According to Conor Grogan, head of product at Coinbase, more than 913,000 ETH is permanently inaccessible due to user errors and software bugs. These losses amount to about 0.76% of the total Ether supply.
State of Ether Losses
The current market value of lost tokens exceeds $3.43 billion. As of the latest update, 913,111 ETH is considered permanently lost due to various errors. This number has increased by 44% compared to March 2023.
Reasons for Losses
The main causes of losses remain consistent and include bugs such as the Parity Multisig error, which locked 306,000 ETH, the QuadrigaCX incident, where 60,000 ETH was lost, and the Akutars NFT minting failure that blocked 11,500 ETH.
Assessment of Loss Scale
Grogan emphasizes that the actual losses may be even larger, as this does not account for tokens lost through forgotten private keys or abandoned Genesis wallets. 'This $3.4 billion number significantly undershoots the actual lost/inaccessible ETH amount,' he noted.
The losses of Ether highlight the importance of user caution and software reliability in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Given the substantial figures, this serves as a cautionary tale for market participants.
