235 sats \ 5 replies \ @AngeloMetal 20 Oct 2022 freebie \ on: There are at least 3,034 bitcoins certainly lost forever as of 2022 bitcoin
This is misinformation.
These coins are part of the UTXO set, and are therefore normally spendable. There might be no person who owns a private key that unlocks 1111111111111111111114oLvT2, but given that there are 2^160 valid Bitcoin addresses in total, and 2^256-2^32-977 valid Bitcoin private keys, there are about 2^90 private keys that can sign for these coins. They aren't certainly lost forever.
Certainly lost forever are those sent in OP_RETURN scripts, unclaimed miner's rewards, and coins sent to nowhere such as transaction - "5bd88ab32b50e4a691dcfd1fff9396f512e003d7275bb5c1b816ab071beca5ba".
OP is likely rounding up from "almost certainly lost forever" to "certainly lost forever" just like
- every hodler rounds up from "almost certainly no one will guess my private key"
- and like you rounded up from slightly inaccurate to "misinformation"
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I don't think I was very pedantic. Certainly lost forever versus likely lost forever isn't the same thing, protocol speaking. There might be a time in a hundred years perhaps, that these seemingly lost bitcoins are brought into circulation.
Furthermore, the consideration that 1111111111111111111114oLvT2 is a burning address is arbitrary. The specific address has the same chances to be generated as any other address. The fact that it looks weird doesn't change that fact.
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:)
If we're being all technical here, the title might still be true based on the number of Bitcoins lost in the ways you describe:
Certainly lost forever are those sent in OP_RETURN scripts, unclaimed miner's rewards, and coins sent to nowhere such as transaction - "5bd88ab32b50e4a691dcfd1fff9396f512e003d7275bb5c1b816ab071beca5ba".
I see there are 100 bitcoins lost in that single transaction. No idea how to get all of them though.
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You can't. There's no unlocking script that can unlock that output. They're sent to a locking script that's invalid.
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I mean a way to get a list of all the transactions that are like that("sent in OP_RETURN scripts, unclaimed miner's rewards, and coins sent to nowhere"), them sum them all up and see if they're less than 3,034 BTC.
Until that's done the title still might be true after all :)
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