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Nearly 4 Million Bitcoins Lost Forever, New Study Says (fortune.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: According to new research from Chainalysis, a digital forensics firm that studies the bitcoin blockchain, 3.79 million bitcoins are already gone for good based on a high estimate -- and 2.78 million based on a low one. Those numbers imply 17% to 23% of existing bitcoins, which are today worth around $9,700 each, are lost. While others have speculated about the number of lost bitcoins, the Chainalysis findings are significant because they rely on a detailed empirical analysis of the blockchain, where all bitcoin transactions are recorded.
There was a BBC article a few years ago about a man trolling though his local rubbish dump looking for a HDD with bitcoins on:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-w...
Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
That's the reality for most of the early miners: they probably all cashed out early-ish. There's a few stories of people hanging on to them longer for whatever reason, like that student who lost the password for his wallet, and finally found it when his stash was worth €300k or so. He bought an apartment with it, and good for him... but that same stash would be in the low 8 figures today.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I'd disagree on two points. First, it's very likely people mined some Bitcoin and forgot about them or at least how to access them.
This is very likely the case. Back at the start when it was worth shit I mined about a dozen BTC. Lost them when I reformatted my computer and didn't even remember until years later when it would have been worth over $1,000.