It's hard to estimate, because until now there is still no system that makes calculations about Bitcoin as a whole. But in my opinion! more days will be growing, this happens when someone forgot Private Key belongs to recording and there are also new users who don't understand about the performance of Bitcoin, which will result in omission occurred

i think, a lot of BTC lost forever when Price low,, now less

Yes, it is not possible to say exactly how many Bitcoin we lost from the beginning. I think I lost too many coins. In the beginning, I lost more bitcoins. But now I can control my play and my bankroll so I hope I am not lost many coins in recent days. The professional gamblers will maintain this balance sheet. The normal gamblers will not care for this.

I doubt if they can be determined, and asking the entire forum this question makes me think you're not really looking for an answer because no one can just give you that statistics else I guess you'd have found it yourself.

It must be much more than that.  People were losing thousands of them left and right when they were worthless.

Has anyone considered the implications that perhaps even the majority of bitcoins produced to date have been lost?

Losses will certainly continue over time, albeit probably at a much slower rate, it's still going to happen.  Counteracting the higher price though, all these new people flooding the market that have no clue what they are doing will also certainly lose some. 

Has anyone considered the implications for the market if we end up dealing with a supply of just 4,000,000, let's say, by 2025?

It should be possible to analyze the blockchain though and create categories of bitcoins shouldn't it?

Moved in the last month
Moved in the last 2-6 months
Moved in the last 6-12 months
Moved in the last 1 year
Moved in the last 2-5 years
Hasn't moved in 5 years +


Does this analysis exist?  it would be interesting.  It wouldn't say definitively whether coins are lost or not but it would show how many are actively circulated.  It would be interesting to look at that chart daily and see if any of the numbers change significantly indicating that perhaps someone took a huge chunk of coins out of long term storage and started dumping them on the market.  Likewise if the number that moved recently keeps decreasing it would mean people are buying and holding. 

Surely somebody is analyzing this data even if they aren't sharing it publicly....

A really interesting and obviously relevant question. Obviously difficult to quantify. It would also be interesting to know to what extent these lost coins are factored into the price (if at all). Everyone cites the 21 million total figure (and with good reason since that is the total pool). But while the total pool is, by definition, 21 million bitcoins, the fact that some are forever lost is a completely relevant consideration, since a lost amount does inherently bring down the total supply.

Imagine if someone bought up a good percentage of the world's gold, then destroyed it (can gold be destroyed?? - you know what I mean) - that would decrease the pool and increase the price of the remaining. That is effectively what has happened with these lost bitcoins.

I wonder if, as bitcoin becomes more and more popular and mainstream, if this will be considered more and the price goes up accordingly. Imagine if bitcoin was fully accepted as an asset class in 2023 and then research was completed to try and estimate how much has been lost. If news stories suddenly break that there had been say 3 million lost coins, as other sources have said, and they are announcing suddenly bitcoin volume is now effectively at 18 million - nice gains for holders.

Time will tell.

I would be fascinated to know the actual quantity of missing cash. I would like to think we will by no means know the real extent of lost cash. By there currently being significantly less cash in circulation it is bound to improve the value of current cash we just have to be safe with our coins we do maintain that we don't get rid of them.

What's lost is lost. What's lost made what's not lost so much more precious

It's definitely interesting though to ask that question, just like asking who's Satoshi Nakamoto!

Nothing at all has lost till now, I am amassing bitcoins by earning it on various methods including faucets, signature strategies and buying and selling and the bitcoin price is now rising and will boost far more and I am earning more and a lot more each working day with the rise in value.

It's really hard to determine how many bitcoins are lost forever. We don't know how many people are holding their bitcoins and how many of them died or lost their private keys. We can have up to 21 million bitcoins, even if about 1 million is lost forever it's still a huge number. Unfortunately, due to Bitcoin design, we can't recover them.