Topic: How many Bitcoins are lost forever? - page 30. (Read 43070 times)
If I had to give an estimate I would have to say at least 2,500,000 bitcoins are lost.
I have coins that haven't moved for over a year and a half. They look pretty undead from here.
Let's say you did have 10,000 coins mined in 2010/11. You'd be pretty hard pressed to spend them all. You're probably enough of a believer to not want to sell all of them. Chances are they're staying put until you can spend them on something you want or need.
Let's say you did have 10,000 coins mined in 2010/11. You'd be pretty hard pressed to spend them all. You're probably enough of a believer to not want to sell all of them. Chances are they're staying put until you can spend them on something you want or need.
I estimate that somewhere between 30-40% of all BTCs are out of circulation and will never be accessed again.
Where is your source, or did you just make that up?
Here you go, link to first page post.
Some have estimated it's 30 per cent of all Bitcoins. It coins haven't moved for years it's unlikely anyone still controls them, except for Satoshi's coins. The figure keeps increasing because of things like burned coins, such as the 2130 Bitcoins burned during the Counterparty distribution.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/11362827/The-625m-lost-forever-the-phenomenon-of-disappearing-Bitcoins.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/11362827/The-625m-lost-forever-the-phenomenon-of-disappearing-Bitcoins.html
Quote
NVIDIA engineer John Ratcliff calculated in June that “zombie coins”, defined as those which have lay dormant for at least a year and a half, accounted for 30 per cent of all Bitcoins.
I have a lot to lose bitcoin, probably around $ 80, it's all because the scam site by offering many advantages 
Those coins arent lost forever, they only are owned by someone other.
When you read the thread start you would see that this is about coins that cant be accessed anymore because the private keys are lost.
The amount of coins lost forever because of scams are very high for sure too.
I estimate that somewhere between 30-40% of all BTCs are out of circulation and will never be accessed again.
Where is your source, or did you just make that up?
I estimate that somewhere between 30-40% of all BTCs are out of circulation and will never be accessed again.
The fact is this Bitcoin ultimately has a finite shelf life. there is no way that people won't for a myriad of reasons lose small amounts of Bitcoin until eventually we are all using a fraction of a Bitcoin and eventually we won't want to divide down anymore.
Death particularly will wipe out a large percentage of coins. I doubt very few people on here have told someone else their coin addresses, and guess what, many won't know their last day on earth was the day they got into their car to go shopping etc.
Death particularly will wipe out a large percentage of coins. I doubt very few people on here have told someone else their coin addresses, and guess what, many won't know their last day on earth was the day they got into their car to go shopping etc.
I agree with most of that.
Coins are lost, and will continue to be lost.
But I'm not sure that people will not just continue to use increments of btc. I think they might?
The fact is this Bitcoin ultimately has a finite shelf life. there is no way that people won't for a myriad of reasons lose small amounts of Bitcoin until eventually we are all using a fraction of a Bitcoin and eventually we won't want to divide down anymore.
Death particularly will wipe out a large percentage of coins. I doubt very few people on here have told someone else their coin addresses, and guess what, many won't know their last day on earth was the day they got into their car to go shopping etc.
Death particularly will wipe out a large percentage of coins. I doubt very few people on here have told someone else their coin addresses, and guess what, many won't know their last day on earth was the day they got into their car to go shopping etc.
I think the number of lost or forgotten coins is much higher than current estimates. many coins were minted in 2009 and 2010 and have never been touched
If you knew how many Bitcoin went missing everyday you could easy work it out. I would imagine if you was to make a graph to display the statistics there would be exponential amounts getting lost, due to the growing number of BTC users.
It's gotta be some kind of inconceivable number.
It's gotta be some kind of inconceivable number.
Well since satoshi is dead.... a heck of a lot of coins are useless..
I bet Satoshi was smart enough to prevent his coins being lost. I believe he holds the coins because he has more ideas as to how the world should change. In order to do that he waits until bitcoin is a world currency and then he has the power to really push things.
In case he dies im sure that a lot of donations will be received by certain organisations. Though he might spread them wisely in order to not crash the bitcoin price.
Im very sure he is smart enough and willing to not lose his coins.
I bet there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of early Bitcoins that were forgotten but early adopters. I read a story of some guy buying some years ago and just happened to read a story about Bitcoins. He couldn't even remember where he had some but found the site and had over $200,000 in Bitcoins. I bet there are a lot of people like this that forgot they had Bitcoins from the beginning.
Well since satoshi is dead.... a heck of a lot of coins are useless..
no have idea, i really don't know
we can find out who the owner of the largest bitcoin?
we can find out who the owner of the largest bitcoin?
Largest bitcoin? You mean the address with the most coins? According to BitInfoCharts, this is currently the address with the most coins:
http://blockchain.info/address/39coweGgC8CPZ6hYL1BBEfc1zqbSfHsprW
How can bitcoin be lost? i cant understand this? maybe the fees that are taken from each transaction ?
A private key is like a "key" that unlocks an address and allows anyone to spend the funds contained within that address. There are some addresses out there where no known private key exists. For example:
http://blockchain.info/address/1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE
Any coins sent to the above address will be lost forever. Same with this unspendable address:
http://blockchain.info/address/1CounterpartyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXUWLpVr
That one was used for Counterparty's proof-of-burn. People sent bitcoins to that address to prove that they were "burned" (i.e. destroyed) so that they could be rewarded with the equivalent amount of XCP coins.
It's also possible for coins in an address to be lost forever by simply deleting the private key that corresponds to the address. Your wallet.dat file contains private keys corresponding to addresses in your wallet. Permanently deleting this file from your computer would make any bitcoins stored in that wallet to become permanently inaccessible. While technically speaking, it may be possible to guess the private key and regain access to these coins, private keys are long and random enough that it would take billions upon billions of years to find a successful match.
As for transaction fees, they aren't lost. They go to the miner that solves the next block. Usually this is a pool and miners who mine in that pool get the fees in addition to the block reward.
Could that 215.000 be the Winkelvos?
no im pretty sure that is something around 5% already that may be lost for a while or stored at some disk that gone
I know it is a tricky question. What do you think, how many Bitcoins are lost forever and are 'out of the network' by lost private keys?
if i have to answer about the amount of bitcoin that lost i never can give the answer...but i think there will be amount of the 10 to 20 % will be lost of the total of bitcoin supply
People that use cold wallet and forgot the key.. these bitcoins are lost forever isnt it?
not rally, there is always a chance of a collision, especially in the future with quantum computer, so you can't really say that they are 100% lost, it isn't impossible to retrieve them in some way in the future
Quantum computers can break also security all over the world so these is always a chance not 100%
Just want to say that I personally lost 0.001... playing around with BIP32 encryption and f**** up a bit and cannot decrypt, still have the encrypted private key somewhere, thinking about posting it so someone can claim it, if they can brute force it, the password is pretty simple (I belive).
well those should happening already buying old disk and searching all info inside it ,always a way to recover the information ,and well im pretty sure the people would go into it but who knows which is the disk with bitcoins,and well maybe there isnt any information on it besides the ammount holded there
As it rolls forwards, the number of people with 'proper' wallets will probably shrink. I've never used one myself. You might have the occasional score with an old disk but it would barely make up for the countless hours of trawling on useless ones.
well those should happening already buying old disk and searching all info inside it ,always a way to recover the information ,and well im pretty sure the people would go into it but who knows which is the disk with bitcoins,and well maybe there isnt any information on it besides the ammount holded there
Jump to: