Actually price depends on many things and not on just supply in circulation.

Only if all those lost bitcoins are made available for sale on exchanges, then they can effect the price.

With growing demand of btc even if all 21m BTC are available for sell even then price can stay at current level or goes up.
That said, it is nearly impossible to recover those lost bitcoins . Imagine someone has lots of BTC in his wallet and he forgets is recovery Passphrass Or he lost his hardware wallet, then in this and many other such situations, coins are lost for good.

I would not be happy that someone lost the private keys to their BTC.

There is no way to know the exact number of BTC's that are lost, some people don't move their BTC's for years and it does not mean that they are lost. And how many actually lost private keys are suddenly going to be found and liquidated for it to make the price of BTC drop, i don't know what your theory is, but this is a non-issue that does not deserve a topic of its own.

You have started many topics recently, slow down and read.

It goes like this.

Whether there will be lost bitcoins or not that will be up for sale and it's a huge volume. There will be for sure an effect to the price of Bitcoin. Not just that, there will be more force if the media is going to publish these sell offs as it's gonna put pressure to many retail holders.

And from there, the news that's disseminated will impact to everyone that's also gonna feel bad about it.

But let's take the reality of these lost bitcoins, they won't be called lost if they're not lost entirely. It's good that there's this take that these lost bitcoins are lost forever and instead of a drop that it will contribute, the value from each of those will be retained.

I have actually created a thread a while ago.

Feel free to check it out: https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/5446374.0

Actually, it's not your theory but Satoshi's. He said that lost Bitcoin should be considered a donation to the Bitcoin technology or network.
For your question, it depends on the amount of Bitcoin that is being discovered. If it's a huge amount of Bitcoin that is being discovered and all is being placed on sale, then it definitely will fall the market a bit but not the Bitcoin network, after some months or a year, the market can still begin to recover again. Some months ago, there was a huge amount of Bitcoin discovered from a hacker; I can't remember the figure accurately, but I guess it was about 50,000 Bitcoin, and then the price of 1 Bitcoin was still trading below $30k, but look at Bitcoin today; the price is up again.



Cheers 🥂, Dr.Bitcoin_Strange 👺👺

The amount of bitcoins lost so far is negligible, and if all of them are found and recovered from their former owners, it will be good news for them. In terms of price, if they sell, it will affect the bitcoin price in the short term, but in the long run, it will have no effect. Supply affects the price of a coin, but it is not the only factor, most rely on demand for pricing. Look at ETH it has an unlimited supply, but its value is not small.

Panic in the crowd is biggest effect. People who get access to old bitcoins that are considered as lost bitcoins will not be stupid to dump all their bitcoins in one sell order on the market. They will do it in OTC market, not at centralized market and will not do that in a single day.

With whale alerts from on-chain trackers and quick speed of new circulation on social media, the crowd will feel very panic when they see massive amount of old bitcoins on the move from old address to new addresses or read speculation and fud that those old bitcoins will be dumped on market soon.

If I own very old bitcoins and recovered my access to those bitcoins recently, I will do my research on how to sell those coins with less effects on market price as possible. It will help me to maximize my profit so I will spend time to think about selling strategy.

a decline that occurs only if the Bitcoin is sold in large quantities and follows the market price. it will certainly make a decline that could have happened in a very short time.
especially if there is prior confirmation that one of the wallets with large enough Bitcoin ownership transferred their Bitcoin to the exchange wallet. this can create negative sentiment leading to panic selling. indirectly the price will decrease either periodically or instantaneously.

Let me correct you a bit, I think this lost coins are already in circulation since they are mined, they are actually part of the 19 million plus coins in circulation. So in logic the only way they say it makes others bitcoin slightly worth more is because it is not sold off and the only way a price is affected is when the coin is sold off, as more of it is sold off it would reduce the demand which will Also affect the price. So if a large amount of bitcoin is recovered today and the institution or investor decides to sell them off then would shake the price. This too will just be a temporary shake just like those that happens when a big exchange runs into problem and people start selling off their bitcoin.

This price dump will only be for a short period because ones the buyers of these coins, save them up and hold on to them again, then they begin to go scarce again and the price will return to normal price

Lost Bitcoins come from wallets with lost private keys, so those coins come off from the available liquid market and cannot be sold till someone gets the private keys. Assuming they sell the coins and if the amount is a significant one, only then the market might drop.

The person who lost the coins will not be happy about it. The rest of the people can be - however that is a very malevolent thing to say, being happy on someone's loss.

Hence we should always know how to keep our coins safe and not leak the keys to any site or person