Topic: No, Bitcoin’s Circulating Supply is Not 18 Million (Read 286 times)

But basically these bitcoins that are considered lost could have a positive impact on the market. If they will not be utilized, it is somehow like a person is holding that huge amount of BTC, we all know that hodlers contributes to the market price of it. Though, for me, if we compare the circulation of the cryptocurrency to the real life financial economy, all money should be circulated that's why banks are doing it so, so as to the cryptocurrency. More active market = more active market adoption.

If that is true 1.5M lost is really relevant to the market price. Some say these are just for publicity or just to make noise about bitcoin but definitely this issues should be taken cared of. Its not that much for some but for those little investors these are really relevant. If these would worsen the situation or just making an issue, well it could be the time that bitcoin should be regulated.

If you think the total circulating supply of bitcoin is not 18 million, please give us your main reasons why you think its not rather than sharing thoughts of other people. You should rather back your reasons with your source than just presenting thoughts of other people from the source. At least make an effort to share and state out your thoughts. That might even help someone to understand why you decided to share this information here.   

So in essence, I assume Bitcoin still has plenty of room for growth and that is good! Given time, I'm now more confident that those features will be implemented in due course and with the help of Bitcoin's core developers, together with the community, I hope it could be realized sooner than expected!

I think in the future such features will also have an influence on determining the actual circulating supply of BTC. Anyway, thanks for the clarification.

Focusing on 21 million BTC units isn't correct.

At this point most people can already not afford a whole Bitcoin, so it makes much more sense to deal with satoshi units. I have been getting used to dealing with the satoshi unit a lot due to the lightning clients I use. It's so convenient and easy to use, and more importantly, people prefer to own whatever number of whole satoshi units over 0.0000xxx part of a whole BTC unit.

If you think satoshi units are low value units, then you will be surprised to find out that one single satoshi can be split into 1000 milli satoshis on lightning.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Satoshi_(unit)

It already does and has since day one. They got hobbed a bit by Satoshi due to security vulnerabilities in them but I'm confident that they'll be restored to full power eventually as people learn more about what form that would best take.  Lightning is powered by Bitcoin's smart contracting abilities.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think you are suggesting the idea that Bitcoin will someday, have the capability to have "smart contract" like features and procedures that will follow certain conditions based on a specific algorithms which could also be tailored to a unique use case?

The ideal number of Bitcoin circulation is the same number output of total Bitcoins in the pool. When the media refers to the total pool, it's under the assumption that ALL those Bitcoins are accessible. Highlighting the word "ideal" here, it references all the Bitcoins generated without considering those lost without the possibility of recovery. This is something even the hardcore Bitcoin enthusiasts won't seem to acknowledge. If mainstream adoption is the key, having a maximum of 21 million units seems problematic. You could argue that the price would exponentially increase to match the demand to the point 21 million will be enough when considering the price per coin, but that still doesn't necessarily solve the problem.

it its waaayy less than that, there are a lot of folks accumulating and not selling never.

We're going a bit offtopic here, but I'll answer..


The thread is full of technical details-- so perhaps not the best summary to link from here.

You know how real property can have deed restrictions?  -- contract terms that run with the land and impose restrictions on future owners?

In theory the same could be done with Bitcoin. Where instead of just having keys and timelocks a coin could constrain have restrictions that it required you to preserve when the coin was moved.  But don't worry, you couldn't accidentally accept one of these encumbered bitcoins, your wallet wouldn't recognize them unless specifically programmed to.

Currently the state of script is hobbled enough that no one knows how to do it at the moment, but it's pretty likely that it will become possible again eventually.  There are really powerful and good uses for such tools, but there are also profoundly stupid ones.

So, for example (in theory) I could take a bitcoin and encumber it so that that particular coin could only ever be sent between me and you,  no other key could ever control it.  You and I could send it back and forth forever, if we wanted... but it would effectively be out of circulation. ... even though it was circulating.  It would effectively no longer be a Bitcoin any more, but some kind of "me and you" token.

In theory, with sufficiently advanced technology,  no one except the people involved with a coin could tell that it was encumbered either.

So it's possible that some day there may be circulating bitcoins that aren't really bitcoins anymore and only their owners know it.

I am not sure whether it's 1.5 million coins or a different number, but surely there are coins lost forever. Apart from that, there are coins which are simply not in circulation, because someone is hodling them faithfully or forgot about them but might actually remember one day. Then there are coins like Satoshi's coins, and we basically don't know to which category they belong. Are they lost forever (=nobody has access to them) or are they just not used by their owners but might enter the circulating supply someday? Anyway, it's true that we'll reach almost the maximum amount of BTC rather soon (a very small amount will be left for a long period of time), so I don't think it's matters much what's the actual circulating supply. Especially if we consider those "inactive" coins lost forever, it just makes the total amount smaller.

Of course it's true. Moreover let's reduce your calculation even further by telling you that many coins are locked into the cold storages of many big guns like Satoshi for example. These coins are untouched and no movement has occured in them in years. I would call even these coins to be out of supply as they are not at all circulating. So truth is circulating supply will be way below 16.5 million currently. I think there isn't any point of debate because these are proven facts as all the information is available on blockchain.info.

Ok this is very crazy. I read your topics about coinwitness and coinconvenants twice and I didn't get it lol. I will give a better reading today  as it really looks interesting.
They were particularly interesting to me because they were old articles, from2013.

Can you eli5 me about this?
If I understand correctly, after doing a soft fork nodes wouldn't check anymore if the rules were followed in your transaction, but if you did checked.
How could this lead to spending supposedly lost coins, without Private keys?
The real owner would have lost his funds , if he had the private keys and decided to spend them?

I agree with you that not all 18,000,000 BTCs are in circulation now that some are in the wallet and some bitcoin is in wallets that have forgotten the private keys and gone. We cannot count on how many are missing and what is in total circulation and I can say that we do not need to talk about this as there is no point in this debate.

But what should be called for in these circumstances? It is like a coin that falls into a deep ditch. So the coin is still there and you just can't get it out.

It is considered lost already because no matter what you do, you won't figure out its private key, that would be the only way to use it or get it out of that address. Therefore, it's already considered 'lost' since like a lost item, it's almost irretrievable and cannot be used to enter the circulation again, pretty much like a void they are stuck in.

Reply to OP - I quite agree on the numbers and the possibility of such amounts 'lost' in Bitcoin is possible. One downside of the security the blockchain provides, it comes with a hefty responsibility of keeping your private keys.

Lost coins?  I don't think that is the very correct word to use a coin can not lost even if it's stolen it goes to a bitcoin address or may be the user of the coin is either holding or is dead and the account is dormant

Price goes up, more coins circulate. Surprise Surprise.

There are certainly many coins lost.  How many? no one knows, and no one's guesses are likely to be worth much.

Many coins haven't moved recently but will still move again in the future.

Some coins that are stationary on the blockchain are, in fact, rapidly circulating... as physical bitcoins,  amounts in exchange accounts,  or in payment channels.

Someday we might even have coins that are moving on the blockchain, but which are effectively lost and essentially out of circulation!

Correct! The actual number of BTC in circulation are irrelevant with regards to its price maybe because people's mind are conditioned that there will only be 21 million coins that will be in existence regardless of their status.



The fact that there are contradicting figures about this issue only suggest that they are only based on assumption and there is no concrete evidence or factual data that could support their claims!

Without proper audit and accounting of all BTC involved, I think there is no way we can figure out the correct amount of BTC's in circulation or their actual status. Imho.

I get that you might not agree that the total circulating Bitcoin is 18 million + as shown by coinmarketcap, but you understand and know that the Bitcoin blockchain network is decentralized network and all transactions made seen the launch of Bitcoin can be seen on the network. Due to the nature of this network, the total number of transactions made can be easily accommulated and the total number of circulating Bitcoin be seen.

This whole circulating supply thing is just misconception... Because, at the end of the day the so called number of coins that are in circulation is even much lower than people assume. So to me Number of Mined coins is not the circulating Supply

Also, You can't really know how many coins have been lost. Coins staying in the wallet for the last 6-9 years does not mean someone lost the private keys. Someone could just be having so much faith in bitcoin that they don't want to move the coins at all.
The circulating supply thing is just bullshit IMO, and we shouldn't care much about it.