How Much STEEM Is Lost Forever?

Bitcoin bulls point to the belief that somewhere between 4M-5M Bitcoin are no longer available. They are in wallets that are basically lost forever. People lost the keys or the wallets were on hard drives that got tossed.

However it was achieved, the view is the value of Bitcoin is actually higher since the supply is not as advertised. With only 21M potentially being mined, a removal of 4M-5M makes a significant impact. With no other variables, this is greater than a 20% difference.

Does the same apply to STEEM?

We know there were a lot of people who signed up for accounts that are no longer here. How many of them acquired STEEM only to leave? At present, there are 268,984 accounts with at least one SP in them. This is according to Steemitboards.

Steemitboard.com

There are somewhere around 40K accounts transacting daily according to the regular posts put together by @penguinpablo. That means we have over 225,000 accounts that are doing nothing.

The question is what is in these wallets? Actually, a more important question is how many of these people will never return?

Here is something that came across my mind: do you have email accounts that you do not use? If so, do you even remember the password?

Most will answer yes to the first and no to the second. Almost everyone set up multiple emails over the years. It is not uncommon for people to have 50 or more. Of course, most are not used. They are dead, simply lost in the virtual world forever.

Why is that?

Since email accounts are free, few value them extensively. Accounts that were set up for the purpose of signing up for a rebate served a purpose then were lost. Most were never opened again.

My point here is that many did not value STEEM. Certainly, at current prices, is there a point to moving 10-20 STEEM? We know many who visited the platform for a while only to leave do not see the value in it. Will these people ever return? If they do, will it be like email where they will simply open up another account?

I think this is highly possible with a certain amount of these accounts. With 225,000 accounts holding SP but basically dead, I think we could surmise that many are gone forever.

Here is another way of looking at it.

According to my stats from last week, there are roughly 243,000 accounts with less than 100 SP in them.

This brings up the questions of how many of these accounts are dead AND what is the average SP in each one?

Could there be an average of 8 SP per account? Would it be 12? Without going through and adding them all up, there is no way to know. What is even harder to consider if how many accounts are essentially null.

The point here is there are a certain amount of tokens that are gone. Even though they are still listed in the supply they are, in reality, not there.

Will this total 1M? 3M? 5M? It is anyone's guess but looking at how some people treat Steem and value it so little, it stands to reason there is a chunk of STEEM never to be accessed again.

This might pale in comparison to the total amount out there yet it does make a difference especially when the price of STEEM rebounds.

Just like Bitcoin, there is a percentage of the total STEEM that is null and void.

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