🚨 3.56M BTC May Be Lost Forever CryptoQuant analy | AFx_Crypto on Gate Square

🚨 3.56M BTC May Be Lost Forever

CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost reports that around 3.56 million BTC are now considered lost or permanently inactive roughly 17.7% of Bitcoin’s circulating supply.

That’s an extraordinary amount of BTC removed from practical market liquidity.

But one important distinction: “lost” doesn’t necessarily mean every coin is proven inaccessible. Some may simply belong to holders who haven’t moved their BTC for many years.

Still, if a large portion never returns to the market, Bitcoin’s effective available supply is much smaller than the headline circulating-supply figure suggests.

Scarcity isn’t just about the maximum 21M BTC.

It’s also about how much BTC can actually move.
#GateLaunchpool141MDOS $BTC

BTC/USDT

+0.35%

This page contains third-party content and does not constitute any advice, nor does it represent Gate's endorsement of such views. For details, please see disclaimer.

BTC+0.35%

1
12
7.3k

Add a comment

Comment

AnonAlias

2026-08-18

Effective supply is what matters: 17.7% is locked up, so the number is meaningless.

00View Original

RetireOnBTC

2026-08-16

Every time I see reports like this, I wonder where the coins held by those early miners and whales actually went. Some may truly be sleeping forever, while others may simply exist in another form. Regardless, with Bitcoin’s supply unable to be expanded and its actual liquidity shrinking, it’s no wonder that more and more people are holding for the long term.

00View Original

ChipDistributor

2026-08-16

Interestingly, “lost” and “long-term holding” look exactly the same on-chain. On-chain data can only tell you that they haven’t moved, not why they haven’t moved. But market sentiment doesn’t care about that—as long as everyone believes the supply has decreased, the price will naturally react.

00View Original

ManipulationThinker

2026-08-16

Scarcity is indeed more resilient than imagined; this 17.7% is basically locked up.

00View Original

RugPullReminder

2026-08-16

So stop shouting about inflation—the actual scarcity is far more severe than it appears on paper.

00View Original

GridForeman

2026-08-16

Many people only focus on the 21 million cap, but forget that the coins actually available for circulation may account for less than 80%—this data is quite shocking.

00View Original

BridgeFerry

2026-08-16

To be honest, I’ve always felt that the word “lost” is too vague. Some addresses haven’t moved for over a decade—the private keys may have been lost long ago, or the diamond hands may simply have been unwilling to sell. Either way, it represents a real reduction in supply for the market, and the long-term bullish logic remains unchanged.

00View Original

SocialSignal

2026-08-16

First Review

If this 3.56M truly becomes a black hole, Bitcoin’s scarcity narrative will reach another level, after all, with so much less tradable supply.

00View Original

Trending Topics

#GateAtTOKEN2049

#LedgerLossesNear90Million

#GateWCTCS9GlobalTradingCompetition

#CRCLLeadsCryptoStocks

#EthereumUpOver71%inQ3

#GateEventMarketVolumeHits73M

#USOpensRussianDieselImports

#GateNetInflowRanks3rd

#SimpleEarnUSDTLimitedTime11%APR

#BTC Pulls Back to 81000