Professional research indicates about 20% of all Bitcoin currently distributed, has been ‘lost’. By lost we mean owners believe it is lost because they no longer have access to either their wallet by losing their passphrase or seedphrase. Or the private key associated with the Bitcoin.
Chainalysis, a research firm that analyzes activity across different cryptocurrency markets, estimates that between 2.78 and 3.79 million, or between 17 and 23 percent of all bitcoins have been lost.
https://www.wired.com/story/wired-lost-bitcoin/
Useful Data Points
- In dollar terms this amounts to about US$73 Billion at today’s Bitcoin Core price (13 Oct 22).
- This is the total amount of Bitcoin available for recovery. If you believe you’ve lost your Bitcoin, it will come out of this number.
- The size of the largest single Bitcoin owner who claims to have lost it is about US$1.9 Billion.
- As part of a possible representative action, accounts owned from the Mt. Gox exchange have lost up to 850,000 Bitcoin or US$15 Billion.
- Our LCR database shows the top 12 Lost Coin Owners amounts to about US$4 Billion. There will be tens of thousands of small owners.
- Our LCR database has already captured about 12% of the total Bitcoin distributed. And nearly 60% of estimated lost Bitcoin.
Note: Unless otherwise stated, Tohonesty uses Bitcoin Core (BTC) as a reference blockchain, because it has by far the largest number of lost coins.