

#Forever lost 2 free
Therefore they could be considered “lost” on one level, but not irreversibly so.īeyond that assumption, investigators were able to use empirical analysis to separate a great deal of “dead” wallets from the wallets of long-time holders thanks to the recent spate of hard-forks in the Bitcoin community.įor example, investigators found that many BTC accounts that seemed totally inactive came “online” again after the August 1st Bitcoin Cash hard fork, presumably to transact with their new free coins. Notably, Chainalysis’ major assumption is that Satoshi Nakamoto’s original trove of 1+ million bitcoins will never move again. That’s a lot of lost BTC! The Nakamoto Factor

And one bitcoin divides into 100 million satoshis, so there’s still plenty to go around. Remove four million units from that finite total and you potentially increase the value of the remaining coins. Remember only 21 million bitcoins will be mined, ever. The firm’s research suggests it’s possible upwards of 3.79 million bitcoins have been figuratively “burned,” however. Now, courtesy of a groundbreaking report from blockchain detective firm Chainalysis, the space has ballpark figures through which to frame the amount of bitcoins that have been lost for good.Ĭhainalysis‘ more conservative estimate is that 2.78 million bitcoins have been lost since the first-mover cryptocurrency was created almost a decade ago. Join the Bitsonline Telegram channel to get the latest Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and tech news updates: Nearly 4 Million Bitcoins Could Be Lostįor years now, horror stories have abounded of users losing devastating amounts of bitcoins.Īnd with the bitcoin price now seemingly flirting with $10,000 USD, the time has long come for casual holders to take serious stock of what precisely can go wrong - whether that be self-negligence or otherwise. Chainalysis’ new forensic investigation of the Bitcoin blockchain suggests 2.78 million as the conservative number for the amount of bitcoins that have been permanently lost.Īlso read: Second Largest Bank in South Korea to Create Digital Asset Wallet
