Amount of lost and hodled Bitcoin climbs to 33.96% of total supply
According to a post by crypto analytics firm Glassnode, the amount of lost or hodled Bitcoin has hit a seven-month peak of 7,167,889.595 BTC, exceeding 33.96% of the total Bitcoin supply.
📈 #Bitcoin $BTC Amount of HODLed or Lost Coins just reached a 7-month high of 7,167,889.595 BTC
— glassnode alerts (@glassnodealerts) September 9, 2021
View metric:https://t.co/dJK8rxBVD3 pic.twitter.com/xgClrGzFdh
The said metric hit a five-month high almost three weeks ago on Aug. 21. Chinese crypto journalist Colin Wu stated that these coins should be considered to be out of circulation. Subsequently, Bitcoin's scarcity saw an increase, while altcoins and gold were favored by multiple Bitcoin critics, including Peter Schiff.
It is possible that some of these supposedly lost coins may be stored in cold wallets by long-term holders and crypto enthusiasts who bought/mined the digital asset in its early days. This also includes wallets on old computers that are out of service, and wallets that are no longer accessible to their owners after they may have lost their private keys.
Former Ripple CTO Stefan Thomas is one of those who have been unable to unlock his Bitcoin wallet that held $231 million worth of BTC. Also, InfoWars founder Alex Jones stated that he had lost a laptop containing a wallet holding $560 million in Bitcoin.
