About 10% of Bitcoin’s Lying Dormant for 10 Years

Over 1.85 million Bitcoin have been lying dormant in the past one year. It is not known whether these coins will be moved in the future or if they are lost forever.

About 10% supply locked

The coins make up for 10% of the total supply of Bitcoin, which means that every 10^th Bitcoin has remained dormant in the system for the past 10 years. Glassnode, a crypto metrics firm, shared the data recently.  The platform highlights that as of December 17, 2020 about 1,857,721 Bitcoin have remained “stationary” for a decade. The total number of Bitcoins in circulation was 18,573,268 at the time of creating the report.

Some experts suggest that this 10% dormant Bitcoin simply shows the commitment of hodlers who do not want to part ways with their coins and believe in the potential of Bitcoin. However, others suggest that most of these coins are dead and lost forever.

The first stack of these coins is of 1.125 million Bitcoin which was mined by Satoshi Nakamoto, the enigmatic and pseudonymous creator of the cryptocurrency. These coins were mined in the early days of the coin and haven’t been moved. No one knows who Nakamoto is or if the person is alive. This means that the fate of his coins remains unknown.

Glassnode tracking dormant Bitcoins for almost 2 years now

Glassnode started tracking and showing the number of Bitcoins that haven’t moved in 10 years on January 3, 2019. This marked the 10^th anniversary of Nakamoto launching the network and meaning the first Bitcoins.

There is another stack of 2.6 million Bitcoin that is probably lost forever. This could include coins lost because of misplaced private keys, Bitcoins burnt intentionally, broken hard drives, and people dying without creating a backup plan for their coins. About 20% of the currently mined Bitcoins, which totals 3.7 million BTC, seems to be a stack that may never be recovered. This is $83.3 billion in Bitcoin value according to current prices.