Are there good estimates of the amount of bitcoin lost every year due to carelessness? Based on many anecdotes like this, I fear it's pretty large.
Bitcoin was supposed to be slightly inflationary, due to mining. But if a sufficient fraction is lost every year due to hardware failures and forgotten passwords, it will end up being deflationary. Someday (around log(1e6)/log(1+x) years from now, where x is the fraction lost every year), there'll be only 21 bitcoins left in the world, trading either at 0 or a number with 3 or 4 commas.
Bitcoin was supposed to be slightly inflationary, due to mining. But if a sufficient fraction is lost every year due to hardware failures and forgotten passwords, it will end up being deflationary. Someday (around log(1e6)/log(1+x) years from now, where x is the fraction lost every year), there'll be only 21 bitcoins left in the world, trading either at 0 or a number with 3 or 4 commas.
[edit: fixed in/de-flation mixup]