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According to the Japanese company "Isle", there are about 1 million bitcoins in dead crypto wallets. At today's rate, this is more than $100 billion. These funds were lost forever for a variety of reasons. For example, someone forgot the password to access their wallet, someone lost 12 secret phrases for restoring their crypto wallet, someone transferred their crypto assets to the wrong address, someone died, and their wallet died with them.
Recall that a total of 21 million coins will be issued. This means that today one twentieth of them is lost forever.
The Japanese company bases its conclusion on the analysis of crypto wallets that have not shown signs of life for more than 10 years. Since the appearance of the first cryptocurrency and its first holders in 2009, the company analyzed all dead wallets until 2015. All these wallets are over 10 years old. In 99% of cases, these are truly lost wallets, otherwise at least one transaction to receive or transfer funds should have been made.
Based on this, we can safely say that more than 1 million bitcoins are lost forever. Most of these losses occur in the first years of the first cryptocurrency. And this is not surprising, because then its value was minimal. How much more will be lost over the next 115 years, one can only guess. After all, it is in 2140 that the last bitcoin is supposed to be mined. By then, these 100 billion losses will probably be estimated 100 times higher.
