Lost Coins
Cryptocurrency units that are permanently inaccessible, typically due to a lost private key or seed phrase, which still count toward total and circulating supply figures despite never being movable again.
Lost coins are units of cryptocurrency that have become permanently inaccessible — most commonly because the private key or seed phrase needed to control them was lost, destroyed, or forgotten — meaning they can never be moved or spent again, even though they continue to exist as valid entries in the blockchain's ledger. Common causes include discarded hardware containing a wallet's only key backup, forgotten passwords protecting an encrypted wallet file, and early holders who simply lost access during crypto's less security-conscious early years.
Lost coins continue to count toward a network's official circulating supply (see Kaavon's "Circulating Supply" glossary definition) and max supply (see Kaavon's "Max Supply" glossary definition) figures, since there's no reliable, universally agreed-upon way to definitively prove a specific set of coins is permanently lost rather than simply dormant in a long-untouched wallet — this means published supply figures for assets with meaningful lost-coin estimates likely somewhat overstate the coins that are actually ever available to trade or circulate again.
Examples
- An early Bitcoin holder who discarded a hard drive containing their only wallet backup permanently lost access to those coins, which remain lost coins despite still counting toward Bitcoin's official circulating supply.
- Because there's no definitive way to prove coins are permanently lost rather than simply dormant, published circulating supply figures likely somewhat overstate what's actually still available to trade.