Estimated amount of lost BTC ? | Bitcointalksearch.org

achow101

staff

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Just writing some code

Quote from: officerpants on November 28, 2017, 08:44:33 AM

If 4 million are already lost, that means there's only ~100k left to be mined, no? (16.9m in circulation, 21m cap, 4m lost) Unless the 'lost' is still considered 'in circulation', then we still have ways to go

No. It's 16.9 million mined, not in circulation. Lost is part of that 16.9 million.

officerpants

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If 4 million are already lost, that means there's only ~100k left to be mined, no? (16.9m in circulation, 21m cap, 4m lost) Unless the 'lost' is still considered 'in circulation', then we still have ways to go

User365

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physics, mathematics and engineering

Cointelegraph answered my question pretty well

https://cointelegraph.com/news/up-to-four-million-bitcoins-gone-forever

4 million BTC are lost, that equals 19% of the total cap and 24% of the currently mined coins.

premiumproductss

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19% of the coins existing on market are lost at the moment. Now we are talking about the current supply

jackg

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https://bit.ly/387FXHi lightning theory

Quote from: aplistir on September 12, 2017, 05:06:22 AM

Your estimation is probably quite low.

Here the writer estimates that about 30% of all mined bitcoins are "lost"
https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/rise-of-the-zombie-bitcoins

And more are lost every day, when some keys are lost, due to accidents or deaths etc.
But it is actually just a good thing for anyone owning Bitcoins. The remaining ones just get that much more valuable.

That's true. I know there was a treasurer for this forum who was unable to continue and no one has access to his private keys (afaik).

And the estimate is low, I think 30% is a bit high though. But based on the reward halving, that is possible.

aplistir

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Your estimation is probably quite low.

Here the writer estimates that about 30% of all mined bitcoins are "lost"
https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/rise-of-the-zombie-bitcoins

And more are lost every day, when some keys are lost, due to accidents or deaths etc.
But it is actually just a good thing for anyone owning Bitcoins. The remaining ones just get that much more valuable.

Golerm

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Quote from: jackg on September 11, 2017, 12:34:40 PM

Quote from: User365 on September 11, 2017, 10:47:25 AM

I wondered how much bitcoins are already lost (I know there is no posibillyty to determine an accurate amount) ?

BTC can for example be lost if someone forgets the password of his wallet/ looses wallet.dat

Is there any estimated amount ?

There are obviously Satoshi's addresses (and private keys which he claims he won't use).
Beyond that, I'd say it'd probably at least 10000 bitcoins that have been lost due to forgotton passwords (based on the history of this part of the forum).
Also some early miners may have lost/deleted private keys as soon as they ined blocks.
Any coin that hasn't been moved since about 2012 is probably one powered by a private key the user at that time had no access to.

Seems like a good estimate.

I remember sending some Bitcoins to friends in 2011 for fun. They laughed as I tried to explain how it works and how it might be worth a lot of money.

Now they're crying because they could have thousands of dollars if they just made backups of their wallets.