How much of the supply of Ethereum will be lost forever? Here are the amounts you need to exclude when calculating supply

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Coinbase executive Conor Grogan has announced that at least 913,111 Ethereum (ETH) has been lost forever due to user errors. This amount, currently around $3.43 billion, represents 0.76% of the total ETH supply.

According to Grogan, these losses are attributed to irreversible transactions and inaccessible wallets. Additionally, including 5.3 million ETH (approximately $20 billion) burned in EIP-1559, the latest update on Ethereum’s pricing mechanism, more than 5% of the total Ethereum supply was permanently removed from the circulation.

Grogan noted that this loss is verifiable and only covers ETH that is technically “forever locked”;

Here are some examples of a large amount of eth lost:

  • The Web3 Foundation has locked 306,000 ETH due to an error in the Parity Multisig contract.
  • Quadrigacx lost 60,000 ETH due to a defect in the smart contract.
  • Akutars lost 11,500 ETH in the failed NFT mint.
  • Users are sending around 25,000 ETH to burn addresses for reasons not previously explained.

“This $3.4 billion figure is far below actual losses. That includes only technically permanently locked Ethereum, except for lost private keys and forgotten Genesis wallets,” Grogan said.

*This is not investment advice.

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