What will happen to lost bitcoins? Will they remain in the network?

[Brushless4500KV 4214]

As you know, each wallet has both a private key and a seed phrase. These keys are used to gain access to your wallet and to recover it in case you lose your PC or hard drive. It is said that if we lose our seed phrase, we will never have access to our wallet and we lose our funds. If someone loses his/her seed phrase, what will happen to his/her BTC funds? Will lost funds remain in the network? How many BTCs have been lost in this way? Can hackers access lost funds?

Have you ever thought about the effects of lost bitcoins on bitcoin network? I think this will ruin miners' efforts if the number of lost bitcoins increase day by day. If you lose your paper money, someone else may find and use it! I want to know what is the similar case with bitcoin.

Edited December 12, 2019 by Brushless4500KV

[Migo 7946]

I think they will stay in the network because there is some people I knew they lost their phrases but after while they recovered them and accessed again to their wallets and nothing was missing 

[miskyming 1588]

If you lost the private key or seed phrase, your funds will still remain in the wallet and will never gone. If you need help to the good hackers they can not access it. Private keys or Seed phrase must be in a safe place.

[Brushless4500KV 4214]

2 minutes ago, miskyming said:

If you lost the private key or seed phrase, your funds will still remain in the wallet and will never gone. If you need help to the good hackers they can not access it. Private keys or Seed phrase must be in a safe place.

So, if someone loses his seed phrase he only loses his access to his wallet. I think there must be lots of bitcoins who were lost this way and they are wandering in blockchain network. Is there any way someone could find them? If no one finds lost BTCs, a considerable amount of money will be lost too because those bitcoins were mined with difficulty. They may remain in the network but as long as no one can spend them they are useless. I think crypto users should be careful to avoid this problem because every bitcoin needs time and electricity to be mined and this means waste of energy. There might be a way to search the network for lost bitcoins.

[miskyming 1588]

2 hours ago, Brushless4500KV said:

So, if someone loses his seed phrase he only loses his access to his wallet. I think there must be lots of bitcoins who were lost this way and they are wandering in blockchain network. Is there any way someone could find them? If no one finds lost BTCs, a considerable amount of money will be lost too because those bitcoins were mined with difficulty. They may remain in the network but as long as no one can spend them they are useless. I think crypto users should be careful to avoid this problem because every bitcoin needs time and electricity to be mined and this means waste of energy. There might be a way to search the network for lost bitcoins.

There are many stories that the miners and investors who lost their bitcoin private keys in the early days when the bitcoin price was cheap. When bullish market happened in 2017, Miners and investors were trying to recover their private keys or .dat file in their old computer and some finding their old hard drives, but they had failed, they can only see their hundred thousands of bitcoins in their address and they can not access it anymore.. It is really important to place your private keys in safe places.

Edited December 13, 2019 by miskyming

[febriyana 934]

If like example your private key or anything backup is lost or maybe burned because disaster. What i know is all balance in your wallet will still there forever without ownership. For example in your wallet only have 1 BTC around 2013, if you look on the address that wallet, you will see same amount.

That is like dead balance where wait someone to take the ownership.

How if someone hack our wallet. Don't worry that Bitcoin not lonely again. 😂

But the encryption of wallet is really hard to broken, i don't see any news said hacker success hack the wallet, but for the exchanges is often get hacked.

[maurice22 0]

Most crypto exchanges such as Kraken take advantage with customers funds because they feel these customers don’t know how to get their funds back, But trust me there are hidden ways you can get your lost funds back from the broker. I was able to withdraw my 45BTC from kraken, You can recover your money by contacting recoverywealthnow360@gmail.com

[Vanessa 1266]

It will stay even without value because the security is too high no one can get it from your stored exchange the only thing is that when coins don’t have value anymore so whats the sense

[BTC Future 3946]

When we talk about lost bitcoins means that there is no way for anyone to retrieve them. It is different from stolen Bitcoins which eventually end up being sold in the market. Unritrievable bitcoins are already amounted to more than 2 million Bitcoins with some observers suggesting they might even reach 4 million. Most of these Bitcoins were lost in the beginning when hundreds of people were mining 10.000 bitcoins daily and didn't care much to backup their keys and software. Noone thought Bitcoin would become something so valuable and even at 0,01$ price they could sell for profit.

[khan22 3478]

When we lost the Bitcoin or another coin then it is completely finished for us and it will remain in the network because crypto market is so much changed than the other market because this is the crypto market where your one mistake will give you high loss.

[Grandmaster 245]

On 12/13/2019 at 8:57 AM, Migo said:

I think they will stay in the network because there is some people I knew they lost their phrases but after while they recovered them and accessed again to their wallets and nothing was missing 

Yeah I agree it will still part of the volume and the network and it will stay but it will not move because the owner did not have access anymore, one popular case is Satoshi's Bitcoin which until now has not yet moved.

[kadayakito 765]

in my opinion it will not be lost, it will be in the network, I'm pretty sure with this, but the biggest risk and the biggest loss is still yours. I'm sorry to say that but it is true

[Man 741]

If Bitcoin is lost because the wallet cannot be accessed, of course it will remain on the network at any time. But for sure, we will still lose. Because we can't access our wallet.

[Suhannewaz 245]

When a user loses his wallet, the effect is to remove money. Like every other bitcoin, Missing bitcoins stay in the block chain. Yet missing bitcoins remain dormant indefinitely since there is no way anyone can locate the private key(s) to spend them again.

[Sapdrx 469]

Just now, ZedX said:

Yes, they don't get removed or anything because they are not being used, it is not what makes a coin exist or not exist in the network after all.

So if you loose your Bitcoin somehow they stay forever inactive. There's no such thing as a lost and found. So keep your bitcoin in a safe place. It's just like cash money.

[AmazingLicense 46]

Well, they're lost coins for the owner, not for the network.

It's just nobody can use them, unless their owner.

 

 

 

[Shaza Ahmad 1682]

I think losing private keys means losing bitcoin in this wallet, this is really annoying, but if we think well we will find that everything has a price and this is a high price of security in bitcoin.

[babaji 1228]

On 12/12/2019 at 11:09 PM, Brushless4500KV said:

As you know, each wallet has both a private key and a seed phrase. These keys are used to gain access to your wallet and to recover it in case you lose your PC or hard drive. It is said that if we lose our seed phrase, we will never have access to our wallet and we lose our funds. If someone loses his/her seed phrase, what will happen to his/her BTC funds? Will lost funds remain in the network? How many BTCs have been lost in this way? Can hackers access lost funds?

Have you ever thought about the effects of lost bitcoins on bitcoin network? I think this will ruin miners' efforts if the number of lost bitcoins increase day by day. If you lose your paper money, someone else may find and use it! I want to know what is the similar case with bitcoin.

I guess a lot of the answers are to the point to this post.The coins will remain in the wallet, and since it is just coding, there is no reason for it to decay or change in any way. Hence if you can find some way to crack the wallet till then, those wallets remain inaccessible, but the funds in them remain safe. 

[Honny143 13612]

crypto currency not like Fiat currency we loss means our local currency not recovered, but with crypto currency when we loss our access keys are some one hack our account, so this coins are store in networks of some one access our account, then we regain this coins its means we recover our coins.

[Beromnia 733]

Welcome with me

When a member loses his bitcoin wallet, what happens will be the same effect caused by taking the funds out of circulation. Lost bitcoins will remain in the block chain just like any other bitcoins. Lost bitcoin coins will remain frozen forever as there is no way for anyone to find the private key (or keys) that allow these currencies to be spent again.
Because of the law of supply and demand, when the supply of Bitcoin becomes less, the demand for the remaining currencies will be greater and the value of these currencies will rise in order to reward the shortage in supply.

[jamesvince 2389]

Nothing much happened if someone lost their private keys of their wallets because without proper information we can't access to our wallets address until we have find out our keys other wise our funds will stuck on that wallets.

[Saboor 511]

Those that lose access to their bitcoin will never get in touch with their bitcoin, and this bitcoin will remain ever in the blockchain and nothing can spend them there

[Zaino34 0]

Yes, of course, these currencies will be kept online if we lose our wallet information because no one can access it except the real wallet owner, so we must always keep our personal information safe.

[Upright 2688]

Actually lost bitcoins can be in 3 different ways such as. Having to send bitcoins to a non Bitcoin address will render that as lost. Also having to have Bitcoin in your wallet, but mishappenings happened and maybe you died, that could also be lost of no one knew if you having that and also lost Bitcoin could be of bitcoins being lost accidentally, either by forgetting your wallet password, seed phrase, on your accounts got suspended of suspicious activity.

But they can be retrieved if you have the private keys of your Bitcoin address as to retrieve them if necessary

[pablomarwan 3082]

Of course, this is what will limit you if you lose the code, and by this you will lose everything that you have, but if the support is lenient with you, they will make a crisis in order to retrieve your data, but they will not help you again. I had this experience before in binance platform where I lost it the first time it was repeated and lost it the second time and lost as I had on that platform