原文作者： JEFF JOHN ROBERTS
Original source: Fortune Magazine
原文标题：Old Bitcoin wallets keep waking up: How many of the 1.8 million ‘lost’ coins are really gone?
On April 15, a Bitcoin wallet that had been dormant for 14 years woke up. The wallet owner sent 50 bitcoins to Coinbase, making more than $3 million from these once-worthless bitcoins. Such transactions are uncommon, but they are not unique either. Almost every week, early bitcoin wallets wake up, which raises the question of how many more presumably lost bitcoins can be put back into circulation. A new survey from Fortune and Chainalysis offers some insights.
The chart shows the change in the number of bitcoins lost since 2018
As you can see in the chart above, hundreds of thousands of "lost" bitcoins (which Chainalysis defines as bitcoins that have remained untouched since 2014) have been back in circulation over the past few years. The graph shows a net change in the total amount of Bitcoin in four wallets of different sizes, including wallets holding less than 50 BTC and wallets holding 1,000 or more BTC. Among them, the "less than 50" category accounts for the vast majority of old Bitcoin wallets, as shown in the chart below.
The chart shows a breakdown of the lost Bitcoin wallets
Both graphs show that there is a disproportionate number of old wallets containing 50 bitcoins. This reflects the fact that in the early days of Bitcoin, the block reward was 50. (Since then, a series of "halving" events have led to the reward being reduced to 25, 12.5, 6.25, and just last week, the reward was reduced to 3.25 BTC).
Now, less than 10% of the amount of Bitcoin mined each day was at the earliest point, and early wallets, many of which have huge amounts of wealth hidden in them, may be of greater interest.
$121 billion
Those interested in cryptocurrencies only occasionally may be surprised to learn that there are around 1.75 million Bitcoin wallets that have been in complete sleep for a decade or more, many of which have large amounts of money in them. As of mid-March, these wallets (excluding the approximately 30,000 wallets associated with Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto) contained 1,798,681 bitcoins and are now worth about $121 billion.
The 1.8 million "lost" bitcoins represent about 8.5% of the total Bitcoin supply of 21 million (93% of which have already been mined). In most cases, it's impossible to know exactly where a wallet goes, but it's safe to assume that many wallets do lose their bitcoins forever. In the early days of Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency was almost worthless, and it wasn't until 2011 that the price of Bitcoin broke through the $1 mark. As a result, many people who receive Bitcoin may have completely forgotten about it or haven't bothered to save the private keys needed to open their wallets. Before 2012, a company like Coinbase that kept private keys for users didn't exist, so losing keys was especially common.
But not all idle wallets have been lost or abandoned. Bitcoin is known for its massive "HODLers" who have vowed never to sell their reserves (or at least hold them for the long term). It's these people (in cryptocurrency terms, they have "diamond hands") who manage the few wallets that have been active since 2018.
So why are they selling? Chainalysis' analysis of newly active wallets found a statistically significant correlation between Bitcoin price changes and wallet activity during a given week. Most of the time, however, the increase in wallet activity doesn't seem to be related to obvious external events.
Overall, the activation rate of old wallets seems predictable. For example, during the week of March 25, a typical pattern emerged, with 172 long-idle wallets becoming active, of which 169 wallets had less than 50 bitcoins and one wallet had more than 1,000 bitcoins. Many Bitcoin holders have more than one wallet, especially those who had one before 2014, so the number of wallet activators that week is likely to be well below 172.
Variable: Satoshi Nakamoto's 1.1 million bitcoins
Chainalysis' survey data suggests that old wallets will continue to be awakened at a steady but slow rate until the number of lost bitcoins has largely stabilized: around 1.5 million.
However, we can imagine that the speed of the wallet awakening will accelerate in the future. That said, this can happen when pre-2014 HODLers get old and bequeath long-held bitcoins to their children, who in turn sell those bitcoins. However, such an event is still decades away, as most early Bitcoin holders were in their 20s or 30s.
Finally, the aforementioned "lost" number of bitcoins does not include wallets controlled by Satoshi Nakamoto, who is estimated by Chainalysis to have around 1.1 million bitcoins. A recent Fortune report on Satoshi Nakamoto's fortune (worth about $75 billion) found that most long-time crypto-followers believe that the Bitcoin creator has long since become a myth and that they will most likely never touch their wallets.
If that's the case, then the total number of bitcoins currently lost is around 2.9 million, which is nearly 14% of the total supply. In the long run, the best outcome is that these bitcoins become lost treasures that can never be found.
【Disclaimer】The market is risky, and investment should be cautious. This article does not constitute investment advice, and users should consider whether any opinions, views or conclusions contained herein are appropriate to their particular circumstances. Invest accordingly at your own risk.