However, over the years many users have lost access to their private keys by forgetting passwords or misplacing hardware wallets. According to
According to the New York Times, an estimated 20% of all Bitcoin currently in circulation (18.5 million at the time of writing) is held in lost wallets. That's part of the reason the remaining Bitcoin has gotten more and more valuable.
A great example of this is James Howells, a British Computer Engineer who lost his hard drive, containing details for a Bitcoin wallet that holds 7500+ BTC. It may be the largest Bitcoin wallet that has been classified by the owner as lost.
There are only about two million remaining bitcoins left to mine, and 3.7 million lost coins may increase as a proportion of the total available supply. Through research into production times, there are estimates that about 3.61 million bitcoins were permanently lost in the form of dead coins.
The price of bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, dropped below $16,000 in November 2022, a year after it reached a record high of $69,000. Things have started looking up in 2023 and it's currently worth around $30,000, but the digital currency was on a downward trajectory throughout 2022.
That's out of a total of nearly 19 million circulating today, and a maximum supply of 21 million tokens when Bitcoin is fully mined. At the high end, that could be about 20 percent of today's supply that is gone forever.
Depending on the circumstances, it might be possible to recover lost Bitcoin (for example, if you lose a hardware wallet, but still have your private keys and passwords). However, much of the Bitcoin that has been lost over the years is effectively lost forever.
The largest holder of Bitcoin is believed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous founder of Bitcoin. Nakamoto is estimated to own approximately 1,000,000 BTC, worth around $27.13 billion.
According to a June 2020 report by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, around 3.7 million BTC hasn't been touched for at least half a decade—that's around $40.6 billion worth of Bitcoin that might never be moved again. Crypto data firm Glassnode estimates that about 3 million Bitcoin are lost forever.
According to Coinbase director Conor Grogan users have lost access to 636,000 ETH since the network was created, either due to serious vulnerabilities in smart contracts or simply their own carelessness.
149,127 BTC addresses now hold at least 10 Bitcoin, which is the highest level since August 2021.
Going Full Bitcoiner: 1 Million Addresses Now Own 1 BTC or More.
As long as someone has access to the receiving wallet, those coins should still remain in circulation. Bitcoin can also be sent to burn addresses or wallets that people have lost access to. Since bitcoin is immutable, there is no way to undo these transactions.
Switzerland led the study with a 79 percent return rate for wallets with cash. The United States fell in the middle with a 57 percent return rate, while China had the lowest return rate of all the countries studied, at just 22 percent.
According to a survey by MoneyTips, 62% of the people who responded to their survey have had their wallets lost or stolen. Have you ever lost or had your wallet, purse, pocketbook or money clip stolen? First, make sure your wallet is really lost and not just misplaced.
Around 80 percent of global investors are likely to have lost money on their cryptocurrency investments, says a study, as the market reels under pressure amid the collapse of a major crypto exchange.
The firm expects Bitcoin to hit $1.48 million in 2030, its most bullish outlook, while $258,500 is the bear case and $682,800 the base.
Just like a lot of other digital assets, Bitcoin has been built by its creator around the concept of a finite supply. This means that Satoshi has set a fixed upper limit regarding the number of Bitcoins that can ever come into existence.
The Bitcoin ecosystem is still developing, making it possible that Bitcoin itself will continue to evolve over the coming decades. But however Bitcoin evolves, no new bitcoins will be released after the 21-million coin limit is reached.
Tesla announced in an SEC filing Monday that it has bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin. The company also said it would start accepting bitcoin as a payment method for its products. CEO Elon Musk has been credited for raising the prices of cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, through his messages on Twitter.
Forbes releases its billionaire list annually and this time there are 19 people out of the list who have made their fortunes out of crypto. Cryptocurrencies have had a wild year in 2021. Popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, etc. reached their all-time high in 2021.
While there's the rare chance that Bitcoin will completely lose its value, it's more likely that it will recover from the 2022 price drop in the years to come. The digital market is a very unpredictable space—nothing is guaranteed!
Regardless of what happens, Bitcoin will most likely have value. The only thing that can make Bitcoin valueless is if all governments ban it or render it illegal.