Hi,
inevitably some coins will be lost - broken laptops, irrecoverable wallets etc. Same as losing real coins under the sofa.
As there is a limited number of coins (presumably these won't be replenished), then in effect we have an ever dwindling supply of coins.
Over time the supply will just get less and less. 21 million isn't a huge number of coins.
Would this be an additional factor to cause the price to increase?
Someone else posted more or less
the same question a few days ago.
And forget the "21 million". This number is completely arbitrary, it doesn't matter! Current bitcoin clients support up to 8 decimals, and this can be increased further whenever the need arises.
Would the total amount of gold available in the world ever become insufficient? No! Cause if there aren't enough kilograms, people would deal with grams, or milligrams, etc.
And unlike gold, which can only be divided up to individual atoms (which would be impossible to handle in practice), bitcoins can be divided with unlimited precision, and paying 2 nanoBTC is exactly as convenient as paying 2 BTC)
So, forget the 21 million limit. There might have been just as well 800 trillion coins, or just 5. By definition, there is an
infinite amount of units available.