Topic: What happens if all Bitcoin is lost? (Read 770 times)

Sometimes, I don’t wish to venture into imagining the impossible because this my friend is an impossible.
All Bitcoin been mined and lost… just how would that come to be? Maybe you think the government would eventually becomes so obsessed with the conspiracy theory of having to buy all the Bitcoins little by little, store them all in a wallet and dish the private key or seed phrase to it…
Ain’t no way that would be happening.

If this be one means to satisfy your phobia on either Bitcoin would be around to serve as a currency of the future, well, no one could give you that assurance. Understand that it isn’t risk free, don’t be sacred to dive in with a plan and hope your ability to take calculated risk rewards you.

Bitcoin has been created with a specific amount of total supply in which no additional Bitcoin is adding in the amount, but rather it get reduction in many ways, mostly in the hands of early Bitcoin investors has lost their private key details, because of the cheap price rate as of then and Also some people Lost their Bitcoin through storage device lose without no back up. More over death can also cost Lost of Bitcoin in wallet, because is a private digital assets, that not everyone have to know about it.

You don't understand, the OP means if all the 21 million Bitcoin are mined and by God knows what unfortunate event all got lost (the 21 million Bitcoin got lost), what would happen. From my perspective I'll say we forget that Bitcoin ever existed and we go on with our life's but that's so unlikely to happen because Bitcoin isn't centralized just as you have highlighted and we can't lose all the Bitcoin all at the same time unless something was to happen that all the 21 million Bitcoin that was created get destroys through some kill switch and we don't have anything called Bitcoin anymore but that too is unlikely to happen.

Nobody controls Bitcoin so they can't just make all the Bitcoin to go missing without any trace. Bitcoin is the blueprint of the industry and without it there will be no cryptocurrency industry, if satoshi was alive and all the Bitcoin was to go out of existence, he'll have something to do about the situation to win back the trust of the community and they'll back him.

Maybe a fork could happen and we get new Bitcoin with the same features and values and it's left for the communication to decide if they'll still trust satoshi or not because for anything to be able to remove all the current Bitcoin from existence, then it has to be beyond human and normal computer capacity.

Once lost, meaning that won’t be in your possession anymore, and you won’t own the keys anymore so accessing will never be possible anymore. Although even if it’s still in your possession, but the fact that you have lost already its private keys, then it will never be recover anymore.

This is why security of our coins should be highly prioritized, that is keeping our seed phrases in a safe place without disclosing it to anyone. Otherwise, all your hard-earned coins will be gone in a waste without giving yourself the chance to enjoy its profits.

You will have to explain how do you think that all the bitcoin will get lost all of a sudden?

Many holders have lost their keys, making their coins inaccessible unless they find them again. More will do it in the future. Those are lost coins. It's highly unlikely that every single bitcoin owner will lose their keys one day. Perhaps you think a malicious future update could render all keys useless, but if we take into account how difficult it is to make changes to the protocol that everyone will agree on, that's pretty much impossible. Finally, even if all of the bitcoin got hacked and stolen, we still can't say it's lost. The ownership, changed and those possessing the new keys have access to it. That would pretty much signal the death of Bitcoin, though. 

It is vain to think or imagine things that is or are not possible, in a scale of zero to ten, the chances that all Bitcoin will ever be lost will always remain at zero.

And to answer you more appropriately, what will happen if all is lost is that, I will become the only bitcoin hodler and will sell one satoshi for $100,000 each, this is because if every one else is losing their bitcoin, I will never lose mine  .

On a more serious note, like I said before, there will always be 0.00000000 percent chances of all Bitcoin ever being lost, so, it is vain to imagine and or, discuss what would happen if this happens.

It is the human nature to over think and make up scenarios in their mind and speculate on them. We should indeed focus on things in life and keep our mental trauma to a bare minimum. Bitcoin is just one part of our daily lives and collecting it should be our objective, it is not something to lose sleep over, after all its money in another form, you will not be taking it to the grave with you.

Bitcoin users should spend more time with friends and family, ease out their minds before coming back to crypto.

OP's questions were out of context, I hope they got what they wanted to know. Keeping your coins secure is important and no one can make bitcoin "lose" like that.

How to lose all bitcoins at once where only you can control your bitcoins. Bitcoin is completely decentralized so no one can control it. You can control as much as you bought or mined and own as much as you own. So I don't see any chance that all bitcoins can be lost at once. If you ask such questions knowing all this, then you are the biggest fool. People trust Bitcoin so much and invest in Bitcoins with confidence because there is no such thing as a Bitcoin Scam or all the Bitcoins disappearing all at once.

I agree with you, I also don't understand why so many people like to think about scenarios that are almost impossible to happen in the near future or within our generation. While many other people are spending their time accumulating bitcoins and they are making a lot of profit from it, we are spending our time doubting and worrying about meaningless things. It was really just a waste of our time.

Bitcoin has and continues to become the world's trend and focus, so instead of continuing to doubt, we should take advantage of this unique opportunity to improve our lives. Doubt and worry never help us have a better life.

Since it is unrecoverable then surely it will gone forever but humanity will remain and also this
will surely affect the whole crypto system but since there are so many altcoin in existing and people knows its
value and function then maybe we will still have crypto world with new image and new forms .
correct it will lost forever , and we can forget about bitcoin than time and maybe look for another
currency to use as how we wanted to.

I don't know why people usually get worried about somethings that seems to be impossible or that might happen to a generation that we won't witness. There are so many things happening around bitcoin right now that you should probably be concerned about than an imagination that won't be implemented.

I have probably said this before ( Wake up from that dream mate) go get serious with other things.

I believe it's possible in theory, but in all probability is very, very unlikely.

In theory if all BTC is lost, then it's all lost, correct?

It's possible that all BTC can be mined but I don't think all will be lost like we send it to an unknown address that doesn't exist and BTC can't be recovered anymore. Why would someone do that? For what purpose? Keep in mind that the reason why we buy BTC and HODL is to earn a big profit, but that act we said earlier is just an opposite of it.

BTC is only just a currency. It's not the same as anything. And it's not like an ordinary currency, but it is decentralized and has a limited supply. BTC can keep on circulating but I don't think it's possible for an oil to do that once it was already used. Luckily there are lots of sources of it, so it won't ran out easily.

op I think the popularity of Bitcoin has increased so much day by day especially people are working with more interest in Bitcoin now so I think Bitcoin will not end forever so easily. Generally Bitcoin is not like the paper money we are used to Bitcoin is a coin so it is not possible to expire forever or create many at once. None of us who work on Bitcoin want Bitcoin to end forever or become depleted, everyone will try to hold on to Bitcoin through their own efforts.

There would undoubtedly be significant effects for miners and investors alike if all of bitcoin were lost, and they might suffer financial losses. It is somewhat unlikely that Bitcoin will completely vanish, though, and this is only a highly unreal case. It seems impossible that when we wake up one day, all of our bitcoin will have vanished for no apparent cause, given its significant role in business and its rise to importance in multiple countries. I mean, some bitcoin accounts have been lost, but it's not possible to say that all "bitcoin accounts" would vanish.
 

How is this even possible? Bitcoin all mined, and at the same time all lost? Well, I have read enough replies from people and I wonder why they even bother themselves with many of the suggestions since this is what will never be possible, it can't happen. Who stole them and where did they store them? For what reason and value did they steal them when they wouldn't be able to spend them?

Bitcoin is not a kangaroo blockchain and system where there will not be an explanation for what happens. Not this time what people thought was anonymous is no longer anonymous. The worst that could happen is for a bad news break to the extent that people do not want to deal with Bitcoin again. By this, the value will fall so much, but even at that, some people will still be adamant and will not sell their coin and continue to hold it.

And who knows, there could be a shift in the event and the coin gains back. Which will be a second chance for those who hold it to gain more. I do not see anything that can even cause total disappearance here. Also, on the second thought, can Bitcoin be 100% mined? I doubt that as there will always be divisions of mining and will go on like that unless the whole system crashes, which I don't see feasible for now.

If there is no Bitcoin left to use then there will be no market for it.  It is simple that when there is no supply no matter how huge the demand is, the market will die.


Bitcoin developers can alter the total number of Bitcoins if they want to but due to the consensus system, this kind of action may probably not materialize unless they all agree to change the number of total coins which can possibly result in a hard fork.  Remember Bitcoin is only a program that can be altered anytime the only problem is the implementation since it has to pass through the consensus system.

Lost means that if it can't recover then it will definitely become worthless. And if Bitcoin starts to constantly disappear from the total supply then of course Bitcoin will slowly increase in demand and the price will likely increase a lot.
However, since Bitcoin is decentralized and there is no way to increase the supply like paper money, the more Bitcoins are lost from the supply, the more pressure there is on the amount of Bitcoins left.

Even if we assume that all Bitcoin was lost and only a fraction remains, let's say 1 Bitcoin, then since it is rare, then its price will be astronomical and we will talk about fractions of it to be worthy, maybe there will be micro-satoshi or something like that.
The worst scenario is to have a hard fork and to get a recovery from months or years before the losses so there will be a possibility of retrieval.
Anyway this is very hypothetical and it will not happen in the current century at least.

You've answered the second question well - I agree with some of the statements, but you haven't answered the first question correctly. If all bitcoin are mined – then miners will likely not get rewards from each block as before, but they will only earn bitcoin from user transaction fees. That's what's happening if I understand it correctly - but the price of bitcoin likely won't fluctuate as much as it does now.