I read on lost Bitcoin today on the coin telegram on the topic of lost Bitcoin and I stopped to wonder what benefits the lost Bitcoin are to every holder, there is no gainsaying how much Bitcoin we have all lost due to one reason or the other some to a wrong address I hard of a guy that lost the private key to a wallet holding about 13,000 Bitcoin and wants to ask should we take such accidents as a donation to Bitcoin holders?
If you want Bitcoin to succeed as a useful and functional currency over the long term, every lost Bitcoin is detrimental to the overall currency. Not only does it mean wasted energy used to generate it, but it means that the usability of Bitcoin diminishes over time as we end up with smaller and smaller denominations if the price is expected to rise. People talk about currency inflation in fiat as being a bad thing, you could argue that this sort of currency deflation is equally bad for Bitcoin - no speculative investor is likely to agree with this point though because they want the price to go up so they can offload for a profit. It all depends on whether you see Bitcoin as virtual gold which should never be touched or want it to be used in every day transactions.