There is a common belief that as many as 3.7 million bitcoin have been lost forever.
WARNING: Don’t lose your bitcoin (or your keys to be precise). They will never be recovered and there is no hotline to call to restore access.
All total market values or market capitalization quoted on the exchange listings imply the current market price per bitcoin multiplied by the number of bitcoin currently mined and issued. At the date of this writing there are approximately 19,670,000 bitcoin that have been mined at a market price of approximately $70,000 per bitcoin implies a total market value of roughly $1.33 trillion USD.
If there truly are 3.7 million bitcoin that are unrecoverable, the question is – does the current price per bitcoin reflect that those coins are indeed lost or inaccessible or is the total market value the more accurate value. If it is the latter, then assuming the total market value of $1.33 trillion reflects the true value of all bitcoin, then this value could be applied to the actual available and accessible supply of 15,800,000, resulting in a possible implied value per each accessible bitcoin of $83,000.
Whether this is the correct analysis or whether the market already prices in the lost bitcoin is anyone’s guess, but the fact remains, at some point when the music stops and people are rushing to put currency into bitcoin, there will be 3.7 million (or more) that will not be available for purchase and the overall supply will be much less than expected.