Wouldn't lost bitcoin be one of the inherent faults with the bitcoin system? It seems inevitable that a huge percentage of bitcoin will eventually be locked/unusable as people continue to lose their wallets or passwords, etc. What happens when 25% or 50% of bitcoin is "lost"? Of course, maybe by then, we'll have already moved on to a "better" cryptocurrency.
Why would this be a problem?
There is nothing magical about the number 2,099,999,997,690,000.
If there are only 1,574,999,998,267,500 units of currency (25% loss) or 1,049,999,998,845,000 units of currency (50% loss) remaining, bitcoin will still work just as well.
I wonder how many coins are already lost. Wasn't there a list of knows losses?