Question on the 17.6% lost BTC \ stacker news ~bitcoin

1900 sats \ 25 comments \ @alashazam 23 Jun bitcoin_beginners

Hello,

I want to understand what are these 17.6% lost BTC (is that number even verifiable?)

My current understanding is that since bitcoin mining started back in January 2009, many people must have had mined quite a few and then changed computers, some old computer got thrown away, some user died with their wallet, some other mined btc (while they were 1$ or so) and then forgot, non-technical people might have lost their password, other had their storage destroyed, lost ...

How far am I from the truth?

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120 sats \ 3 replies \ @Scoresby 23 Jun

Something I often think about is that the amount of btc that is lost (meaning the keys unlocking a specific utxo have been deleted or destroyed in some way) only increases and so I would think on a long enough time frame all btc will eventually be lost.

27 sats \ 2 replies \ @030a29f333 23 Jun

But they also could be recovered on a long enough time frame

157 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 24 Jun

I dont know if I agree. If I make a key and use it to generate addresses at which I receive some btc and then I accidentally destroy my backups, the only way to recover the btc would be to crack the locking script. If that happens, doesn't that imply that all bitcoin locking scripts are crackable? If we can recover lost btc it implies we can crack any bitcoin private key.

17 sats \ 0 replies \ @030a29f333 24 Jun

In reality you're right, I was speaking in hypothetical of "on a long enough timeframe" which could be thousands of years.

247 sats \ 2 replies \ @nullcount 23 Jun

In my opinion, forgetting a private key does not make the BTC lost. Its still there on the timechain ready for anyone to move it if they guess/remember the private key.

However, there are some BTC which are provably lost. For example:

When a miner mines a block, the protocol allows that miner to reward themselves newly created BTC. Sometimes a miner does not claim the full amount that the protocol would allow them. Suppose a miner could create 50 BTC, but they messed up their block template and only gave themselves 5 BTC. Those missing 45 BTC are gone for good, permanently reducing max the supply of BTC that will ever exist.

Anyone can make a chart and claim the "lost" BTC is anything they want (without sources). I wish more charts would distinguish "provably burned coins" vs "maybe lost coins".

26 sats \ 1 reply \ @grayruby 23 Jun

I think this is a good point. We often hear of lost coins when people actually mean lost keys.

55 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 23 Jun

I wish more charts would distinguish "provably burned coins" vs "maybe lost coins".

Yes is a good point.

Also OP said:

is that number even verifiable?

I think is just an estimation. Nobody knows exactly how many BTC are not "in good hands" anymore.

85 sats \ 0 replies \ @carlosfandango 23 Jun

You can tell you are in a bull run when the news articles; ‘Hard drive worth millionty lost in landfill and the land owner won’t give permission to dig it up’ and ‘Dog ate my bitcoin usb and shat it out in the woods’ (I might have made that one up). I do enjoy a good ‘hundreds of (shit) coins recovered from wallet, owner believed it was BTC’..

58 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 23 Jun

CoinMtrics wrote this great post explaining all the ways bitcoin has been lost and how it’s known to be lost.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 23 Jun

*coinmetrics

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @alashazam OP 23 Jun

Thanks very much for this document link

37 sats \ 2 replies \ @grayruby 23 Jun

I don't know about 17.6%. That seems like a high number unless you count Satoshi's coins in that bucket.

But regardless there is a lot of Bitcoin that has been lost over the years and just adds to the limitedness of supply.

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @tomlaies 23 Jun

I don't think it's a high number. It could be even higher imo. You have to remember that big big chunks of all coins were mined in the first few years. In 2010-2012 people used Bitcoin very differently - so much just got lost to people throwing their old laptops away.

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @riberet19 23 Jun

Many people say that the lost bitcoins are more or less 4 million due to on-chain analyses, that is, those 4 million BTC have been immobile for too long, if so, it agrees with that percentage, but I also doubt that those 4 million are lost, many times some old wallets of more than 10 years are reactivated.

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @BitcoinAbhi 24 Jun

many people must have had mined quite a few and then changed computers, some old computer got thrown away, some user died with their wallet, some other mined btc (while they were 1$ or so) and then forgot, non-technical people might have lost their password, other had their storage destroyed, lost ...

Totally Agree

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @Satosora 23 Jun

It depends on what they deem as lost. Sometimes if a btc hasnt moved in5 years it is considered lost.

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @tomlaies 23 Jun

No, it's not verifiable. Nobody knows - we don't even know roughly in what ballpark the number is

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinsreporter 23 Jun

We need some other word to describe these 'so claimed list' because they can be verified on chain. May be we should just start saying them 'dormant' or 'static'. Thoughts?

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @16d86e9daa 23 Jun

There's no exact answer. One recent estimate is that about 3-4 million bitcoins are lost forever. It is impossible to know an exact number since a lost Bitcoin looks exactly the same on the blockchain as one that is not lost. A significant portion of Bitcoin is lost forever due to forgotten passwords, lost private keys, or abandoned wallets.

5 sats \ 2 replies \ @030e0dca83 23 Jun

We don't know where all gold is hidden on our planet the same with these lost Bitcoin. One day one lucky man to choose "lost private key" and will get the access to treasure

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @alashazam OP 23 Jun

lost private key

Once all bitcoins have been mined, there will be attempt at finding 'lost private keys' ; possibly using Quantum computing, or is this utter nonsense ?

Otherwise I think the big lesson is to learn how to improve security measures and educating users to prevent the loss of private keys in the first place.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @025738dda8 24 Jun

Once all bitcoins have been mined, there will be attempt at finding 'lost private keys' ; possibly using Quantum computing, or is this utter nonsense ?

We don't know when but I believe that this scenario is probable once a QC becomes practically usable for breaking ECC. Then, there will be two types of "miners" 😅. The thing is, there will always be maximum of ~20,999 BTC and not more and the live wallets will be already QC-resistant.

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @SwearyDoctor 23 Jun

You're not far at all. It's all likely, but not mucho of it really is verifiable. This number is a guess, you could never really know which address owners have lost their keys and which just haven't touched their stack in years. You can make informed guesses by statistics of trashed computers, by following reports on lost keys and some such thing, but even there, who knows if it's not a "boating accident" before a divorce. It's informed guesswork.

4 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 23 Jun

Someone else will definitely know more than me, but I think pretty much all of the above.

There are some high profile cases of people losing thumbdrives containing their wallets with millions of Bitcoin on them.

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @jgbtc 23 Jun

Lots and lots of boating accidents.