It’s don’t know about the accuracy of the percentage. The 20% figure seemed echoed by Ivestopedia (see 20% of all BTC is lost, unrecoverable), based on other people’s studies. Chainanalysis went as far as stating, back in 2017, that almost 50% was, in fact, the figure.
Those studies have taken quite on their reputation when the coins involved in the CSW drama suddenly came to life, then the other 2009 mined coins suddenly moved, and there are a lot more. I think that in reality, the number is much lower, I dare say surprisingly lower..
And that even one day, all of bitcoin may be lost?
If we're talking in terms of satoshi, not full BTC yes, one day just before the sun dies they will be lost, but technically it would be impossible till 2140.
No, because as bitcoin's adoption grows its price also goes up and that means 2 things. First people can acquire less bitcoin (for example you could buy a thousand BTC when it was worth less than a US cent but you can't buy 0.01 BTC now that it is almost $20k as easily) so if they lose it they will lose smaller amounts and Second since bitcoin is much more valuable now they will take a lot more care to not lose it.
This means as adoption grows less and less bitcoins will be lost.
This means as adoption grows less and less bitcoins will be lost.
There are actually arguments against this
- yes one whole bitcoin is more valuable so people buy less but at the same time more people buy, otherwise the price would not increase, more points of failure
- the people who buy now have less knowledge than the first generation and most of them don't have the habit of backing-up stuff
- as more people buy in smaller batches there is also the possibility of wallets ending with a few satoshis in dust which would be irrecoverable at higher fees, making people thinking of just erasing the wallet as for satoshis worth 30cents there is no point keeping that on their phone