Just like fiat currency or the notes in your pocket, digital currencies can be lost as well. The loss of a cryptocurrency can take place in a variety of manners. One of the inevitable ways is when someone who owns bitcoins or some other digital coins dies. You can never get their private key and hence never recover the digital currency they had. Some cryptocurrency has been lost due to cybercrimes, thefts, and hacks as well. If you are curious to know how many bitcoins have been lost to this day, here are some estimates. Do keep in mind that these are just estimates, not exact figures.
Details of Lost Bitcoin
First, you have to take into account that Bitcoin did not just fall from the sky. There was someone who created the first BTC and his/her name is Satoshi Nakamoto. Perhaps, the biggest mystery of the blockchain or cryptocurrency world is the creator of cryptocurrencies. This person or organization is said to have no less than 1,000,000 bitcoins. Even if Satoshi Nakamoto emerges out of somewhere on one fine day, it is certain that you will not be able to access the digital coins he/she holds.
If you surf the internet and search about Bitcoin, you will find a variety of stories from people about how they lost their Bitcoins. Not to mention, you have Tim Draper, a Bitcoin millionaire who is the best example of how bitcoins and lost and never recovered. Just so you know, he invested in Bitcoin when no one really trusted or understood the power of it. At that time, he had spent nearly $250,000 in buying the magical digital currency. However, he purchased it on a platform that was later hacked. His investment was gone forever.
In a similar way, many other investors in bitcoin have lost their investments in the wake of hacks and thefts. Another research on the lost bitcoin shows that nearly four million bitcoins will never make it back into the cryptocurrency market because they are gone forever. However, these researches are not the freshest and you can only say that the number on lost bitcoins must have increased by now. There are other people, popular on cryptocurrency-related forums, who have lost their bitcoins for one reason or another. You can take the example of James Howell and Stone Man (a nickname) losing nearly 7500 and 9000 bitcoins respectively.
Final Thoughts
While reading this, you have to realize that the number of bitcoins these people lost might seem small but the overall value of those lost bitcoins is bigger than you might imagine. If you want your money to be safe, you should only consider safe online trading platforms like XTR Gate trading. That’s not it, there are many other online platforms where you can trade cryptocurrencies without owning them. Perhaps, you should take a look at this Neuer Capital full review to get an idea. So, on these platforms, you can trade cryptocurrencies, make money from them, but you can’t lose them just like that because you never have them in your ownership.
