Despite the fact that more than 18.5 million BTC have been created, some of them are unusable, which lowers the amount of Bitcoin in circulation. These coins can be taken out of circulation by being destroyed, misplaced, or simply lost. So how many bitcoins are there? And where have they gone? We will see in this article.
How many Bitcoins are lost now?
A 20% permanent loss of the existing Bitcoin supply is predicted by current estimations. There are a total of 21 million Bitcoin available. This indicates that there will never be more than 21 million BTC in circulation until the supply mechanism for Bitcoin is drastically altered.
Due to the regulated supply system in place for Bitcoin, only about 18.59 million of the maximum quantity have so far been created. Despite this, the real number of BTC available for usage or trading is substantially smaller than the circulating supply shows because a sizable portion of the Bitcoin supply has been lost beyond recovery.
Why are some Bitcoins lost? And where have they gone?
There are three key reasons why one-fifth of Bitcoin hasn't been transferred in five years.
Satoshi's holdings: In the early months of Bitcoin's existence, its enigmatic founder Satoshi Nakamoto might have mined about 1.1 million BTC. Since then, it seems Satoshi hasn't touched his stockpile, indicating that they are unable to or unwilling to add these coins to the supply that is now in circulation. Since Satoshi's Bitcoin holdings are believed to be out of circulation as a result, the available supply has decreased by about 5.9%.
When Bitcoin is transferred from a wallet that hasn't been touched since the beginning of the cryptocurrency, it frequently sparks (erroneous) rumors that Satoshi has come back. Since it creates the prospect that the market could be inundated with substantial sums of Bitcoin that were previously believed to be locked away forever, it has been known to trigger volatility in the price of Bitcoin.
Lost private keys: Simply getting lost is one of the main ways that Bitcoin is taken out of circulation. Anyone who loses access to their private keys or recovery phrase will also be unable to spend their bitcoins, as owners must have access to these in order to move their currency. There have been multiple instances where thousands of bitcoin have been lost in a single sweep, despite the fact that most of the time this only results in a tiny loss. In one sad incident, a man accidentally threw away a hard drive carrying 7,500 BTC.
Some of the unavailable Bitcoin comes from deceased Bitcoin owners. The 30-year-old founder of the Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX passed away, leaving behind the private keys to about 1,000 BTC and other cryptocurrencies valued at about $190 million. A Reddit user recently discovered his late brother's old computer, which had 533 Bitcoin on it, but the hard disk was missing.
The amount of Bitcoin that has been mistakenly lost or otherwise lost cannot be determined with any degree of certainty, but it is most certainly in the tens of thousands, if not more.
Purposefully burned Bitcoins: A significant amount of Bitcoin has also been purposefully transmitted to a number of different "burn addresses." Since there is no known private key for these addresses, they are essentially Bitcoin vanity addresses, which means that any Bitcoin sent to them is probably lost forever.
The 1CounterParty address, which was utilized as part of Counterparty's 2014 Proof-of-Burn event, is just one example of the many burn addresses that have been used throughout the years for a variety of purposes. More than 100 suspected burn addresses have received more than 2,700 BTC, wiping almost $30 million worth of Bitcoin from circulation.
However, there are some signs that those "lost" coins might actually turn up if Bitcoin's price continues to smash records. Data from Glassnode shows that since the bull run began in October 2020, almost $7 billion of Bitcoin that was considered to have been lost due to HODLing has awoken.
