destroyed) so that they could be rewarded with the equivalent amount of Counterparty (XCP) coins. People sent bitcoins to that address to prove that they were "burned" (i.e. That one was used for the Counterparty's proof-of-burn. There are some addresses out there where no known private key exists.Īny coins sent to the above address will be lost forever. The wallet can still be seen online, complete with every transaction, but the funds will likely never be retrieved. This can be done by setting up a wallet with no known private key. As Bitcoins are far more valuable now than in the early days, people tend to secure their private keys with more care.Īnother avenue through which Bitcoin can be lost is through "burning". Or for example, those who began mining on their computer, didn't like what it was doing to it and deleted everything, a scenario more common than you'd expect. Certainly, with Bitcoin worth so little, a lot of people frankly didn't care if they lost their keys to the Bitcoin that they mined or purchased, and some just plain forgot about them Let me remind you of the poor sap who threw away his hard drive of 7500 Bitcoins. The vast majority of losses however, are from Bitcoin's earliest days, back when mining rewards were still 50 Bitcoins a block and Bitcoin was trading at less than a cent. Lost Bitcoins still remain in the blockchain just like any other Bitcoin, but lost coins remain dormant forever because there is no way for anybody to find the private keys that would allow them to be spent again. In general, it's extremely improbable and effectively impossible to recover lost coins. Bitomat lost the private keys to 17,000 of their customers' coins. Even veterans have made massive mistakes. There's no shortage of newbies from all eras flubbing their coins, for example by accidentally sending Bitcoin to a valid but unowned address, in which the Bitcoin would be transferred and then be as good as lost.
And sometimes, people just plain mess up. Either way though, considering Satoshi's possible courses of action, it is extremely likely that those coins will remain dead permanently.īitcoin can be lost due to irrecoverable passwords or private keys, forgotten wallets, hardware failure, or the death of the Bitcoin owner. This value of 25% includes the coins that Satoshi Nakamoto may or may not hold, a topic which I believe should be saved for another article. The reason that Ratcliff's value can be adjusted for the current date is because the bulk of the lost Bitcoins originate from very early on in the history of Bitcoin, and as Bitcoin's value goes up, people lose their coins at a slower rate. His article, written June 18, 2014, arrives at the conclusion that 30% of all coins had been lost, equating to 25% of all coins when adjusted for the current amount of coins in circulation. A good estimate is around 25% percent of all Bitcoin (4 million Bitcoins), according to an impressive, albeit slightly dated, analysis by John W. So how much Bitcoin exactly has been lost? It's a pretty tough question considering there is no definitive metric for finding the answer. As a side note, while the number of Bitcoin in existence will never exceed 21 million, the money supply of Bitcoin can exceed 21 million due to fractional-reserve banking. The total spendable supply is always lower than the theoretical total supply, and is subject to accidental loss as well as willful destruction. The theoretical total number of Bitcoin, 21 million, should not be confused with the total spendable supply. Projected Bitcoins Short Term Date ReachedĪs of June 20, 2017, Bitcoin has reached a total circulation amount of 16.4 million coins, which is about 78% of the total amount of Bitcoin that there ever will be in existence.
The number of new Bitcoins created each year is automatically halved over time until Bitcoin issuance halts completely with a total of 21 million Bitcoins in existence. The Bitcoin protocol is designed in such a way that new Bitcoins are created at a decreasing and predictable rate. Bitcoin has a controlled supply, meaning that amount of coins that can be created are finite.
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