# What happens to my lost bitcoins? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 17, 2017, 9:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-my-lost-bitcoins/804700 "2017-12-17T09:19:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![nate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nate/32/13085_2.png) [@nate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nate)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2017, 9:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-my-lost-bitcoins/804700/1 "2017-12-17T09:19:11Z")
I think it was around 2009-10 when I read about mining bitcoins on Slashdot and decided to give it a go on my home computer. I setup the software and let it run and do it’s thing, I can’t remember exactly, but I think I mined a little over 2 bitcoins. It 2 plus some fraction, I can’t remember exactly. This was at a time where they were pretty worthless and more of a experimental tech thing than something that would actually take hold and it was easy for someone to mine them on a home computer. I remember when they hit $1 and I thought that was crazy. If $2 was worth it to go through the trouble to sell mine, I would have, but it wasn’t easy to cash them out so I held on to them. Well I stopped the mining software eventually due to lack of interest and sometime later upgraded my laptop hard drive to an SSD and I can’t remember what I did with the old HD that contained all my bitcoin data and probably couldn’t find it. So now that bitcoin is at some insane price, I’ve started to wonder where this HD is. But say I never find it, what happens to my 2+ bitcoins? Do they just disappear or do they “expire” after sometime? ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2017, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-my-lost-bitcoins/804700/2 "2017-12-17T09:26:11Z")
They don’t expire, but they can never be used if the private key has been lost. [How Many Bitcoins Have Been ‘Lost’ Forever?](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4082979-many-bitcoins-lost-forever) > [@](#): > > So how many Bitcoins exactly have been lost? It’s a pretty tough question considering there is no definitive metric for finding the answer. A good estimate is around 25% percent of all Bitcoins (4 million Bitcoins), according to an impressive, albeit slightly dated, analysis by John W. Ratcliff. His article, written June 18, 2014, states that 30% of all coins were lost, equating to 25% of all coins when adjusted for the current amount of coins in circulation. The reason that Ratcliff’s value can be adjusted for the current date is because the bulk of the lost Bitcoins originate from very early on in the history of Bitcoin, and as Bitcoin’s value goes up, people lose their coins at a slower rate. This value of 25% includes the coins that Satoshi Nakamoto may or may not hold, a topic which I believe should be saved for another article. Either way though, considering Satoshi’s possible courses of action, it is extremely likely that those coins will remain dead permanently. > > Bitcoins can be lost due to irrecoverable passwords or private keys, forgotten wallets, hardware failure, or the death of the bitcoin owner. And sometimes, people just plain mess up. There’s no shortage of newbies from all eras flubbing their coins, for example by accidentally sending Bitcoins to a valid but unowned address, in which the BTC would be transferred and then be as good as lost. Even veterans have made massive mistakes. Bitomat lost the private keys to 17,000 of their customers’ coins. In general, it’s extremely improbable and effectively impossible to recover lost coins. Lost bitcoins still remain in the block chain just like any other bitcoins, but lost bitcoins remain dormant forever because there is no way for anybody to find the private key(s) that would allow them to be spent again. > > The vast majority of losses however, are from Bitcoin’s earliest days, back when mining rewards were still 50 Bitcoins a block and Bitcoin was trading at less than a cent. Certainly, with Bitcoin worth so little, a lot of people frankly didn’t care if they lost their keys to the Bitcoins that they mined or purchased, and some just plain forgot about them; Let me remind you of the poor sap who threw away his hard drive of 7500 Bitcoins. Or for example, those who began mining on their computer, didn’t like what it was doing to it and deleted everything, a scenario more common than you’d expect. As Bitcoins are far more valuable now than in the early days, people tend to secure their private keys with more care. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2017, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-my-lost-bitcoins/804700/3 "2017-12-17T12:43:39Z")
Lost Bitcoins are just like other lost/destroyed items. Burn up a $20 bill, drop a gold coin into a volcano, trash your original copy of _Action Comics_ #1? They’re gone. ---
**Author:** ![glowacks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/glowacks/32/5548_2.png) [@glowacks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glowacks)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2017, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-my-lost-bitcoins/804700/4 "2017-12-18T00:16:05Z")
Like a coin dropped in a sewer, the bitcoins still exist. If someone somehow were to make an incredibly, ludicrously, lucky guess as to what the private key was of a wallet that they saw receive coins on the blockchain ledger, then they could redirect those coins and presumably get value for them. But the reason the system is secure is that the likelihood of being able to do that intentionally is incredibly, ludicrously, low. It’s probably more likely that the coins become accessible by the cryptography being broken some point in the future, which would make the entire system worthless anyway. Nevertheless, the coins exist and in principle they can be spent. I’ve heard that there are hypnotists that are in business specifically to get people to remember how to access their bit coins, with their fee being a percentage of what gets recovered. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2017, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-my-lost-bitcoins/804700/5 "2017-12-18T04:32:32Z")
So they _don’t_ go to a farm up state where they can run and play with other bitcoins? ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2017, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-my-lost-bitcoins/804700/6 "2017-12-18T13:21:57Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > So they _don’t_ go to a farm up state where they can run and play with other bitcoins? No, they go to heaven where the streets are paved with … Bitcoin. Sure they spend eternity being walked on but at least the feet are those of nice people. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2017, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-my-lost-bitcoins/804700/7 "2017-12-18T15:15:06Z")
Maybe under the cushions of your bit couch ---
**Author:** ![brossa](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brossa/32/3040_2.png) [@brossa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brossa)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2017, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-my-lost-bitcoins/804700/8 "2017-12-18T19:19:13Z")
This strongly implies to me that Bitcoin as a system has a finite lifespan. If there are a finite number of Bitcoins, and once lost they cannot be recovered, it would follow that a Bitcoin has a half-life of sorts, in that eventually it will be lost in some fashion. Maybe 25% of Bitcoins have been lost already. The rate is slowing down as the value goes up and people pay more attention, but there will inevitably be fires and deaths and what not that result in a gradual trickle of loss. So what happens as the total number of bitcoins becomes grossly depleted? If there are only 10 bitcoins, does the system work just like before but with nanocoin transactions instead? Would it work with a single bitcoin? It would be a neat problem to try to predict how long it will take for all bitcoins to be lost, like trying to predict how long it would take for you to be trapped forever if you were immortal. Do you look to historical examples of ephemera like comic books that once existed in the millions and had little value but are now rare? Estimate that a bitcoin will be lost once in every _x_ thousand transactions? ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2017, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-my-lost-bitcoins/804700/9 "2017-12-18T19:29:23Z")
The smallest unit is 0.00000001 coins. Even so, you are right about its unsuitability as a long-term system; even now, it is hardly scalable to replace Visa or Swift or even PayPal. ETA sorry I have not addressed your statistical question: it is a valid Fermi question. You need some estimates of the number of users and their hardware failure rate (including printed-out backups of private keys), distribution of how many coins they have, etc ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2017, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-my-lost-bitcoins/804700/10 "2017-12-18T21:38:28Z")
There have been from time to time proposals to fix various Bitcoin problems. These are highly contentious as you would imagine and have resulted in [forks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bitcoin_forks) of various forms. One recent fix to Bitcoin addresses [the Bitcoin Scalability Problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_scalability_problem) hoping to reduce transaction time and costs. Similarly, if needed, a method of extending the number of decimal places or some such will be rationally voted on and adopted. Just kidding, these are paranoid crypto people with money at stake. It will likely be an unresolvable mess when that time comes. ---
**Author:** ![Blakeyrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecd19e/32.png) [@Blakeyrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blakeyrat)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2017, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-my-lost-bitcoins/804700/11 "2017-12-18T23:03:51Z")
> [@brossa](#): > > This strongly implies to me that Bitcoin as a system has a finite lifespan. True; but keep in mind that if we ever build true quantum computers, those might be able to recover these lost bitcoins in a matter of seconds. (And with the side effect of making all bitcoins worthless-- since it’d also be able to recover bitcoins in _legit_ wallets just as easily!) So the currency might eventually become useless regardless. ---
**Author:** ![Projammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/projammer/32/559_2.png) [@Projammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Projammer)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2017, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-my-lost-bitcoins/804700/12 "2017-12-19T03:10:31Z")
One way to determine the maximum number of lost coins is to audit the blockchain to determine how many have been inactive for a specific period of time. Obviously some of those are sitting in a wallet somewhere and the owner knows where they are and has the key for them, but you could make some educated guesses by looking at the timelines and transaction histories. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2017, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-my-lost-bitcoins/804700/13 "2017-12-19T12:01:54Z")
> [@Blakeyrat](#): > > True; but keep in mind that if we ever build true quantum computers, those might be able to recover these lost bitcoins in a matter of seconds. (And with the side effect of making all bitcoins worthless-- since it’d also be able to recover bitcoins in _legit_ wallets just as easily!) So the currency might eventually become useless regardless. Assuming I understand the concept correctly, generating the same Bitcoin again wouldn’t mean you get to use it. Once it is created, it is put on the blockchain, and now they have a history of who owns it, linked with an ID. If they didn’t, then anyone who generated the same coin could then take it from the other owner. I believe that generating an old Bitcoin already can happen now, and those are just discarded, making the problem harder. The issue with quantum computers is just in the encryption that is used to make sure the blockchain isn’t altered. If you can crack that encryption, then you could change the records. But do note that quantum computers aren’t some magic bullet. It’s true that they can crack current encryption a lot faster, but that doesn’t mean you can’t just increase the amount and make it harder again. And there’s nothing preventing the open source Bitcoin from adding extra encryption to the system to make it harder. I guess it’s also possible they find a quantum method to produce Bitcoin that actually makes it faster, and the increase in supply decreases the value. But that’s still not an issue of the old Bitcoin becoming worthless.