Tons are lost. 7K lost today in the BTER incident alone... plus all the early adopters that lost their wallets with thousands of coins.
You do not quite understand. These 7K are not "lost" ... simply "stolen"
Correct
CoinRocka, this is an exercise in speculation as to the total number of permanently lost Bitcoins. The amount of stolen Bitcoins would also not be possible to accurately gauge but would make for an interesting story as the percentage of coins stolen should theoretically go down over time as stricter security options become common place. This is very much still the 'Wild West' of the new paradigm with only six years into the experiment.