How many Bitcoins are lost forever? - page 35.

Amph

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Quote from: thebenjamincode on June 24, 2015, 01:02:49 AM

in my opinion
as time passes by, more and more bitcoins will be lost forever
i think 1/3 of the total bitcoin is my guess

i don't think so, it will be harder from now to lose coins for anyone(there will be only small amount here and there, that will be lost), in the past many have lost them because they did not pay much attention to the bitcoin mania, because bitcoin was worthless

not it's a different story, there is more care in managing your wallet and everything related to it

thebenjamincode

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37iGtdUJc2xXTDkw5TQZJQX1Wb98gSLYVP

in my opinion
as time passes by, more and more bitcoins will be lost forever
i think 1/3 of the total bitcoin is my guess

thebigtalk

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Bitcoin and co.

No one really knows how much because of the amount of the users of bitcoin. Imagine the guy who throw away his hard drive with tons of BTC in it. Yes that's a real news.

1FfmbHfnpaZjKFvyi1okTjJJu

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Im not 1FfmbHfnpaZjKFvyi1okTjJJusN455paPH

Quote from: tyz on June 23, 2015, 12:59:30 PM

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?

im never lost at private keys , but im ever lost because some 1 hack my email, i lose 1BTC at local exchanger and 0.7BTC at bittrex
that my true sad story

Lorenzo

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Quote from: Xialla on June 23, 2015, 03:25:44 PM

ahh such tricky question:)

14.3M mined, from them were 740k goxxed...adding bad luck, human factor and stupid RNG. ok, lets say at least 3M until now...maybe even more.

The private keys for the Mt. Gox coins are probably not lost forever unless they lost them due to some accident or technical glitch. If you believe that they were hacked, then the coins are either sitting in a wallet somewhere or they have been sent through mixing services and are now spread out across multiple addresses.

grendel25

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This idea that fewer coins due to loss or destruction will be helpful to bitcoin by raising the value of bitcoin doesn't make a lot of sense. To the contrary, it underscores the physical security issues with bitcoin. If I put my fiat in a bank, I won't lose it because I forgot some ridiculous password. No, I have an identity and I can use my identity to verify my ownership of the currency and then take actions to always control the currency I placed in a reliable and insured bank.

Now, I'm not saying there aren't benefits to bitcoin. Bitcoin definitely is valuable in ways that fiat will never touch. But... there is a huge issue with security and that the various losses have definitely contributed to the slow adoption to the mainstream.

But this idea of "the less the merrier" is only valid if 1) bitcoin continues to successful and 2) People can benefit from actually having at lease "some" bitcoin to actually use. People who have lost their bitcoin because of the inherent security flaws (yes, forgetting or losing your own password is a security flaw) wouldn't agree with this idea that losing their bitcoin is a 'good' thing.

knowhow

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well the less running out there better to gain worth on the next years and yes i guess around 4 to 5 milions already losted ,i believe that someone bought them cheap and left them on wallet and nowadays doesnt remember the key soo lost some money that is worthing atleast 100x more anyway to the total avaible suppy well is better.

Bit_Happy

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A Great Time to Start Something!

Quote from: evenlydistributingfuture on June 23, 2015, 04:36:34 PM

Quote from: Snorek on June 23, 2015, 02:32:07 PM

Quote from: BitAddict on June 23, 2015, 02:27:25 PM

Impossible to know... but when they were nearly worth nothing in the start, lot of them were lost for sure.

Yes, we can't be sure of the exact number of lost bitcoins. But:

1. It is not important.
2. It is actually a good thing that bitcoins are lost.
3. Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone.

I know this "donation to everyone" idea is from Satoshi Nakamoto's own commentary (or at least that's what I recall), but I don't see it as positive.
If it's true that around a third of all coins are basically lost and gone forever, that hurts far more people than it helps.

The few who bought in early might gain in value, but everyone else in the world loses out. That's a comparative handful of people having coins worth slightly more in exchange for the entire world facing a situation of higher prices and less likelihood to want to transact in BTC.

Why does "everyone else in the world" lose out?
1) There will always be enough BTC, since you can add more zeros and someday buy an awesome new car for 0.0000000000001776 BTC.
2) The eventual race to own "at least one whole Bitcoin" will drive prices to levels that might (today) seem very insane.

Edit:
3) High prices do not drive people away, just wait until you see your first Bull market, Newbie. Cheesy

evenlydistributingfuture

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Quote from: Snorek on June 23, 2015, 02:32:07 PM

Quote from: BitAddict on June 23, 2015, 02:27:25 PM

Impossible to know... but when they were nearly worth nothing in the start, lot of them were lost for sure.

Yes, we can't be sure of the exact number of lost bitcoins. But:

1. It is not important.
2. It is actually a good thing that bitcoins are lost.
3. Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone.

I know this "donation to everyone" idea is from Satoshi Nakamoto's own commentary (or at least that's what I recall), but I don't see it as positive.
If it's true that around a third of all coins are basically lost and gone forever, that hurts far more people than it helps.

The few who bought in early might gain in value, but everyone else in the world loses out. That's a comparative handful of people having coins worth slightly more in exchange for the entire world facing a situation of higher prices and less likelihood to want to transact in BTC.

Xialla

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/dev/null

ahh such tricky question:)

14.3M mined, from them were 740k goxxed...adding bad luck, human factor and stupid RNG. ok, lets say at least 3M until now...maybe even more.

jwcastle

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Don't forget about the thousands (or millions) of people who quit Bitcoins and left some satoshis behind. It's probably almost nothing, but a lot of them put together might be significant.

I know I have a bunch of satoshis spread across several accounts & wallets that I own, which I've abandoned.

tyz

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Someone summed up the lost BTC only from the thread. In total BTC 134578.27864659
And this is likely just a particle of all lost coins.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.8601641

cakir

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★ BitClave ICO: 15/09/17 ★

"None of them".

In theorically even lost private keys can be cracked (yes I know it takes millions of years with current technology, but it's not impossible).

gentlemand

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Welt Am Draht

Quote from: seoincorporation on June 23, 2015, 02:44:45 PM

with a lot you mean the 10% of the total btc? or what % you think is lost?

Is a nice topic, maybe together we can find the way to find a good answer for this.

I'm afraid my spider sense only stretch so far.

The most likely losses are from the very earliest days. Lots of people on here have written about mining on their computer, not liking what it was doing to it and deleting everything. At the time their computers were worth a vast amount more than what they were mining.

You've also got no shortage of newbies from all eras making a balls up with their coins. Even veterans have made massive mistakes. Bitomat lost the private keys to 17,000 of their customers' coins.

seoincorporation

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Quote from: gentlemand on June 23, 2015, 01:52:37 PM

It will be forever an eternal mystery. My only guess is that it's a lot, lot more than many think.

with a lot you mean the 10% of the total btc? or what % you think is lost?

Is a nice topic, maybe together we can find the way to find a good answer for this.

Possum577

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Loose lips sink sigs!

This has to be impossible to assess realistically or with reliability. The anonymity enables each coin outstanding to remain unlinked to a source or person. Further, even if we could assign an owner to the coin we wouldn't know if the coin was lost or just being held.

Certainly a great question. Is there any way to see the count of coins that haven't had any transactions from or against it over a long period of time?

ifightformerkel

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I read a few month ago a article, that NVIDIA engineer John Ratcliff calculated that the total amount of coins that lay over 1.5 years is around 4.200.000 Bitcoins (30% of all bitcoins today).

I think that of this 4.2 million bitcoins, 3.5 million are lost.

And i bet when the price will go around 250 dollar for a while, a lot of more people will lost their private keys.
But i think its good for bitcoin, the value will be higher with so a big amount of lost bitcoins.

Lorenzo

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Quote from: tyz on June 23, 2015, 12:59:30 PM

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?

Here's a thread from 2011-2014 that tried to count all of the bitcoins that were permanently lost (and not just merely stolen):

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/lets-add-up-the-known-lost-bitcoins-7253

One example that comes to mind is the Counterparty proof-of-burn which saw 2,130 BTC sent to an unspendable address. Then there's that hard drive containing thousands of BTC that got thrown away as well. Those coins definitely won't be going anywhere anytime soon. But like others here have already said, I don't think we'll ever know exactly how many coins are truly lost.

I'm sure there are also people out there who will claim that their coins are lost when in fact they still have access to them - either because they're scammers who want to hide their bitcoins or simply those who want to avoid taxes on their BTC income/wealth. Then you might have people who end up dying with the only copy of their wallet's encryption password being the one stored in their head. There would be no way to prove whether or not these coins are actually lost.

NorrisK

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There is a thread around here with confirmed lost coins by people from the forums here. I think it was around 150.000 around here alone.. Someone has the link to the thread?

Snorek

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Quote from: BitAddict on June 23, 2015, 02:27:25 PM

Impossible to know... but when they were nearly worth nothing in the start, lot of them were lost for sure.

Yes, we can't be sure of the exact number of lost bitcoins. But:

1. It is not important.
2. It is actually a good thing that bitcoins are lost.
3. Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone.

Topic: How many Bitcoins are lost forever? - page 35. (Read 43070 times)