How Much of Ethereum’s Supply Is Lost Forever? Here’s the Amount That Must Be Excluded When Calculating Supply

Coinbase executive Conor Grogan announced that at least 913,111 Ethereum ($ETH) were permanently lost due to user error. This amount, currently valued at approximately $3.43 billion, corresponds to 0.76% of the total $ETH supply.

According to Grogan, these losses stem from irreversible transactions and inaccessible wallets. Furthermore, when we include the 5.3 million $ETH (approximately $20 billion) burned under EIP-1559, an update to Ethereum's fee mechanism, more than 5% of the entire Ethereum supply has been permanently removed from circulation.

Grogan noted that this loss only covers $ETH that is verifiable and technically “locked forever,” not lost private keys or forgotten wallets.

Here are some examples of large amounts of $ETH lost:

• Web3 Foundation locked 306,000 $ETH due to an error in the Parity Multisig contract.
• QuadrigaCX lost 60,000 $ETH due to a faulty smart contract.
• Akutars lost 11,500 $ETH in a failed NFT mint.
• Users have sent approximately 25,000 $ETH to burn addresses for reasons that remain unexplained to date.

“This $3.4 billion figure is far below the actual loss. It only includes Ethereum that is technically permanently locked, excluding things like lost private keys or forgotten Genesis wallets,” Grogan said.

*This is not investment advice.