Dead Cryptocurrency. How many Bitcoins are lost irrevocably?

In the modern world it is increasingly necessary to confront the security and utility of any information product. The same is with Bitcoin. If you lose your bank card or forget the code from it you can restore...

In the modern world it is increasingly necessary to confront the security and utility of any information product. The same is with Bitcoin. If you lose your bank card or forget the code from it you can restore access through the bank. Therefore, the bank has full access to the data of its customers. Many of those who are seriously concerned about the issue of privacy use cryptocurrencies. But if you lose access to a crypto wallet then no one else can use the coins stored there - they are lost forever.

There are a lot of "dead" wallets in the Bitcoin system and some of them have coins in them. Most of these wallets used to belong to the pioneers of the system who mined the cryptocurrency "just for fun" and got a reward in Bitcoins for it. Few could imagine then that the capitalization of the system would exceed $100 billion.

Forbes magazine has estimated the number of lost bitcoins at 3 million coins. Accordingly, in the Bitcoin Cash network, which is the fork of bitcoin, their number is the same.

Wallets were considered "dead" if there was no activity after March 1, 2013 when the material value of bitcoin became recognized. Until this time, crypto-currencies were not considered a serious financial tool - rather they were seen as entertainment for geeks.

Their assessment is a "bottom-up assessment" because after March 2013 people are still losing access to their wallets. But it is possible that some of the "inactive" wallets actually belong to those who made long-term investments in Bitcoin. Forbes estimates that 4% of the total volume of coins that have been lost since 2013 are Bitcoin.

Forbes proposes not to take into account coins with a value inflated by automated buying and selling with the help of robots. According to the publisher, one should not trust coins with a capitalization of less than $30 million and a daily trading volume less than $50,000.

The magazine believes that as of September 2017, $21 billion of Bitcoins and other crypto-protected units have been lost. This figure is growing with the increase of cryptocurrency capitalization.