would you be able to do a stacked bar graph of what you have along with total bitcoins in the bitcoin economy (total bitcoins generated)

Here is a running percentage of the unredeemed Bitcoins for a particular month compared to the total in existence at the end of that month.



Here is the percentage of unredeemed compared to the current total in existence.

I realized that it might make more sense to account for the unredeemed totals from previous months when calculating the running total. So here is the percentage of unredeemed BTC during a particular month, compared to the total Bitcoins in existence at the end of the month minus the past unredeemed totals (i.e. the total still in circulation carried over from the month before plus the total added by mining).

Shouldn’t it be redeemed and not unredeemed Bitcoins per month then? I’m confused.

Like I've mentioned before, it's impossible to know whether Bitcoins are lost or not, but looking at the last graph (% in circulation), it's apparent that a large part of the BTC mined initially were permanently kept out of circulation (presumably lost). However, as the months went on, the coins in circulation tended to carry over to the following month. (Note that it's also impossible to distinguish whether the coins actually changed hands or were laundered or shuffled about, but I doubt that those activities comprise a significant percentage.)

For about a year, only 10-20% of the Bitcoins in circulation were completely hoarded away during any particular month. However, this percentage has gone up, likely due to the sudden changes in value. Nonetheless, nearly 70% (about 1.1 million) of the Bitcoins in circulation in April were eventually exchanged during May, so I believe that's a good sign.