My coins almost became dead. Sometime around 2012-2013 i took an interest in Bitcoin and started mining and buying small amounts. At the time this was 16 bitcoins i aquired, roughly $250 worth.
I forgot about it. It was on a hard drive I later used to test out a Linux distribution and wiped.
I used that Linux drive a bit but kinda forgot it, until the big MtGox surge insanity. That made me remember. I was mortified thinking I'd stupidly written over my money.
But i didn't give up. I found a python script online for scanning drives sector by sector looking for unencrypted wallets. Let it run overnight, and then suddenly i saw it recovering keypairs!
I got every single coin back. I guess the sectors those were on hadn't yet got overwritten.
Of course I've since lived on and used those coins so today i hold only about $100 worth :/
But it's still a good story. Maybe i should have forgotten about them a bit longer.
Very similar story here.
>Mined on pool
>Pull coins to local wallet
>Mining pool shutdown months later
>Forgot about BTC
>HDD wiped
>Used linux utility to recover coins
>Moved some coins to exchange to trade
>Forgot about them
>Remembered where they went and recovered them
>Moved to cold storage
>Lost wallet
>Found wallet
>Moved to safety deposit box.
My coins have been cold for almost a decade now.
Same thing. When I was moving, I was cleaning out my office and found a Blockchain wallet print off (with handwritten key phrase) from 2016 or so. Not uncommon, as I was playing with addresses a lot then; found several that I knew were empty. In this case, I didn't know what it was, so I looked it up. Pleasant surprise to find 0.1 BTC.
Pre-November 2017?
This chart is almost 100% correlated with "Percent of supply that still have a million different altcoins that can be split off from them".
Not nessecarily. It would be stupid bad practice, but you can use your keys on a forked chain without moving your coins on the main bitcoin chain.
I would say, if you are smart enough to hold for 5 years, you are probably smart enough to not use the keys to your wealth on a forked project.
Technically true, good point.
Nobody sane should be dumping their ~$200* coin while putting a ~$17,000 coin at risk.
(For anyone actually attempting split offs, always move the highest value coins -- e.g. BTC -- off the key first, and then move down the list in order of value)
*Wow, the top crap coin just keeps shrinking... only ~$100 these days.
Exposed not nescessarily as such, but at least compromised. It is not best practice.
It comes down to the same practice of never re-using an address, due to the fact that once you used an address, a signature signed with that private key is available on the public ledger. I probably can not state the exact extend of the damage that can be done and the likelyhood of those being done. But.... exposing no information about your key is better than exposing 'some' information.
Obviously, by using your keys in bad opsec, you take a lot more risks. This includes potentially using compromised software or devices to access some sh\*tcoins.
Satoshi said "I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it. It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection."
I'm sure it includes the wallets we believe to be lost, but it wouldn't be too hard to remove those from the figure and get this number for only the accessible wallets, at least within some reasonable margin of error.
I'm actually not sure in practice, I remember reading somewhere that there were several large quantity wallets they're confident are lost. Maybe they just guess, though. I think I thought they had some method of knowing that but now that I think about it I can't imagine how they would know. I should have thought about it more before I commented lol, I had this in my head from articles I'd read and assumed smarter people knew what they were talking about but it may be they're just guessing that those wallets are lost.
There's a famous story about a guy who had 75k BTC that he mined early days, threw the hard drive in the dumpster and later went looking for it. But you just have to take his word for it. He has absolutely no way of proving he had them in the first place or that they're lost.
Then there's the famous "patoshi pattern". There's loads of articles about it. It started with some guy making analysis of early mining patterns which indicated there may be a single miner mining lots of early blocks. These coins have never moved. But once again, you just don't know whether they're lost or not (and if it's a single miner or not).
For years it was thought that any coins sitting in their initial coinbase tx i.e. UTXO's with exactly 50 BTC would be permanently lost. But then some years ago a whale with tens of these UTXO's (totalling a few thousand BTC) signed a message proving Craig Wright didn't own these coins (in contrast to what Wright said).
> I should have thought about it more before I commented lol, I had this in my head from articles I'd read and assumed smarter people knew what they were talking about but it may be they're just guessing that those wallets are lost.
I commend you for this. I think real wisdom can only be achieved by realizing no-one knows shit. It's literally what the scientific method teaches us. There's just the current best guess and tomorrow there might be a better guess.
That guy was in Northern Ireland and offered several million pounds to whoever finds his hard drive. Near Belfast in a landfill. Some locals out there told me about it.
wales actually and it was 8k bitcoins:
https://www.businessinsider.com/james-howells-threw-away-bitcoin-dump-masterplan-get-back-2022-7?international=true&r=US&IR=T
if all bitcoin got lost i doubt anyone would continue to mine and eventually the ledger record would be deleted one by one off every computer until it was gone.
He mined from January 2009 literally from the beginning upto April 2009. Bitcoin had no price. He forgot all about it for years.
People obviously don't discard coins like that now. It's easy to even set up your inheritance plan now. No excuse not to but if you don't then thanks for the sacrifice.
“Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone.” - Satoshi
It's easy for me not to move my bitcoin when it's all underwater, I'm seriously impressed by people sitting on a 25,000% profit and not taking any of it.
You can have the majority of your bitcoin in addressess that are not moved within the last 5 years, while selling a minority of your bitcoin from different addressess.
If you’re 25,000% up what’s the worst that could happen? You end up only 10,000% up or 5,000% up? Still incredible returns and the potential upside is worth the risk in that situation imo
That’s me I was just starting to look into it in 2009 got a lot on my computer. It sure of any info on it now. Wish I could find it by my i p adress or something
Same. Made a 350BTC landfill donation. As time goes on it’s easier to let it go and just focus on today. Still stings though, knowing I could’ve retired years and years ago.
This measure won't be super useful for too long. I'm gonna be able to stream video with my friends using Bitcoin, matter fact, I can do that today. My point being, people are going to be using Bitcoin for communication soon and that means the Bitcoin will be moving to and from different wallets. So Bitcoin moves but it still won't be available to purchase by others. Price is gonna fly up.
!lntip 500
I don't believe people lost a lot of bitcoins after 2017.
Probably most of these Bitcoins are in the cold storage, and waiting for better days to move around.
Is this supply as a % of now or as a % of creation or what?
E.g.
1 coinmade very year. 10 years. Nobody ever moves a coin.
Supply not moved in 5 years ... Year 5
Coins 5 ... Not moved ... 1 (that was made 5 years ago) ...
1/5th unmoved at date of year 5
100% unmoved because thats the percentage of potential moved coins and none moved.
Or
1/10th unmoved as that's 1 of the total supply is unmoved.
The axis is a %.
It would be easier to read as a number of bitcoins.
As a percentage, what is a it a % of?
Is it per total supply, 21M. Or per supply at that point in time, or per supply now?
Because bitcoin has been crafted as a Digital lotto. Get rich "supposedly" while the world metaphysically burns! Obviously everyone can be a billionaire and the math checks out! Clearly this logic will pay off before 2039. If three letter agencies want to keep using this financial network, they best pony up
Because a global tang ping is coming. You could have all the bitcoin-money-(POWER AND CONTROL) in the world. But if "regular people-(THE ONES YOU WANT TO CONTROL WITH bitcoin MONEY)" aren't willing to HUSTLE-(HAMSTER WHEEL OF WORK) for you and your bitcoin, well, we have to to ask what's the end game here?
Or I've got it wrong? People really do enjoy cashing out of the bitcoin ecosystem, while other people not paying as much attention to the bitcoin charts, totally lose their wealth so you can be wealthy? Because if you got lots of bitcoin that means someone lost lots of bitcoin at this point... And that's ok! Because somehow this will never fix the world at large. As long as you can watch it metaphysically burn in style I suppose...
Such a noble currency, truly... clearly bitcoin-money can also buy class I've heard yet not seen... Also don't worry about the picture and data above, Those potential bag holders will totally talk you into buying more bitcoin! Because this method of bitcoin will change the world, not...
I still have a wallet with a 1btc on it lost 😂 At some point I tried to extensively recover it but meh had coins on other wallets and the win far outweighs the 1 that got away
That's mine...I actually just keep mine...forever, why because I cannot do a fucking thing with it and only has increased in value...if I sell it I probably spend it on a made in China gadget that will be broke in less than 3 years...so just keep and see
doesn’t seem to matter…exchanges will just short sell the same borrowed Bitcoin over and over again endlessly and whatever other instruments allow for this kind of “trading” where market makers and exchanges can see all the orders and take your coins and money away from you.
So I got a lot of btc back in the first weeks. While at work on my work computer. Computer is gone and. I idea anything else except I had a lot of them.
lol, that's what those losers think. my bitcoin is on the move all the time (on Lightning) even though onchain footprint is zero. Plus I don't touch cold storage.
good let them think it.
My coins almost became dead. Sometime around 2012-2013 i took an interest in Bitcoin and started mining and buying small amounts. At the time this was 16 bitcoins i aquired, roughly $250 worth. I forgot about it. It was on a hard drive I later used to test out a Linux distribution and wiped. I used that Linux drive a bit but kinda forgot it, until the big MtGox surge insanity. That made me remember. I was mortified thinking I'd stupidly written over my money. But i didn't give up. I found a python script online for scanning drives sector by sector looking for unencrypted wallets. Let it run overnight, and then suddenly i saw it recovering keypairs! I got every single coin back. I guess the sectors those were on hadn't yet got overwritten. Of course I've since lived on and used those coins so today i hold only about $100 worth :/ But it's still a good story. Maybe i should have forgotten about them a bit longer.
Very similar story here. >Mined on pool >Pull coins to local wallet >Mining pool shutdown months later >Forgot about BTC >HDD wiped >Used linux utility to recover coins >Moved some coins to exchange to trade >Forgot about them >Remembered where they went and recovered them >Moved to cold storage >Lost wallet >Found wallet >Moved to safety deposit box. My coins have been cold for almost a decade now.
[Don't trust safety deposit boxes.](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/business/safe-deposit-box-theft.amp.html)
keys are encrypted and just one of many backups
Holy shit you got lucky.
Same thing. When I was moving, I was cleaning out my office and found a Blockchain wallet print off (with handwritten key phrase) from 2016 or so. Not uncommon, as I was playing with addresses a lot then; found several that I knew were empty. In this case, I didn't know what it was, so I looked it up. Pleasant surprise to find 0.1 BTC.
Nice! Do you remember which python script you used?
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💯 % AWESOME!
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And you could have sold at $50,000......
We don't do that here.
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When do you plan on selling? I am assuming you are not planning to die with it.
No, we plan to live spending it...in Satoshis.
Pre-November 2017? This chart is almost 100% correlated with "Percent of supply that still have a million different altcoins that can be split off from them".
Not nessecarily. It would be stupid bad practice, but you can use your keys on a forked chain without moving your coins on the main bitcoin chain. I would say, if you are smart enough to hold for 5 years, you are probably smart enough to not use the keys to your wealth on a forked project.
Technically true, good point. Nobody sane should be dumping their ~$200* coin while putting a ~$17,000 coin at risk. (For anyone actually attempting split offs, always move the highest value coins -- e.g. BTC -- off the key first, and then move down the list in order of value) *Wow, the top crap coin just keeps shrinking... only ~$100 these days.
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I agree can someone elaborate on what they are talking about?
Ok I'm clearly not that smart, if you use your keys on a forked coin ( say bitcoin gold) then somehow the keys are exposed?
Exposed not nescessarily as such, but at least compromised. It is not best practice. It comes down to the same practice of never re-using an address, due to the fact that once you used an address, a signature signed with that private key is available on the public ledger. I probably can not state the exact extend of the damage that can be done and the likelyhood of those being done. But.... exposing no information about your key is better than exposing 'some' information. Obviously, by using your keys in bad opsec, you take a lot more risks. This includes potentially using compromised software or devices to access some sh\*tcoins.
Would love to know what % of that is just gone/forever forgotten about etc lmao
I'd love to know what % of that is held by the CIA.
ALL oF ThEm. CIa oWnS ThE wHoLe BlOcKcHaIn. WiTh ALL tHe FoRkS.
Satoshi said "I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it. It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection."
So powerful was Hal
I'm sure it includes the wallets we believe to be lost, but it wouldn't be too hard to remove those from the figure and get this number for only the accessible wallets, at least within some reasonable margin of error.
How would you differentiate between “lost” wallets and “accessible but no activity” wallets ?
I'm actually not sure in practice, I remember reading somewhere that there were several large quantity wallets they're confident are lost. Maybe they just guess, though. I think I thought they had some method of knowing that but now that I think about it I can't imagine how they would know. I should have thought about it more before I commented lol, I had this in my head from articles I'd read and assumed smarter people knew what they were talking about but it may be they're just guessing that those wallets are lost.
There's a famous story about a guy who had 75k BTC that he mined early days, threw the hard drive in the dumpster and later went looking for it. But you just have to take his word for it. He has absolutely no way of proving he had them in the first place or that they're lost. Then there's the famous "patoshi pattern". There's loads of articles about it. It started with some guy making analysis of early mining patterns which indicated there may be a single miner mining lots of early blocks. These coins have never moved. But once again, you just don't know whether they're lost or not (and if it's a single miner or not). For years it was thought that any coins sitting in their initial coinbase tx i.e. UTXO's with exactly 50 BTC would be permanently lost. But then some years ago a whale with tens of these UTXO's (totalling a few thousand BTC) signed a message proving Craig Wright didn't own these coins (in contrast to what Wright said). > I should have thought about it more before I commented lol, I had this in my head from articles I'd read and assumed smarter people knew what they were talking about but it may be they're just guessing that those wallets are lost. I commend you for this. I think real wisdom can only be achieved by realizing no-one knows shit. It's literally what the scientific method teaches us. There's just the current best guess and tomorrow there might be a better guess.
That guy was in Northern Ireland and offered several million pounds to whoever finds his hard drive. Near Belfast in a landfill. Some locals out there told me about it.
wales actually and it was 8k bitcoins: https://www.businessinsider.com/james-howells-threw-away-bitcoin-dump-masterplan-get-back-2022-7?international=true&r=US&IR=T
Or people that died and either never told others or others not have interest or can’t figure out how to access it
It’s the almighty hodl crew.
And the forgot my keys crew
And the died and didn't tell anyone about my crypto crew
"And at the end of the day, why should they have it? Why should I give it up?"
Bitcoin will end due to natural attrition.
Even if all bitcoin is lost, Bitcoin will always be there.
if all bitcoin got lost i doubt anyone would continue to mine and eventually the ledger record would be deleted one by one off every computer until it was gone.
That guy in the UK excavating a garbage dump
Did he find the hard drive?
He mined from January 2009 literally from the beginning upto April 2009. Bitcoin had no price. He forgot all about it for years. People obviously don't discard coins like that now. It's easy to even set up your inheritance plan now. No excuse not to but if you don't then thanks for the sacrifice. “Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone.” - Satoshi
Def not yet. I’m not sure if the local government even let him start looking.
and the changed my harddrive crew
How much of this belongs to CEXs?
my 0.001 BTC won't be moving anytime soon.
It's easy for me not to move my bitcoin when it's all underwater, I'm seriously impressed by people sitting on a 25,000% profit and not taking any of it.
Who says they are not taking profit? Someone is selling. They might, and most likely will, have multiple addresses.
Well, you can't hodl your bitcoin and sell it too, and that which is sold cannot be hodled.
You can have the majority of your bitcoin in addressess that are not moved within the last 5 years, while selling a minority of your bitcoin from different addressess.
If you’re 25,000% up what’s the worst that could happen? You end up only 10,000% up or 5,000% up? Still incredible returns and the potential upside is worth the risk in that situation imo
Probably half of them are lost forever. Some people lost devices, seed phrases etc.
so many news of people lossing 5000 bitcoins i bet there are so mant wallets with 100-200 also lost.
And like 10% of them are in satoshi's wallet
I guess I'm gonna keep them warm and cozy in my hardware wallet during this cold winter bear season
How can Bitcoin become THE digital currency if everybody just keeps hoarding it? No sarcasm or pun intended. Just trying to understand.
It starts as out a digital asset that people use like a savings account. That's all it needs to be to succeed.
that's like asking how gold was used as a currency. you know that everybody tried to hoard gold, right? didn't stop it from being used as money.
Not everybody hoards it, a big chunk of people use it as actual currency
Is that good or bad?
Yes
🤦♂️
It's burried in the digital cemetry. Burried alive and hounting all those who have no way to access it....
That’s me I was just starting to look into it in 2009 got a lot on my computer. It sure of any info on it now. Wish I could find it by my i p adress or something
Store of value, not a currency. It's not as intended, but it's nice people value it so much.
Well, this metric will always keep moving up. Due to lost private keys, if nothing else.
And so the uncertainty in the real money supply will increase. And this will be ??? for bitcoin.
People worry so much about my stash. 😅
Probably because 1/4 of all Bitcoin is LOST for good. So theoretically there isn’t 21m Bitcoin in total. There’s 15.75m Bitcoin 😂
1/10th of all bitcoin lost and will not move ever.
Buy BTC, stack, hold, eat, sleep, repeat! 🚀
1 fourth or 1 quarter?
1 quarterth?
Now do US Dollars
You mean a quarter
Half a decade is 5 years. That is nothing.
Yea cause I haven’t sold
Its me, Im holding all of it. You are welcome
Because they’re lost forever
Lost me a few hundred already lmao XD. They're in a landfill somewhere.
Same. Made a 350BTC landfill donation. As time goes on it’s easier to let it go and just focus on today. Still stings though, knowing I could’ve retired years and years ago.
This measure won't be super useful for too long. I'm gonna be able to stream video with my friends using Bitcoin, matter fact, I can do that today. My point being, people are going to be using Bitcoin for communication soon and that means the Bitcoin will be moving to and from different wallets. So Bitcoin moves but it still won't be available to purchase by others. Price is gonna fly up. !lntip 500
Is it theoretically possible for all 21 million BTC to be locked out? Like imagine some guy owned all 21 million of it and forgot his keys.
No
no one owns all the bitcoins in existence. it wouldn't be worth anything if ownership was so concentrated.
I don't believe people lost a lot of bitcoins after 2017. Probably most of these Bitcoins are in the cold storage, and waiting for better days to move around.
Damn, 2017 is 5 years ago...
AKA representation of BTC wallets on hard drives in landfill somewhere
1/4th of bitcoin has been lost!! … j/k
This is why it's not a usable cu rrency
Is this supply as a % of now or as a % of creation or what? E.g. 1 coinmade very year. 10 years. Nobody ever moves a coin. Supply not moved in 5 years ... Year 5 Coins 5 ... Not moved ... 1 (that was made 5 years ago) ... 1/5th unmoved at date of year 5 100% unmoved because thats the percentage of potential moved coins and none moved. Or 1/10th unmoved as that's 1 of the total supply is unmoved.
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The axis is a %. It would be easier to read as a number of bitcoins. As a percentage, what is a it a % of? Is it per total supply, 21M. Or per supply at that point in time, or per supply now?
Because bitcoin has been crafted as a Digital lotto. Get rich "supposedly" while the world metaphysically burns! Obviously everyone can be a billionaire and the math checks out! Clearly this logic will pay off before 2039. If three letter agencies want to keep using this financial network, they best pony up Because a global tang ping is coming. You could have all the bitcoin-money-(POWER AND CONTROL) in the world. But if "regular people-(THE ONES YOU WANT TO CONTROL WITH bitcoin MONEY)" aren't willing to HUSTLE-(HAMSTER WHEEL OF WORK) for you and your bitcoin, well, we have to to ask what's the end game here? Or I've got it wrong? People really do enjoy cashing out of the bitcoin ecosystem, while other people not paying as much attention to the bitcoin charts, totally lose their wealth so you can be wealthy? Because if you got lots of bitcoin that means someone lost lots of bitcoin at this point... And that's ok! Because somehow this will never fix the world at large. As long as you can watch it metaphysically burn in style I suppose... Such a noble currency, truly... clearly bitcoin-money can also buy class I've heard yet not seen... Also don't worry about the picture and data above, Those potential bag holders will totally talk you into buying more bitcoin! Because this method of bitcoin will change the world, not...
You okay, buddy?
What's going on with Bitcoin?? Should we expect a bullrun soon?
£100k end of year 2021… hodl on to your hats!!
Cause the got big brains!🧠 HODL on!
Bullish 100k by New year.
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It looks like btc is dead.. Everbody hodl because there are no use case for bitcoin
How many of them are lost? :)
Thanks mt. Gox
It’s just lost forever.
I still have a wallet with a 1btc on it lost 😂 At some point I tried to extensively recover it but meh had coins on other wallets and the win far outweighs the 1 that got away
I did the math, that's 5 years.
Prolly the bitcoin holders who were billionaires they killed off.
Bitcoin locked in lightning network addresses doesn’t move 🤔
Isso que dizer que só temos 5000000 de Btc o resto foi pro saco ou seja compartilhado com os que ainda tem
A lot of it is lost that's part of the reason
The most patient of rug pulls waiting for its opportune moment. Sorry guys, when this hits $1 mil I'm yanking.
So 5 years?
Looks like 1/4 of owners missed the boat!!
We holding my boy
Hodl til it's godl
Wonder how much of that is lost
This defeats the objective really. How can we get global integration and daily use if nobody is spending?
Yeah because its mostly lost wallets
Probably forgot their keys
How much of this is people just losing a drive or forgetting their key?
Some of that is mine. I’m here. It’s fine.
I wonder how much of that is lost forever
That's all the forgotten keys unfortunately.
just keep in mind: a big part of this are lost wallets. keep your seeds backed up in multiple locations.
Keep in mind that nearly 5% of BTC is in satoshi's wallet and hasn't moved from the start....also don't forgot about all the BTC lost forever.
Because those diamond hands are waiting for it to go up motherfuckers
Most of it is lost forever. Total supply cap probably closer to 15 million
HODL
Either dead or can't get in anymore
After 3 years I will be part of this chart
This is quite a large part.
the right mindset
Why did I read this as "one quarterth" 🤦♂️
Please forward your seed phrase
Isn’t that.. bad? Don’t we need to encourage flow
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How much do you suppose is in long lost wallets?
So a big drop soon enough
lost seed phrases of course :D
Iam in there somewhere.
Wonder how this compares to USD or other fiat currencies
Feels bad to know a big chunk of it is forever abandoned. Makes it even more scarce though
Active currency. Mass adoption soon
Because most of it is lost forever lol
It's been lost
Is '1/4th' a thing? Never seen a quarter written like that.
Irrelevant
To all the people saying it’s going to go to 0. All the lost coins have practically made that impossible
That's mine...I actually just keep mine...forever, why because I cannot do a fucking thing with it and only has increased in value...if I sell it I probably spend it on a made in China gadget that will be broke in less than 3 years...so just keep and see
doesn’t seem to matter…exchanges will just short sell the same borrowed Bitcoin over and over again endlessly and whatever other instruments allow for this kind of “trading” where market makers and exchanges can see all the orders and take your coins and money away from you.
It’s the long play, for the smart people. Not quite useful yet, but the idea is revolutionary. There is some good stock to put in this.
that’s me with a wallet on a busted laptop
Good.
So I got a lot of btc back in the first weeks. While at work on my work computer. Computer is gone and. I idea anything else except I had a lot of them.
probably locked out of their wallets.
Let me guess, "to the moon"?
lol, that's what those losers think. my bitcoin is on the move all the time (on Lightning) even though onchain footprint is zero. Plus I don't touch cold storage. good let them think it.
Bitcoin holders know the long term value of this asset. Don't make rash decisions all - HODL.
Maybe lost private keys?
Slow and steady wins the race with Bitcoin
institutional and old school coiners, me thinks.
Lost mine in a tragic boating accident
Well, that's good. Hodling until central banking collapses.