Recently we celebrated the extraction of another round number of BTCs. According to coinmarketcap, the total supply of extracted bitcoins is over 18 million. However, the truth is quite different. There is little bitcoin – mainly because a large number of coins is forever blocked on the wallets.
Reducing supply limitation
Bitcoin’s not much. There are about 16.5 million pieces in active circulation. This means that around 1.5 million pieces are lost/blocked on their wallets. This includes bitcoins that have been stolen and lost.
BTC expected supply was 18,000,000 at block 600,000.
But there are over 1,500,000 coins that are assumed lost.
And many more that were stolen and haven’t moved since…
Read the full break down by @khannib in this week's State of the Network:https://t.co/oF4JcANXkp pic.twitter.com/gWTMOFGMIO
— CoinMetrics.io (@coinmetrics) November 19, 2019
Coinmetrics presented interesting statistics on this subject on its Twitter. According to their research, at least 1.5 million BTCs are lost and 197,000 have been stolen. These are, of course, only estimates, as it is extremely difficult to identify the exact numbers.
Daily bitcoin flows oscillate between 2-3 million. The stock exchanges have about 6.7% of the total supply and they are the largest whales. Additionally, the most popular cryptocurrency has been lost in many different ways. The most popular are the uncollected prizes or 50 BTC from the first block, which are not in the register. There are also situations of sending bitcoins to non-existent addresses or Bitcoin Cash addresses. Nevertheless, the most obvious way to lose a BTC is to forget your private key.
A chance for higher market prices?
Bitcoin deficiency is mentioned in economic matters as well as in the wealth of individual economies. Theories about bitcoin as a global currency reserve led to its price estimation at a high level.
Currently, 500,000 to 700,000 addresses use bitcoin every day. Millions are traded daily between them. Popular breeding is certainly not a strategy that is conducive to value creation. Quicker, liquidity and trading are able to do it.
It is worth remembering that the activity of the BTC network itself follows price events. Usually, as the price increases, more transfers of the most popular cryptocurrency are made. The same happens in the case of a drastic drop. Imagine how much impact the recovery of all the BTCs that are considered stolen or lost today could have on the market. What do you think? Would they confuse the market?
