Topic: Why not all dormant addresses are lost bitcoins. (Read 181 times)

What safer wallet could it be when those Bitcoin where untampered and not hacked for over a decade? I don't think so. I believe those hodlers moving those coins could be for other reasons that aren't for wallet safety. Perhaps they've notification set around the $100k level for their take profit. That price level as we've now could be their exit point and they're moving out their Bitcoin to sell off and either rebuy at correction or stay away from the market.

It can also be added that people, seeing the price of one hundred thousand, begin to look for their already "lost" bitcoins, which they at some point lost hope for. Remember the stories of those who hired entire groups of people to work on finding their lost hard drives. I think that these people get into a severe depression, seeing the price today and realizing how inattentive and careless they were. In some way, each of us can feel this, since not everyone was a skilled holder, especially in the early stages of acquaintance with Bitcoin, and many seed phrases with a certain amount in wallets remained untouched and lost.

Dormant addresses are not lost bitcoin for sure as there are still many long term investors who still has possession of their seed phrases and are actually waiting for the price to hit a certain target before they reinstate their wallets again. Some people bought about 5000 bitcoin with just $50 in 2010 when the price was around $0.01 and they invested that money without having any understanding that bitcoin will get to this stage it is now and they just say that amount like what they could afford to let go if the price of bitcoin doesn't increase further. Since the price has now hit $100k, they have seen the profits their long time investment has produced for them, that is why they have reactivated their wallets and moving bitcoins out of it, i guess those are part of the reasons why the price experience some corrections after hitting above $100k.

Currently now, there are big investors who do not mind the price of bitcoin now and are still buying because they have seen and witnessed a good future in bitcoin and are ready to hold for long term benefits which some of them can hold up to three cycle, imagine the amount of profits they will make in 12 years from now and most of them especially the big investors prefers lump summing than DCA where they will just invest a certain amount and not make any accumulations again till after that 12 years price targets, someone might feel that such wallet has been forgotten or the owner of the coins has lost custody of it but when the time comes they will still access their wallets again.

Yeah I feel like they do sell because they definitely have lots of it in their possession, someone who most probably held like thousands of bitcoin could just simply be taking profits with tens or hundreds every bull run and it wouldn’t matter much to their portfolio. Some of them actually do have more than one wallet or adress they even keep their bitcoins so some of this dormant ones are probably the ones they might have set aside as retirement savings and could be taking their profits elsewhere from their active wallets or addresses.


Yeah even this addresses in the image I posted in the main topic are very old addresses that have been monitored by some people and immediately they saw movement it became news. Most of the addresses were even from 2011, so yes they are been monitored most especially by hackers trying hard to brute force them

It's can be lost bitcoins or not lost bitcoins, we don't know the truth. Only people who own these bitcoins or used to own these coins, know their stories. What means with us is learning from their stories, who lost their bitcoins because they did not make proper wallet backups. We have to back up our wallets, with private keys, with mnemonic seed, with wallet file, because these backups will help us to recover our wallets and access our bitcoins.

How to make a wallet backup?

If you can hold bitcoins, you can be rich. You only can control yourself and what to do with your bitcoins, hold your coins or sell your coins. It's your control only with your bitcoins. With bitcoins of other people, lost or not lost, dormant or active, you can control these people and their coins, so don't let it bother you.

Not all dormant addresses are already forgotten because some of them just sleep around and wait for the right time to wake up to make a transaction, some of them made but just transfer an address which is seems to into a latest wallet so the user won't forget their account. We know few of them years already and not all the time people have a really good memory so instead you lose a money transfer it to another safe place. To those diamond hands congrats to them because its worth it imagine the price of the bitcoin now with the 100k USD and for sure this scale could buy a lot of things with that holdings.

Congratulations to those that got in at the Early stage imagine someone investing $50 12 years ago and now the amount is total of 10 Bitcoins this is crazy and at the same time incredible pointer to the fact that we have to create such long term mindset towards Bitcoin holdings, and since let say in the next 12.0 years from now, someone else could be creating threads for our own Bitcoin movement, what makes the difference is the determination to stay off the market for a long time, because for such wallets, there have been a lot of tempting price in the past and even some regret for not taking profits earlier, but now, it's all good taking such huge profits at the point in time.

That's right. People who jumped into the market so long ago definitely won't need to sell a sat anymore to eat, and in these conditions it is very easy to hold. But that doesn't mean that they will never sell their Bitcoins.

There is a direct proportion between the time an address has been dormant and the probability of the Bitcoins contained there being lost forever, but there is no way to know for sure whether this is the case most of the times.

Even satoshi-era dormant addresses are a mystery, and some people monitor them all day in case at any time there should be any movement in them.

Because they want to be cooked by narratives and fud. They love these things and they chase for these things, and fortunately they are fed by these things from Market Makers.

Unfortunately, after being fed by these unhealthy things, they failed to control their mind, belief, and actions so they turned to panic sales and lost money.

It affects all people in this market, traders are most vulnerable but investors are affected too. Especially newbie investors are sensitive with these things, but they're similar to traders, love to chase such news and will be beaten down by such 'unhealthy and unnecessary' news.

Experienced investors will be immuned against such news, because they know that news comes and goes, selling pressure appears and disappears, so they don't have to worry about it while Bitcoin adoption continues its growth, demands on Bitcoin becomes bigger with time, future supply is less because of future Bitcoin halvings. They comprehensively understand these fundamentals and are able to hold their bitcoins.

Not only investor, but it also applies to people who attempt to crack or brute-force "lost" wallet/address.


In short, it's because they think less accessible Bitcoin equals less market supply where investor expect it'll make Bitcoin price rise more quickly.

It shows that person who created Bitcoin means Satoshi had great idea. People who started using Bitcoin early on believed in it and helped it grow. Some people worry about Bitcoins that are lost because someone forgot their password or threw away their computer. But Satoshi said that these lost Bitcoins actually help make remaining Bitcoins more valuable.It is also important to know that just because someone has not used their Bitcoin in long time it does not mean it is lost forever. Mostly these people are just waiting for right time to use their Bitcoin. Today when Bitcoin reached $100000 many people who had not used their Bitcoin in long time started using it again.They moved their Bitcoin to safer places or sold some to make money. It just means they are waiting for right time to use it.

Why do actually investors need to know how much Bitcoin that likely to lost forever? investors are long term holder, they almost don't care with everything, especially like lost Bitcoin. They only care if the future isn't bright or something big happen that could make Bitcoin dead.

While big coins moved is more affect the traders.

The accounts where the whales of the past deposited Bitcoins are currently active and the owner or Bitcoins have not been lost. Because they were inactive for a long time, their Bitcoins are now going to be active since they have achieved their target. Investors who targeted $100,000 and experienced investors are ready to take the benefits.
The accounts that were holding Bitcoins from 2011 to 2017 are basically selling their holdings at the moment because they have been able to achieve the benefits they want, but I think the keys or owners of all these inactive or hidden Bitcoin accounts are dead or lost. These accounts are not being recovered at the moment, but other active and inactive accounts are being revived.

There's no way to categorise that all the address that didn't happen to have any activity in years considered it as lost. As you said it could be a whale's long term storage.

But if we assume all those Bitcoins are lost too, still doesn't do any harm and actually it just helps the price of spendable Bitcoin value to go higher so we don't need to be focusing on the wallet activities, all we need to focus on how to acquire more Bitcoins as we can since the growth is unstoppable and it's going to be expensive day by day.

It's because like other assets, if Bitcoin holders only hold their bitcoins in their wallets, you never know that what's happened with these bitcoins like these coins were lost forever or just in holding mode. You only can have stronger reason to conclude that it is more likely lost bitcoin after like 50 years or longer when it passes through limit of human lifespan, but it is another assumption. Even that initial Bitcoin holder passed away, these bitcoins can still be inherited to other people like children, grandchildren and are still dormant.

We only can know that it is not Lost bitcoin when there is a Bitcoin transaction to move it on-chain.

You can not know how many bitcoins are actually lost based on this HODL waves.
https://www.bitcoinmagazinepro.com/charts/hodl-waves/

That's just a speculation that all dormant wallet address with bitcoin in it are lost unless it is proven that it's really a lost wallet where the owner lost his/her wallet information like the private key or seed phrase. Some people may not think that it is not considered as lost just like what you can read to some of the post in this thread but i'd say that he is wrong. If it's not lost then does the bitcoin can be sent to another wallet, if the answer is yes then it is not lost but if the answer is no then it is lost.

No one will ever know if those dormant addresses are lost forever. We've seen cases of it for every bull run that many of these dormant addresses that have huge amounts of Bitcoins become alive again and transfer their balances into exchange ready to be sold. That's why those that assume that they're all lost forever, we will never know. While there really are those dormant addresses that are likely lost forever due to forgotten keys or the owner of it has died, it's best not to think that all of them are lost forever but if they do, thanks to their contribution and donation to the economy.

I don't consider dormant wallets and their holdings to be lost bitcoin unless the coins are sent to a burn address; if not, there is no way to prove that those coins are for real lost. 
 
Over the past few years, there have been news of wallets that have been dormant for years since their first transaction that recently got activities of funds being moved from them to a new wallet, and as time goes on we will see more of such happenings, which I'm not surprised about.

The little additional challenge we may have to ask about is on how we are going to differentiate between a dormant address and the one that is holding bitcoin for a long term, because we cannot assume an address being dormant to loss it bitcoin, while the coins lost maybe attributed to the ones sent on a wrong address and as such is being redistributed back to the network.

Exactly the same argument I have there is just one way to actually tag an a bitcoin lost and it is the one sent to the genesis address or maybe the coin is sent with the OP_Return script which permanently locks the output, this two to me are the only way we can say those bitcoin are lost for ever. Even if an address remains dormant for centuries maybe because the seed phrase is lost and not that backup is destroyed there is still chances of it to be recovered and the bitcoin gotten access too. Most of this long term dormant addresses are even for inheritance purposes