This Week in Crypto

Crypto things you didn’t know you didn’t know.

It is estimated that 4 million Bitcoins have been lost.

What would you do if you had a stash of Bitcoins that you could not access because you have lost the keys, damaged your hardware or sent it to a so-called burn address?

Well, guess what? An estimated 4 million Bitcoins have been lost forever. The number is significant, considering that only 21 million BTCs will ever be mined. Experts believe that over 20 percent of the lost coins cannot be retrieved.

Scary, right? How does something like this happen?

The BTC blockchain is immutable and irreversible. This means that once a transaction is completed, it cannot be canceled or reverted. If you send your crypto assets to the wrong wallet, they are gone.

The cryptography used to secure these coins has no empathy. It doesn’t care if you are on the verge of having a heart attack. If you do not use the correct key, you will not access the wallet. Maybe a quantum computer could crack a private key, but decades may pass before it happens. Besides, it may not be possible even with the next generation of computers because developers are already working on creating quantum-proof solutions.