As early wallets keep waking up, how many of the 1.8 million 'lost” Bitcoins are actually gone?

On April 15, a Bitcoin wallet that had been sleeping for 14 years woke up. The wallet owner sent 50 Bitcoins to Coinbase, making over $3 million in profit from the once worthless Bitcoins. Such transactions are uncommon, but not unique. Early Bitcoin wallets are waking up almost every week, raising the question of how much of the Bitcoin that has been speculated to be lost could be put back into circulation. A new survey from Fortune and Chainalysis provides some insight.

Chart showing changes in the number of Bitcoins lost since 2018

As the chart above shows, hundreds of thousands of “lost” Bitcoins (defined by Chainalysis as Bitcoins that have not been moved since 2014) have been put back into circulation over the past few years. The graph shows the net change in the total amount of Bitcoin held in wallets of four different sizes, including wallets holding less than 50 Bitcoins and wallets holding 1,000 Bitcoins or more. Among them, the "less than 50 coins" category accounts for the vast majority of old Bitcoin wallets, as shown in the figure below.

Chart showing details of lost Bitcoin wallet

Two Each picture shows that there is a disproportionate number of old wallets containing 50 Bitcoins. This reflects the fact that in the early days of Bitcoin, the block reward was 50. (Since then, a series of “halving” events have resulted in the reward being reduced to 25, 12.5, 6.25, and just last week, the reward was reduced to 3.25 Bitcoin).

Now that the number of Bitcoins mined every day is less than 10% of what it was in its earliest days, early wallets (many of which hold vast fortunes) are likely to generate greater interest.

$121 Billion

Those with only an occasional interest in cryptocurrencies may be surprised to learn that approximately 1.75 million Bitcoin wallets have been fully operational for a decade or more. Sleeping state, many of which have large amounts of money in their wallets. As of mid-March, those wallets (excluding the approximately 30,000 wallets associated with Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto) contained 1,798,681 Bitcoins and are today worth approximately $121 billion.

These 1.8 million "lost" Bitcoins account for approximately 8.5% of the total Bitcoin supply of 21 million (93% of which have been mined). In most cases, it’s impossible to know exactly where a wallet has gone, but it’s certain that there are many wallets where Bitcoins are lost forever. In the early days of Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency was nearly worthless, and it wasn’t until 2011 that the price of Bitcoin broke through the $1 mark. So many people who receive Bitcoin may have completely forgotten about it, or haven't bothered to save the private keys needed to open the wallet. Before 2012, companies like Coinbase that held private keys for users didn’t exist, so losing keys was especially common.

But not all idle wallets have been lost or abandoned. Bitcoin is famous for its massive “HODLers” who have vowed to never sell their reserves (or at least hold on to them for the long term). It is these people (who, in cryptocurrency parlance, have “diamond hands”) who manage the handful of wallets that have been active since 2018.

So why are they selling? Chainalysis’ analysis of newly active wallets found a statistically significant correlation between Bitcoin price changes and wallet activity in a given week. However, most of the time, increases in wallet activity appear to be unrelated to obvious external events.

Overall, the activation speed of old wallets seems predictable. For example, a typical pattern emerged during the week of March 25, with 172 long-inactive wallets becoming active, including 169 wallets holding less than 50 BTC and one wallet holding more than 1,000 BTC. Many Bitcoin holders have more than one wallet, especially those who had wallets before 2014, so the number of people activating wallets that week was likely much lower than 172.

Variables: Satoshi Nakamoto’s 1.1 Million Bitcoins

Chainalysis’ survey data indicates that old wallets will continue to be awakened at a steady but slow rate until the number of lost Bitcoins has basically stabilized : Probably around 1.5 million.

However, we can imagine that the pace of wallet awakening will accelerate in the future. That said, this could happen when pre-2014 HODLers grow old and bequeath their long-held Bitcoins to their children, who in turn sell them. However, such an event is still decades away, as most early Bitcoin holders are in their 20s or 30s.

Finally, the above-mentioned number of "lost" Bitcoins does not include wallets controlled by Satoshi Nakamoto. According to Chainalysis estimates, Satoshi Nakamoto owns approximately 1.1 million Bitcoins. A recent Fortune magazine report on the wealth of Satoshi Nakamoto (worth approximately $75 billion) found that most long-time cryptocurrency enthusiasts believe the Bitcoin creator has long since become a myth and they will most likely never Will not touch my own wallet.

If this is the case, then the total number of Bitcoins lost so far is approximately 2.9 million, or nearly 14% of the total supply. In the long run, the best outcome is for these Bitcoins to become lost treasures that will never be found.

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