What are Lost Bitcoins?

It is believed that almost a third of the bitcoins in circulation remain lost in a kind of virtual limbo, of people who in the early days of bitcoin bought and now that it had its price increase, do not remember the passwords to their wallets. The data was published in the Wall Street Journal and shared by Chainalysis.

In the data, it is found that between 17% and 23% of existing bitcoins are inoperative or forgotten on the Blockchain.

These estimates are based on a study on the blockchain where all bitcoin records are stored. According to their calculations, there may be between 2.78 and 3.79 million bitcoins lost in the network.

The figures refer to those that have been lost and for the moment have no possibility of being used. Those that were hacked or stolen, are not taken into account as they are still in control of the coins.

The results are shown below:

• 30 and 50% are out of circulation
• 100% original coins
• 2% in sales and purchase
• 2% strategic investors

We see that between 30 and 50 percent of the bitcoins in circulation have the possibility of being lost, which would mean a total of 2.56 million bitcoins. It is also estimated that each of the cryptocurrencies originated by Satoshi Nakamoto has disappeared.

This implies that the creator(s) of the world’s first cryptocurrency has not moved the estimated 1.04 million bitcoins he has to his credit.

Statistics also estimate that 2% of the cryptocurrencies that were spent or moved wallets have been lost along the way for simple reasons such as poorly worded delivery addresses.

The same percentage of lost coins are in the “Strategic Investors” category, which is those who have held more than 1 or 2 years to see if their cost increases. Everything suggests that the first miners could not have tasted that they were going to be worth both, so they do not seem to have put so much interest in remembering the passwords and as it went up the precautions grew and the miners began to take it more seriously, but meanwhile, the first passwords were forgotten and the coins are stagnant.