Bitcoin has a finite supply of 21 million and that means that it can not be manipulated like fiat currencies. It's limited supply means that no centralized authorities like CBN can mint more of it and cause a likelihood of inflation. Bitcoin was structured from it's creation as a decentralized digital cash with a limited supply which makes it an hedge against inflation.
Many people have lost their Bitcoin forever because they can no longer send it to another wallet from the Blockchain, this happens when a person loses the private keys of their wallet. These Bitcoin that are in the Blockchain but the owners can not sale them are parts of the 21 million finite supply.
If the amount of the Bitcoin that people holds begins to be lost because they have no control over it in the Blockchain forever, due to the lose of their private keys, the effect will be deflation. Although the amount of Bitcoin lost through this means might be insignificant compared to the amount that is in circulation now, but if the loses keeps occuring in the future, it will certainly lead to deflation
The effect of deflation is abnormal increase in price which can cause Bitcoin to be overpriced in the future. My question is what do you think will be the adoption and usage rate of Bitcoin then, whether it will increase or decrease?
Well, this is a very good question you have brought up, and what I have to say is that..
First, the chances that the amount of bitcoin people loss access to continuing to Increase is very slim, not impossible, but also understand that sometimes, "slim" can be equal to "not possible".
Secondly, if a good number of bitcoins are lost by their owners, which simply means that those bitcoins are off the market, which thereby increases the price of bitcoin as demand gets high and supply becomes very low due to the number of bitcoins that their owners have no access to, bitcoin can still be used for day to day transactions even with its high price, since one doesn't need a whole 1 bitcoin, bitcoin can be divided into smaller parts known as satoshi, and the lesser the parts (even down to 0.00000001), the cheaper it is.