Topic: Lost bitcoins (Read 864 times)

For the most part, no. The thing about bitcoin is that, no price point is for certain until you act upon it. With that in mind this means that should you find your lost bitcoins or gain access to them somehow after years of not being able to do so, the only time that you could affect bitcoin's price if the sale was sudden, like a couple of hours or days in between, and the amount of bitcoin you sold's high enough that it causes panic within the industry. Usually not even a few thousand bitcoins being transferred from addresses to addresses cause bitcoin's price to drop, so I'm not so sure how much bitcoins you would really need to sell in order to insinuate a price dump.

Their is some certain things i do consider in any investment, what comes to my mind when investment of Bitcoin come in, is that you have to understand that bitcoin investment have to do with risk and when you have not make up your mind to say bitcoin investment is all about  risk that means you have not started in bitcoin investment, the lost they are telling for bitcoin investment is all about when you are losing in bitcoin and if you invest when you are not invest in bitcoin, so this one of things I know that happens in bitcoin investment also,lose is what every investment person do experience

If Bitcoin wallet addresses are lost, the Bitcoins associated with those addresses essentially become inaccessible. This is because Bitcoin transactions and ownership are tied to the private keys that correspond to the wallet addresses. Without the private key, it's impossible to access or spend the Bitcoins associated with a particular wallet address. So, if someone loses their private key or the information needed to access their wallet, those Bitcoins are effectively lost.

However, it's important to note that lost Bitcoins do not directly affect the overall supply of Bitcoin in the market. The total supply of Bitcoin is capped at 21 million coins, and this cap will not change due to lost Bitcoins. What can happen, though, is that the reduced effective supply due to lost coins might create a perception of scarcity and potentially influence market sentiment. If a significant number of Bitcoins are lost and cannot be accessed, we can argue that the scarcity could increase the value of the remaining accessible Bitcoins over the long term, as they become relatively scarcer compared to the fixed supply.

A donation to the network, it is a beautiful statement, but it will not always the truth. So a bitcoiner should make a hard decision to "destroy" his bitcoins, because he knows they are limited. Just think about it and you come in a short time to the thought "no I do not". so a donation is very nice to say, but I believe it in very few cases. There is for example this address here, recently weéder bitcoin arrived with the designation "Mt Gox Hacker": https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/1FeexV6bAHb8ybZjqQMjJrcCrHGW9sb6uF

This is one of the disadvantage of Bitcoin or the general cryptocurrency. It can not be easily transferred to generations and once the seed phrase is lost, everything about our cryptocurrency assets is lost for ever and it can not be reclaimed again. Bitcoin is good to invest in but we need understand the disadvantage before putting our money into it or else we are going to make loses that is inevitable. The lost Bitcoin are nit still accessible till now and the owners have nothing to do about it since they don't have access to the seed phrase.

Most of the lost accounts will never be recovered, since they are often lost with no trace at all (for instance, a guy created an acc back in 2009, then collected some btc on it, then forgot about the acc and lost all the keys for it). But there are many sleeping accounts, which can resemble lost acs until the owner decides to be active. Such accounts can become a threat for crypto financial system, if adoption goes to far, since their owners can become crypto tycoons dictating the financial game rules, the same thing has happened with the dollar system.

Some people use to store Bitcoin on a cold storage wallet and forget about it for a long time. You'd think the coins are "lost" because they are no longer circulating across the network. There's really no way to tell whenever Bitcoins are lost or dormant. Assuming they're all lost, market prices should be able to rise exponentially over the coming years. Think of it as added deflation.

What's important is that people do the right thing by securing their coins against hacks and/or theft. It's very unlikely to lose funds on a properly-secured Bitcoin wallet. Lost coins or not, Bitcoin will be here to stay for a very long time. Just my thoughts

The lost of customers' coins in Mt. Gox, FTX or any centralized exchanges aren't entirely lost. The coins can still be accessed and spend, the different is just the person who hold the coins. It's like you get hacked, the coins belong to hacker.

Bitcoin is lost from the circulation supply when no one own the private key or not able to access it anymore.

Such a shame too, but yeah it is overall good for all holders. That type of loss would surely be a tough pill to swallow, eh? All the way from Mt Gox to FTX and everything in between.

The price of Bitcoin may depend on the demand for Bitcoin in the market rather than the supply of Bitcoin in the market. Suppose at the moment the total supply of Bitcoin is reduced a lot but people do not buy and sell Bitcoin, then even if the total supply decreases, the price of Bitcoin will decrease because people do not like Bitcoin. Similarly, if lost bitcoins can be recovered and those bitcoins are released into the market, the value of bitcoins will not decrease even if people believe in bitcoins and people buy more bitcoins. According to certain calculations the number of Bitcoin users is increasing every year, that is, the amount of Bitcoin generated every year is equal to the amount of new members connecting to Bitcoin to buy Bitcoin, so I think we should not worry about the price of Bitcoin.

The lost bitcoins I think will never be recovered so if they were then about half of the bitcoins would have been recovered by now.  And in the current Bitcoin environment I think the price won't go down even if the lost Bitcoins are recovered. Because as more bitcoins come into the market, the number of buyers will increase. @op Lost Key How to unlock your wallet if lost? I don't think it can ever be salvaged. Currently, the number of people in the market is very high, so if it was possible to recover BTC, many people would have recovered it and brought it to the market.

No one has ever held Bitcoin in an environment where Bitcoin would be lost. I personally store bitcoins in wallets I will never lose. So those who hold quality bitcoins may have been hoarding bitcoins for a long time. And no one will ever throw the face keys of hardware wallets down the drain.

It is very simple. The bitcoins that are lost can be considered as burnt and it directly reduces the active supply of bitcoins in the network.
So bitcoin becomes more scarce with reducing supply which gives it more value. If the bitcoins are recovered the active supply increases making the value slightly decrease.
It's all about the demand and supply.

If the coins are recovered then you can assume that they are back in circulation and the owner might try to sell them, which is their personal choice. If the coins are never recovered which is the maximum number of cases, those coins can be considered to be "inaccessible" and therefore lost forever and not coming back to the market to change its prices.

But the chances of such recoveries are tiny. So better to consider lost bitcoin as lost forever.

The theory you propose has some foundation, but as others have said in the thread, it cannot be based solely on the supply in circulation... because the price of BTC goes beyond that simplicity, other much more important factors come into play here, Which would further highlight the scarcity, since it is known that in total only 21 million bitcoins can be mined and as demand increases and supply remains limited, the price tends to rise. If the lost bitcoins were to be recovered, the total amount of bitcoins in circulation would increase, which could lessen the upward pressure caused by the shortage and affect the price. One thing I learned from the Wyckoff Method book is market perception and I say this because it's a key driver of the Bitcoin price… the market is very sensitive to perceptions and news. If a large number of lost bitcoins are reported to have been recovered, this could have a psychological impact on investors and traders, potentially influencing the direction of Bitcoin's price.

I highlight the fact that current factors such as institutional adoption, government regulation, public acceptance and the underlying technology have been giving a lot of talk about the value of Bitcoin… So thinking about the low probability of recovering those lost Bitcoin will only remain in situations that most likely will never happen.

And that will never happen unless developers change the code and the community approves it. We all know how Bitcoin SV's attempts to do this turned into a huge failure. It's simply not worth doing this. By increasing the circulating supply, you're essentially removing value from the market. You can see why Satoshi always said that lost Bitcoins are a donation to the community.

I'm fine with BTC just the way it is as long as it remains decentralized and censorship-resistant. That said, it's up to you to take responsibility by preventing the loss or theft of your BTC. Who knows if the number of lost coins is reduced over time? Just my opinion

If the amount of Bitcoin lost is recovered in full, it will not significantly affect the value of Bitcoin. And you should never do that thinking because lost bitcoins can never be recovered. and we can say that the amount of lost bitcoins should be considered as a donation to the bitcoin network. and as per your question, even if the lost bitcoins are fully recovered, there will be no damage or change to the bitcoin network, but the price of bitcoin may fall slightly.

Not just a miracle, but also extremely good discipline. Of course if you lost it and found it, definitely a miracle. Just holding it however, just diamond hands!

You don't need to be an expert to utilize cold storage. In fact, everyone should be using at least cold storage for coins that are not planning to be moved for 1-3 months+.

Given today's economic circumstance - you are right in saying that it is hard for the average person to hold on for the long haul.


I wish I was a part of Bitcoin at those prices, and had a few hundred dollars of cash to spare. I would like to think that I would at least have been able to hold onto a few or put some in cold storage for the long run. Yet, here we are. A strong amount of determination, belief and lack of interference from financial circumstances I believe were absolutely necessary in hindsight.

To save up to this point seems like it would be a miracle.
But when they forget and find the private key now stored in a safe place, they are quite lucky.

Few people will be able to hold on to it for now, but if they are experts and store or move their bitcoins in a Cold Wallet or hardware wallet, they are ready from the start and believe in Bitcoin.

Like the story of Davinci Jeremie, a software developer from Chile who is a true Bitcoin Holder.
Bought Bitcoin for under $1 and held it until now then sold it gradually and became a Bitcoin investor with a million-dollar fortune.

It takes a strong determination and belief that Bitcoin will reach its highest price and become valuable in the future.
No one will lose Bitcoin.

Of course, cold storage is something I forgot to mention. Nice one!

I do wonder though, if you stored coins in 2008-2013, would you have just kept the private key and left it this entire time, or would you have moved the coins to better storage following? If someone is still holding their coins from that era and has not touched them, while keeping them safe and having peace of mind with the way they store it, they definitely deserve some credit and commendation.


For us that unfortunately don't have cold storage from that era, exactly. The only thing we can do is focus on accumulating! Good luck everyone

There can't be any more Bitcoins created than there are in circulation. The blockchain technology which underpins Bitcoin doesnt allow for the issuance of more coins than are already in circulation. Inflationary threats associated with conventional fiat currencies are reduced by this idea of finite supply.

When considering reserves, however, keep in mind that Bitcoin is not like conventional financial institutions. Reserves do not exist; all that exists is unmined Bitcoin. These will be added to the market via mining at a steadily increasing rate until the final Bitcoin is mined in about 2140. In the meanwhile, lets HODL