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Key facts:
There can be 21 million bitcoins in the world as thought.The rarities, errors, and other events affecting the amount of cryptocurrencies there is in the system.According to the report number 26, Coin Metrics, published last 19 November, more than 1.5 million bitcoins may be lost forever, either by rewards not claimed by the miners, transactions the wrong, theft, or “coins zombies”, which is a demonstration that the calculation of the supply current of the criptomoneda pioneer, is much lower than what had been thought of up until now.Last October 18, when they mined the block 600,000 of the network bitcoin, it had been determined that the offer working capital was 18 million BTC, the missing 3 million for the mine to reach the goal of 21 million originally scheduled, as established by Satoshi Nakamoto in the white paper of Bitcoin.After being mined, the block of 600,000, several experts noted that the network had not exceeded the milestone of 18 million BTC. Even, Pieter Wuille, a developer of Bitcoin Core, mentioned that the actual supply from the block 600.002 was 17.999.854,82192702 BTC. In that sense, the technical document of Coin Metrics focused on determining the reasons for the criptomoneda largest in the world by market capitalization, is more scarce than you think.To determine the amount of BTC that you may not have access to, the study analyses the reasons for which are lost cryptocurrencies and difference coins that you can prove that they are lost, of those that are “assumed lost”. The precision that make both Wuille as Coin Metrics refer to the first case, but as can be seen, the loss proven is minimal, approximately 145 BTC in the estimation of Wuille and 182 BTC in the case of Coin Metrics, which places the current BTC in 17.999.817 BTC considered from the block 600.000 vision is “technically correct” the supply of Bitcoin.
Bitcoins lost forever
The research of Coin Metric revealed that, among the coins lost forever, are 50 BTC block Genesis, which, possibly due to an error, were not included in the ledger of Bitcoin, even when it is a transaction visible in the main chain. Another group of lost coins, from of duplicate transactions, which happened on two occasions, in 2012, in the early history of the criptomoneda, when the outputs of the base are sobreescribieron and do not appear registered in the whole UTXO (outputs that are not spent), so that 100 BTC product of these operations, nor are they in the ledger.The BTC whose loss it is proven technically to the height of the block to 600,000. according to Coin Metrics. Source: Coin Metrics.Among the bitcoins lost forever are also the rewards are not claimed by the miners, which had lost about 29 bitcoins. In this sense, the report explains that each entire node verifies that the miners are not attempting to claim more than what is allowed, but not valid if you claim less than what corresponds to it, which has happened on numerous occasions, totalling to 1221 anomalies.Another case was an anomaly that sent a handful of bitcoins to the outputs OP_RETURN, which allow users to embed data in the string without inflating the set of UTXO. The report explains that although the majority of these outputs are created with a value of 0 satoshis, some are not. From the block to 600,000, there were 3,72 BTC to the outputs OP_RETURN, which makes them unusable for ever, without forming part of the supply of Bitcoin.
Bitcoins supposedly unrecoverable
The report of Coin Metrics grouped in a category the bitcoins that believes that they are not all lost, but whose chances of recovering them is virtually impossible. In that group, which is called “BTC accepted as lost”, included to the coins that were deposited in false directions, without any private key known, where are found a few 2.213,195 BTC that would only be recoverable if someone was able to guess the private key. Another batch of coins was lost as a result of the Mt. Gox sent 2.609,363 BTC to a script false, which basically transferred him to a public key that is empty.Also are the Coins Zombie, which represent the group of BTC, the “neither living, nor dead”, that have not been moved in many years. In this group are the 1.496.907,88 BTC, recorded in the block of 600,000 that were touched for the last time before July 2010 and that supposedly mostly belong to Satoshi Nakamoto, due to their condition of mining dominant during the early years of Bitcoin.There are also the coins that the report points to as the stolen, the last category in BTC accepted as an out-of-print. And although throughout the history have been recorded innumerable facts, two of them were highlighted in the report: the theft of 80,000 BTC from MtGox in 2011 and the theft of 120,000 BTC in Bitfinex in 2016. In connection with the theft of MtGox, the 79.956 BTC that were removed from the portfolio, have not been touched until the day of today, still considered to this, the sixth address, the richest in the world. About Coin Metrics points out that it is unknown the reasons why I never spent the amount stolen, it is presumed that the thief can not access the private key.Around the loss of Bitfinex product of an attack, until today, very few of these coins stolen have moved, and only recovered 22 BTC. As of block 600,000, the addresses to which you sent the coins stolen still had 117.091,31 BTC.
21 million BTC is an optimistic view
In its conclusions the report of Coin Metrics, points out that “the adagio common that there can only be 21 million bitcoins in the world, is an optimistic view”, as it is demonstrated that with the passing of time, the rarities, errors, and other events will affect the working capital of BTC. Today, Coin Metrics, estimated that at most, there will be less than 19.5 million bitcoins in circulation, counting the assumed as lost today exceeds 1.5 million.
The analysts of the firm of research of the ecosystem of the cryptocurrencies point out that on the basis of estimates of the lost coins, it is possible to set three possibilities adjusted to the time you determine which is the actual supply of bitcoin that exists in the world: one of them is technically correct, you account all the lost coins. The other is a provision that excludes the coins lost, and that is supposed to have been lost or burned during long time. While the third will be a provision that excludes the coins stolen in addition to the coins wasted probable and suspected.