What Happens to unclaimed Bitcoins?
So far, around 16 million bitcoins have been mined out of a total of 21 million that can be mined in total. At the projected rate of supply growth, that means another 5 million coins will be mined in the next century or so. These numbers mean 75% of the total supply has already been issued and coins will become rarer (and therefore more expensive) over time.
The mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto is said to own 1 million coins and many other early adopters own hundreds if not thousands of coins that they acquired when mining was 'cheap'. That means a relatively small number of users likely hold a very large proportion of the total coins, and over half the total supply is said to be dormant (e.g. zero account activity since acquisition).
No one knows if Satoshi Nakamoto is a person or a group of people operating under a pseudonym, but let's assume it's just one person... what if he or she got hit by a bus? Not wishing any misfortune on the person or persons who created quite possibly the most revolutionary script ever written (the blockchain) but if he or she no longer exists, and the key to their million coins is lost, this means there is now only 15 million coins in circulation and 20 million in total after all coins have been mined.
Presumably there are other early adopters that have thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of coins that they are saving for "payday" when the price hits a new high. But what if some of these people have also been hit by a bus, fallen critically ill, or even just lost their codes?
Sh*t happens in life. No matter how secure you keep your 'keys', they can always be lost or destroyed. Then what? Do your cyber coins just sit there occupying a few bytes on the internet forever? Is there any way to get them back? My understanding is no, and therefore doesn't that mean all bitcoins will eventually be "locked" in cyberspace, inaccessible to anyone, making the currency effectively a dud?
Interested to hear thoughts on this from the Steemit community...
yes ..unfortunately there is nothing to do
Actually, i guess there are people that placed gold and values into swiss accounts and they don't come to claim them for long time because they are dead or whatever ...i wonder what the swiss bank does in these cases
With physical gold i'm sure the banks have contact details of the owner(s) and there is probably something in the storage conditions that allow the banks to repossess the contents if the owner doesn't pay their storage fees... with Bitcoin and other crypto's it just disappears from the currency supply... eventually 21 million bitcoin owners will lose their codes or die without passing them on and the currency will end up being just some code in cyberspace?
yes i agree that there has to be some mechanism that would recover bitcoins that were not touched for a long period of time putting them in circulation ...same mechanism should also have a way to resolve situations where someone claims its bitcoin after X years that it was not touched and have a way to recover it´s bitcoins
If bitcoin or any other crypto will ever catch on to the mainstream, this issue will have to be solved. It won't be acceptable to just lose access and the answer be "hey, that's just how it goes". This is one of the reasons I don't think crypto currency will ever be widely used by everyone.
@lig007 totally agree!
very Interested !!!
I have locked myself out of an account with .16 bitcoins. Back in the day it wasn't much of a deal but it is continuing to grow. Wonder if I will ever get them back
what happened? did you lose the code? is there any way to get back access to your account?
I lost my encryption key :(