Yes, you read it right! As estimated by Chainalysis, a digital forensics firm that studies the bitcoin blockchain, 2.78 million to 3.79 million bitcoins based on the low and high estimate respectively, are already lost from the internet.
Well, this is a large amount and implies above 20% of the existing bitcoins. According to today’s value, $9600 per bitcoin, this goes over $40 billion. The estimate done by Chainalysis is based on a detailed analysis of the blockchain. Let’s have a look at the image shared in the report.
The company claims that the figures in the above image show the actually lost bitcoins, not including the stolen or hacked coins.
This all is quite shocking for the specialists and they estimate that the actual number of bitcoins available for trading will be significantly lower by the year 2040 when all 21 million bitcoins will have been mined.