It is hard to calculate the permanent loss ,due to deaths, forgotten passwords etc
My guess is that about 1 million are permanently lost.
Topic: How many Bitcoins are lost forever? - page 32. (Read 43090 times)
This is an interesting question/topic... The exact answer to this question is very hard to come up with. I would imagine that there will be many Bitcoins lost throughout Bitcoin's use. People's hard drives may crash, they may not store backups, they may loose/forget/delete their private keys, etc. There could be many Bitcoins lost already. Maybe somewhere as high as even 1 - 2 million BTC. But as for now, that number largely remains unknown.
I bet a large fraction of Bitcoin are permanently lost, either from when BTC was new and worthless and miners didn't bother backing up their wallets, or forgot their passwords etc.
Please add the currency unit for the guessed 50 million. Let me guess, you mean Satoshi 
50 million
I think there are 20% percent of Bitcoin lost forever.
there are 14.3 million bitcoin in circulation right now so 20% is equal to 2860000BTCyou are claiming that there are 686 million dollar worth of bitcoin lost?
care to explain why you think that?
I don't know for sure, but the 20% figure given by wywoc1 seems to be quite possible. Some BTC5,300,000 were mined during 2009 and 2010, when the exchange rate was less than $0.001. Most of the people were mining just for fun then. Many of them threw away the coins which they mined, or lost them through negligence. If we assume that half of the coins mined during 2009 and 2010 are lost, then it comes to 20% of all coins in circulation right now.
i think it is safe to assume all satoshi's bitcoins as lost forever, not because of lost private keys or anything, i am sure he has all of them but because he is not going to use any of those coins.
exactly. i read alot of satoshis writings here on the forum and also emails to other forum members and the development process. you can see that his intention was not to get rich, Satoshis intention was to change the world. that is a little bit more than just money.
if he would move his old coins, he would hurt BTC very badly. iam pretty sure the deleeted the private keys.
We'll never know.
I guess yes ... I have heard somewhere but i forgot the link i,ll update this post whenever i found it again .
the 20% that wywoc1 looks so random to me that is why i asked him. i am curious to see the link that you talking about. but still 20% looks so random to me :/Also whatever the amount of btc is lost forever why are we talking , thinking about it ? we cannot hack or get the bitcoins from the address or we ? Well actually my self i cannot hack ..
i think it is more of curiosity rather than wanting to hack those addresses, which is impossible unless it is a wallet on a website like blockchain.info that you can hack the password to the wallet there but you can not hack private keys.
I don't think there's a way for us ever to find out, to be honest with you. But I really like to know though.
A lot of these are lost wallets. Tons of early miners/adopters lost their computers/HDD with their wallets on them.
people have guesses, but there is no way to know for sure ,lot of bitcoins where lost in 2009-2010 when people formatted their drives .As the value goes up people are being more careful with their coins.
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?
As per my internet search ,it has been come to a round figure of $5 bitcoins have lost or stolen . 
Bitcoins are crytocurrency uses SHA-256 algorithm which uses Private key to protect bitcoin.Private key is stored(kept)by user (bitcoin holder).
once stolen cannot be recovered.
I think there are 20% percent of Bitcoin lost forever.
there are 14.3 million bitcoin in circulation right now so 20% is equal to 2860000BTCyou are claiming that there are 686 million dollar worth of bitcoin lost?
care to explain why you think that?
i don't know it seems a bit random, but if you look at this http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/27/hard-drive-bitcoin-landfill-site
he only lost 7500, and it was a big lost already, but still tiny in comparison to 20% of the toal coins
i'm guessing if someone lost more than that, he would have revealed it like this guy did(but there aren't any other major news of many coins being lost), so the overall estimate of coin lost, it is very overrated i believe...
I think there are 20% percent of Bitcoin lost forever.
there are 14.3 million bitcoin in circulation right now so 20% is equal to 2860000BTCyou are claiming that there are 686 million dollar worth of bitcoin lost?
care to explain why you think that?
you are claiming that there are 686 million dollar worth of bitcoin lost?
I guess yes ... I have heard somewhere but i forgot the link i,ll update this post whenever i found it again .
Also whatever the amount of btc is lost forever why are we talking , thinking about it ? we cannot hack or get the bitcoins from the address or we ? Well actually my self i cannot hack ..
I think there are 20% percent of Bitcoin lost forever.
there are 14.3 million bitcoin in circulation right now so 20% is equal to 2860000BTCyou are claiming that there are 686 million dollar worth of bitcoin lost?
care to explain why you think that?
I think there are 20% percent of Bitcoin lost forever.
The logical conclusion is that each of these was an address setup by a miner in the first 2 years of the digital currency. The reward was paid into that address and no currency was ever added to it.
We could actually make some estimations based on forum comments and news,but there is a fraction that it can't be known because it must be people who has forgot about it
I think there are hunred thousands of lost bitcoins
I think there are hunred thousands of lost bitcoins
that is the same thing that have the key who won 100milion dollars and didnt regist it soo it would be yours but isnt because you did paid to regist it,about wallets well some bitcoins is lost really ,some left the bitcoin and deleted all with some satoshis inside them ,besides that some people lost them on hardisks on cpu computer well some is lost but well as i said know that have them and doesnt know keys to moove them is like be dead bitcoin
You guyz are killing me.
All generated bitcoins are sitting on blockchain. None of them is lost!
People may loose their control over private keys (which is required to say "Hey, those bitcoins are mine"). That doesn't mean those bitcoins are lost forever.
How to loose bitcoins forever?
If you manage to delete some blocks from all of the full nodes; then yes we may say some of bitcoins are lost. But no, you can't do that. There're lots of offline computers which have entire blockchain. You can try to delete but you'll fail and we can recover it.
You're arguing this question: "How many bitcoins are not controlled by people?" or "How many people lost their control over their private keys? (and how many bitcoin balances are affected on those keys?)"
And the answer is "Unknown" (You can't know that).
Also those controls can be regained by same people or others.
In conclusion; none of the bitcoins are lost. They're on the network.
All generated bitcoins are sitting on blockchain. None of them is lost!
People may loose their control over private keys (which is required to say "Hey, those bitcoins are mine"). That doesn't mean those bitcoins are lost forever.
How to loose bitcoins forever?
If you manage to delete some blocks from all of the full nodes; then yes we may say some of bitcoins are lost. But no, you can't do that. There're lots of offline computers which have entire blockchain. You can try to delete but you'll fail and we can recover it.
You're arguing this question: "How many bitcoins are not controlled by people?" or "How many people lost their control over their private keys? (and how many bitcoin balances are affected on those keys?)"
And the answer is "Unknown" (You can't know that).
Also those controls can be regained by same people or others.
In conclusion; none of the bitcoins are lost. They're on the network.
I would say you are kind of right but when a private key is lost, the bitcoins on that private key are basically stuck and can never be used. So for most practical purposes they are lost cause they can never be used or moved again.
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