Thanks for the detailed explanation so each block created currently increases the ledger by a maximum of 12.5BTC.
Shouldn't there be a mechanism to reclaim the accidental loss in a block chain and have that available for miners?
Has anyone tried to total the number of BTC in ledger?
Blockchain.info has tried, along with some other sites.
However, many coins are lost as well. There's a
thread which attempts to count all of the
known lost coins - last time I checked there was around 130,000 on there. However, the actual number is likely to be much more, since Bitcoins were practically worth nothing when it first started.
Fortunately, lost coins are
sort of limited by the market, since losing coins lowers the supply, thus pushing up the price and making each person own less coins to lose in the long run (and/or making them more careful with their coins).