I actually keep wondering about these "lost" coins. Do they account for only coins supposedly actually lost like in a steaming pile of garbage, or in burn addresses, or do they also consider dormant ones?
Only dormant ones, the ones that were sent to burner addresses are way to low to even consider, and when we say "lost" how do we even know they are truly lost, anyone can claim that they have lost 100 BTC and they don't have that drive or laptop anymore but there is no way to actually prove that.
So we go by coins not moved X years, which doesn't really mean a thing as we can see from the ones above.
Once I thought that we could include dust here too but seeing how people pay $50 to consolidate $40 with of BTC that is also a no-go.
Anyhow, 1.8 million unspent coin base coins, 3.2 million that have not moved in 10 years, so the number should be.....somewhere...around
No coins are forever lost. They will all eventually move to another address in the Blockchain. It's just a question of when not if. There are people working on it day and night, using more and more advanced equipment.
No, they won't and the moment that magical equipment of yours is invented that's the day Bitcoin dies.