There are at least 3,034 bitcoins certainly lost forever as of 2022
566 sats \ 11 comments \ @nullama 20 Oct 2022 bitcoin
I'm not considering bitcoins lost to people losing their keys, etc, that number is probably way higher than this one but it's impossible to calculate as lost keys might get found, etc.
These are burned coins, sent to a public address that has no known private key.
The addresses that I'm talking about look like 1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE, and are sometimes called burner addresses. Just in that single address there are more than 13 bitcoins. There are more than 400 bitcoins at 1111111111111111111114oLvT2, and so on. Here's a non exhaustive list of such addresses.
In case you're wondering, you don't have to trust anyone here, the long vanity public address tells you that it's virtually impossible that anyone in the planet has or ever will have a private key for that address.
I ran a small script to sum up all the bitcoins at those addresses and came up with a total of 3034.53041803 bitcoins.
This is a number that the vast majority of the population will never get to put their hands on, yet they're lost forever.
In the words of Satoshi Nakamoto:
Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone.
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235 sats \ 5 replies \ @AngeloMetal 20 Oct 2022 freebie
This is misinformation.
These coins are part of the UTXO set, and are therefore normally spendable. There might be no person who owns a private key that unlocks 1111111111111111111114oLvT2, but given that there are 2^160 valid Bitcoin addresses in total, and 2^256-2^32-977 valid Bitcoin private keys, there are about 2^90 private keys that can sign for these coins. They aren't certainly lost forever.
Certainly lost forever are those sent in OP_RETURN scripts, unclaimed miner's rewards, and coins sent to nowhere such as transaction - "5bd88ab32b50e4a691dcfd1fff9396f512e003d7275bb5c1b816ab071beca5ba".
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250 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 20 Oct 2022
OP is likely rounding up from "almost certainly lost forever" to "certainly lost forever" just like
  • every hodler rounds up from "almost certainly no one will guess my private key"
  • and like you rounded up from slightly inaccurate to "misinformation"
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24 sats \ 0 replies \ @AngeloMetal 21 Oct 2022 freebie
I don't think I was very pedantic. Certainly lost forever versus likely lost forever isn't the same thing, protocol speaking. There might be a time in a hundred years perhaps, that these seemingly lost bitcoins are brought into circulation.
Furthermore, the consideration that 1111111111111111111114oLvT2 is a burning address is arbitrary. The specific address has the same chances to be generated as any other address. The fact that it looks weird doesn't change that fact.
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @nullama OP 20 Oct 2022
:)
If we're being all technical here, the title might still be true based on the number of Bitcoins lost in the ways you describe:
Certainly lost forever are those sent in OP_RETURN scripts, unclaimed miner's rewards, and coins sent to nowhere such as transaction - "5bd88ab32b50e4a691dcfd1fff9396f512e003d7275bb5c1b816ab071beca5ba".
I see there are 100 bitcoins lost in that single transaction. No idea how to get all of them though.
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12 sats \ 1 reply \ @AngeloMetal 21 Oct 2022 freebie
You can't. There's no unlocking script that can unlock that output. They're sent to a locking script that's invalid.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nullama OP 23 Oct 2022
I mean a way to get a list of all the transactions that are like that("sent in OP_RETURN scripts, unclaimed miner's rewards, and coins sent to nowhere"), them sum them all up and see if they're less than 3,034 BTC.
Until that's done the title still might be true after all :)
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120 sats \ 0 replies \ @0260378aef 20 Oct 2022
One very worthy of note is the Counterparty burn address: 1CounterpartyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXUWLpVr ; there are about 2131 BTC at that.
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100 sats \ 1 reply \ @2bithits 20 Oct 2022
Thanks for sharing
So... How do these addresses work? You just need a 1 at the front & the rest you can just make up?
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222 sats \ 0 replies \ @nullama OP 20 Oct 2022
Kind of...
It needs to be base58, and it needs to have a checksum, so that the whole address is valid.
Here's some background: https://learnmeabitcoin.com/technical/base58
The addresses starting with 1, and 3, are legacy, now modern addresses start with bc1.
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100 sats \ 1 reply \ @nullama OP 20 Oct 2022
This number is really low.
To put things in perspective, this person sent 7,500 bitcoins to a landfill and this one threw away 1,400
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @hussamfyi 20 Oct 2022
I wonder what the best approximation is for the total bitcoins that are lost forever...
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