180万枚「丢失」的比特币有多少真的消失了？-比特币官网

The chart shows the change in the number of lost Bitcoins since 2018

As shown in the above figure, hundreds of thousands of "lost" bitcoins (defined by Chainalysis as bitcoins that have remained untouched since 2014) have been circulating again in the past few years. This graph shows the net change in the total amount of Bitcoin in four different sized wallets, including wallets holding less than 50 Bitcoins and wallets holding 1000 or more Bitcoins. Among them, the category of "less than 50" accounts for the vast majority of old Bitcoin wallets, as shown in the following figure

Nowadays, the amount of Bitcoin mined per day is less than 10% of the earliest times, and early wallets (many of which contain huge wealth) may attract even greater interest$121 billionThose who are only occasionally interested in cryptocurrency may be surprised to find that approximately 1.75 million Bitcoin wallets have been completely dormant for a decade or more, many of which have large amounts of funds in them. As of mid March, these wallets (excluding approximately 30000 wallets related to Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto) contain 1798681 Bitcoins, now worth approximately $121 billionThese 1.8 million "lost" bitcoins account for approximately 8.5% of the total supply of 21 million bitcoins (93% of which have already been mined). In most cases, it is impossible to know the exact whereabouts of a wallet, but it is certain that many wallets have lost Bitcoin forever. In the early days of Bitcoin, this cryptocurrency was almost worthless until its price broke through the $1 mark in 2011. Therefore, many people who receive Bitcoin may have completely forgotten it or have not bothered to save the private key required to open their wallets. Before 2012, companies like Coinbase that kept private keys for users did not exist, so losing keys was particularly commonHowever, not all idle wallets have been lost or abandoned. Bitcoin is known for its massive "HODLers", which vow never to sell their reserves (or at least hold them for the long term). It is these people (who, in cryptocurrency terms, have "diamond hands") who manage the few active wallets since 2018So why did they sell? Chainalysis's analysis of newly active wallets found a statistically significant correlation between changes in Bitcoin prices and wallet activity for a specific week. However, most of the time, the increase in wallet activity seems unrelated to obvious external eventsOverall, the activation speed of old wallets seems to be predictable. For example, during the week of March 25th, a typical pattern emerged where 172 long idle wallets became active, with 169 wallets containing less than 50 bitcoins and one wallet containing over 1000 bitcoins. Many Bitcoin holders have more than one wallet, especially those who already had one before 2014, so the number of people activating wallets that week may be much lower than 172

Variable: Satoshi Nakamoto's 1.1 million bitcoins

Chainalysis's survey data shows that old wallets will continue to be awakened at a stable but slow rate until the number of lost bitcoins stabilizes: around 1.5 millionHowever, we can imagine that the speed of wallet awakening will accelerate in the future. That is to say, this situation may occur when HODLers before 2014 age and pass on their long-term Bitcoin holdings to their children, who then sell these Bitcoins. However, such an event will still take decades, as most early Bitcoin holders were only in their twenties or thirtiesFinally, the number of "lost" bitcoins mentioned above does not include wallets controlled by Satoshi Nakamoto. According to Chainalysis's estimate, Satoshi Nakamoto owns approximately 1.1 million bitcoins. A recent report by Fortune magazine on Satoshi Nakamoto's wealth (worth approximately $75 billion) found that most long-term cryptocurrency enthusiasts believe that this Bitcoin creator has become a myth and they are highly likely to never use their walletsIf that's the case, then the total number of lost Bitcoins is approximately 2.9 million, accounting for nearly 14% of the total supply. In the long run, the best outcome is that these Bitcoins become lost treasures that will never be found