcity, for anything to have value It must be relatively scarce. this was a quote from Satoshi Nakamoto about lost coin.

This implies that the more bitcoin lost the more it becomes more scarce and also more expensive.

they're gone forever but it also adds sense of scarcity towards the circulating BTC which is still a win for any bitcoin holders at the end of the day.

I think you don't need to worry about it, even if the lost BTC increases in number, market will compensate, BTC is deflationary currency, the value will always go up since total supply is hard capped, i'd say the longer you hold your bitcoin, the more scarce and rare it becomes, it's like holding treasure if i'm being honest.

this thing also what motivates some people into hoarding BTC, because it's just that good for investment.

This is indeed a possibility for those old miner coins nobody is spending (many of them are supposed to be Satoshi's) - think of quantum computers able to break ECDSA. The P2PK transactions could be "cracked" in theory.

Just recently there was a discussion about the economic consequences of this scenario -- let's say quantum computers (or any other future computing technology) gets strong enough to break the keys because P2PK transactions expose the public keys, and Shor's algorithm could in theory calculate the private key taking the public key.

Once this becomes a possibility, opcodes for post quantum cryptography could be added and users be heavily recommended to transact their Bitcoins. And those who do not, have used P2PK and have re-used their address, would be vulnerable to this attack.

Altcoins have often already performed similar swaps, so it's no nuclear science. The only problem is that if there's much onchain activity and the change comes too late, then there could be a huge fee spike, so it would make sense to add post-quantum cryptography challenges relatively early.

And once these "presumed lost coins" which don't participate in this "swap" (not the "provably lost coins" like those burnt in OP_RETURN transactions!) are attacked, then they would be redistributed by the hackers (I don't believe they'll try to HODL).

Maybe even today with BitVM you could already create a post-quantum challenge? This would actually an interesting idea (Edit: I opened a thread about this for those interested).

The "quantum computer attack" is however a very remote possibility and also has been discussed several times here.

If you have the seed phrase to your funds backed up, then there is no question of it being a lost coin in the first place, because the seed phrase for its recovery is available.
Lost coins are not recycled or anything like that, when Satoshi said we should think of it as a donation, he simply meant that lost coins will reduce the supply of BTC available in the market and with demand, that should make available coins worth slightly more.

Yeah, thanks. So, all are estimation for the year but likely to hit exactly and for this quantity of Bitcoin.

You this too early? I cannot believe those stories, but it doesn't mean they're not real. Well, I've read the same experiences about those who have known Bitcoin too early, mined a lot, and then just forgotten the wallet.dat. Same same stories.

But it does happen, I guess a regretful part is waking you up almost every day.

Sadly , I've added more lost coins than I'd care to admit. I heard about Bitcoin in 2010 and decided to start mining while at work . Did so for about 3 years till I moved and got about it . Never found the wallet.dat files 6 years later when I went looking. The bitcoin core wallet showed 2,100 encrypted files ( not sure if that is transactions or what) if transactions there's no telling how many coins as my PC would have been clearing 3-4 BTC solo mining in a day

Already question like this one have been asked on several occasions on this forum, that all the lost coins will be recircled back to the network in form of spreads on every holder of bitcoin, this effect is what is being felt when you're holding and you discover that the market is rising and you're profitable by just holding it without trading, this is just on a single approach, there are other things we may also consider, because no one is there claiming all those lost coins except when being hacked or scammed.

What do you mean by "registered number"?
The 4 millions which was mentioned by OP was just an estimation and he/she didn't even mention any source for that. There is no way to know how many bitcoins have been lost due to the people losing access to the private keys.

They will be lost in Limbo nice word BTW, they will be considered burned which means they're being lost is good for the demand and supply ratio of the BTC and its hype. You are right more people will still be losing their BTC and some are trying hard to find their lost BTC and even some are suing other companies to allow them to search the scrapyard. If we measure in terms of ratio that either people have lost more than the people have recovered then the ratio is high.

Nothing will happen to them they just sit in their addresses and the seed phrases and they will sit there till end they won't expire. 4 millions is just a registered number the actual numbers will be more than this surely.

Lost coins are lost forever. Which means once access is lost, it will clearly be regarded as irreversible. Not your keys, not your coins, so if you have forgotten or lost your private keys, that coins will probably be one's ownership already.

However, in cases where the device where the private keys is kept becomes damaged or ruined, but there's back-up available, then those lost coins will never be lost forever, but will be retrieved anytime.

Another example being if some desparate person had half of his seed phrase burned and posts a picture of the other half online in the hopes that someone can find it.

I think you misunderstood NotATether.
NotATether means that it may possible to get access to lost coins, if there are some information about the lost private keys or seed phrases.

Let's say you have a 12 word seed phrase. You know 7 words with their correct positions and you have lost 5 words. Now, you can't access your coins, but it may be possible that you brute-force the seed phrase one day.