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THE LOST BITCOIN

According to estimates, approximately 3 to 6 million Bitcoins have been permanently lost. There is no customer support for Bitcoin, so if someone forgets or loses their digital wallet details, there is no way to regain access to those Bitcoins. A similar situation occurred with James Howells, a resident of Wales, who lost access to 8,000 Bitcoins due to a hard drive being discarded.

Some of these lost Bitcoins may have been abandoned after being earned through criminal activities. According to the blockchain research firm Elliptic, 3.15 million Bitcoins have been inactive for 10 years or more. Some analysts even suggest that Bitcoins inactive for five years may also be considered lost.

An estimate puts the number of such coins at around 3.5 million. However, it is likely that 1.1 million Bitcoins among these inactive coins are held by its anonymous creator, which means these 1.1 million coins can be excluded from the inactive coin count. This implies that the number of lost coins is about 11% of the total Bitcoins (2.4 million coins).