Brits Sit On $45.3 Billion in Forgotten Bitcoin

Bitcoin Market UK

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Sead Fadilpašić

Journalist

Sead Fadilpašić

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Sead specializes in writing factual and informative articles to help the public navigate the ever-changing world of crypto. He has extensive experience in the blockchain industry, where he has served...

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Last updated: 

September 30, 2024

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UK residents may be sitting on billions of dollars in the world’s biggest cryptocurrency, according to blockchain technology-based platform CoinPoker.

CoinPoker cited its study per which Brits hold up to £34 billion in unaccounted Bitcoin (BTC).

This translates to $45.32 billion.

It goes on to state that up to 720,000 BTC is unaccounted for in the UK alone.

The report went on to cite the World Population Review data, which stated that the UK currently owns 18% of the world’s cryptocurrencies.

“Some popular coins that the UK uses include Litecoin, Ethereum, and Bitcoin,” it says.

According to analyst David Bartram, “with a large portion of the world’s Bitcoin supply owned by UK residents, there is undoubtedly a huge amount of money unaccounted for.”

Based on the above figures, the report made several conclusions:

• between 540,000 and 720,000 BTC is unaccounted for in the UK;
• between £25 billion and £34 billion in BTC is unaccounted for in the country;
• with the current exchange rate, some “tens of billions” in lost BTC is potentially missing from the British economy.

Therefore, CoinPoker concluded, “as the cost of living continues to rise, some Brits may be sitting on a small fortune.”

Bartram noted that some of this fortune may never be recovered.

However, he said that “it’s certainly worth it for people to check through old hardware and try to remember passwords if they have ever owned Bitcoin.”

We Don’t Know ‘How Much is Out There’

Globally, some 3 million—possibly even 4 million BTC—are missing—just sitting somewhere in a wallet with a forgotten passkey, on destroyed hardware, or in the wrong address.

And these are the coins that many presume will never be recovered.

Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, for example, found that as of 2020, 3.7 million coins were lost.

Similarly, an earlier Unchained analysis found that some 3–3.8 million BTC are very much lost.

Notably, this accounts for some 14%-20% of the coin’s total supply.

One of the most popular examples is that of James Howells, a computer engineer from Newport, UK.

He claimed that in 2013, during house cleaning, he had mistakenly thrown away a hard drive with a whooping 7,500-8,000 BTC on it.

Based on current prices, this amounts to $478.2 million–$510 million.

Despite his many pleas, however, Newport council, which owns the landfill, repeatedly denied Howells access to dig the site, citing environmental and other concerns.

Meanwhile, the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies is currently $2.36 trillion.

Thus, the global value of all missing crypto is “likely far higher,” Bartram said. “We may never know just how much is out there.”