Topic: Losing private key with tens of thousands of BTC (Read 3527 times)

The majority of coins from 2009 are probably already gone or inaccessible.

10k coins from a wallet that was just sitting there anyway isn't going to have any effect on the market in the short term because the coins were not in circulation anyway.

In the long term all these losses add up to reduced supply of bitcoins.

They always say there is 21m btc  well not really and this is why.   Maybe there is only 20m because so many got lost like this.   Same thing happens with copper coins except decades later you can still find those.
No is the answer to your question, Ive never heard anyone reverse engineering the bitcoin out of a lost address.  If that were possible it would make reverse charges and all sorts of things possible so I think its fairly simple to say once its gone then you would literally have to physically dig up the old hard disk.

   Only other thing is if Jonny mnemonic had memorised the exact unique code for that btc address in his head, how long is that someone want to say?  Then you can reconstruct.

I guess the other idea might be what if they forked and changed the rules somehow so coins can be recovered


The effect on the network is natural deflation.  There is a tale of a popstar burning 2 million cash, same thing.  The value isnt lost really, it was just paper.  In effect value of these lost coins is now placed with those in distribution.   Obviously hash codes by themselves might be unique but they are not of inate use so the value is transient.  If your friend lost 1000 coins, he made a donation to every other btc holder.
 The creator of btc was a smart guy and allegedly he has alot in a wallet? my guess is they'll never be used for this reason, maybe he removed all temptation or  not; there was the case of an ancient Indian temple where they discovered hundreds of gold bars kept over centuries and amazingly never used by the temple priests

It would not affect the price of BTC unless that person decides to use fiat to purchase other BTC to replace his "lost" coins.

Is that your laptop you are talking about?

Well , if someone realy looses 10 000 btc, that would make some change to price, but not as much as one would think.
On the other hand , if someone would have their key/wallet leaked, and attacker liquidated that btc, impact would be much bigger

Say someone lost their private key containing 10000+ BTC... How long would it take for that to affect the market price of bitcoins since there will be less of a supply of bitcoin and more demand?

A friend of a friend of mine has lost more then 10000 in his old computer. He forgot about those coins and now he dont have his PC anymore ( He was mining on it back in 2009) so now he does not have 6 milions in his pocket, but not sure how this is going to affect the network and also are these BTC lost forever? Is there a way to resurect them?
BR

I would if I had a reasonable idea of where it might be.

I don't think it would have the greatest effect due to the fact that the market is big.

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Well in the case of losing 5000 bitcoins (current worth of 3.3Million) when bitcoin price rises enough....people may very well go digging for old hard drives in landfields....

Did you ever recover your bitcoin private key? If so, how did you do it?

It depends on if it is made public or not, take Mtgox those bitcoins were lost and then refound and the price reacted with downward pressure since it was the largest exchange.
Then there are Satoshi's coins which are not used but do exist and the market accepts those ones are around as well but it doesn't affect the price
So it depends

Not if you are speaking to as being "lost" as in someone lost the private keys.

Most of the time "lost" private keys are not publicly reported and is often not discovered for a significant time after they are "lost"

There is a thread somewhere on this site about the biggest bit coin losses. It includes fraud losses as well. It is an interesting read if you have the time to search for it.

Is there a list anywhere of Bitcoins that are known to be "lost"?

That is something that will have to be addressed at some point. The fact that it is divisible helps, but maybe a POS system in the future can help keep us around 21 million coins in existence.

Since the 10,000 BTC would eventually have been spent, it's loss will have an effect.

Long-term there will be a severe shortage of BTC*
*Bitcoin will be able to function as a currency (i.e. "Here is your payment for 0.0000123 BTC"), but people who want to own at least 1 whole Bitcoin will find there are not many for sale. 

Well since that 10,000 btc wasn't on the market anyway and was stored away "safely" in your wallet no one would be the wiser except yourself.

Probably more coins were destroyed during reformats, reinstalls, and wallet corruptions than HDs tossed into landfills.  How many of us nerds actually toss HDs.  I end up pulling them apart and my job has nothing to do with PCs

I wonder if any companies who recycle computer parts check the hard drives for old BTC wallets? (especially the ones from ~2010)
The odds of finding a good one would be low, but the "hidden treasure" could be worth millions.