Analyst says 6 million Bitcoins have been irretrievably lost.

Analyst Timothy Peterson of Cane Island Alternative Advisors said that 6 million of the 19.3 million BTC mined have been irretrievably lost.

I estimate that, as of this week, 6 million of the 19.3 million #bitcoin mined have been irretrievably lost. (See related research at https://t.co/ULso76SXjD ) This means 13.3 million remain with only 1.7 million left to be mined over the next 100+ years. In that time, it’s… pic.twitter.com/WpiSNT9TSF

— Timothy Peterson, CFA CAIA (@nsquaredcrypto) March 25, 2023

“This means that only 13.3 million BTC remain and only 1.7 million BTC remain to be mined over the next more than 100 years. Over that time, almost certainly another million coins will be lost,” he wrote.

According to Peterson, as new bitcoins are created, the old ones are lost. The 13 million BTC currently in circulation, he called “all that we are likely to have access to.”

In April 2020, Coinmetrics analysts calculated that 2.3 million BTC of the 18.3 million BTC mined at that time were permanently lost.

As reported in February 2023, the number of addresses with a balance of 1,000 BTC or more (over $24.7 million) fell to mid-2019 levels. According to Glassnode, their number stands at 2024.