Oh Dear! Ether’s $3.4B Vanishing Act: A Comedy of Errors 🎭

by

Well, darlings, it appears Ether has decided to pull a disappearing act, with a staggering 913,111 ETH now lost to user blunders and bugs — a figure representing a mere 0.76% of our dear Ether’s current circulating paraphernalia, as so wittily pointed out by Conor Grogan, the head honcho of product at Coinbase. 😱

Grogan graciously shared this delightful little tidbit on X this past Sunday, revealing that our vanishing Ether, combining human miscalculations and pesky software quirks, now amounts to a jaw-dropping $3.43 billion at current market values. Well, isn’t that just a charming little fortune to lose? 💸

And let us not overlook the grand spectacle of 5.3 million ETH, incinerated via the Ethereum Improvement Proposal 1559 (a mouthful, isn’t it?) since 2021, escalating our losses to a tantalizingly higher figure.

In fact, when combining our illustrious ETH cremation with EIP-1559, the total amount of Ether in a state of permanent holiday amounts to roughly 6.2 million ETH, a staggering $23.4 billion, which makes up a delightful 5% of the current Ether supply of 120.7 million. Cheers to that! 🥂

The Ether Supply: A Surprising Surge of 44% Since March 2023! 🎉

Looking back at a similar report in March 2023, it seems our dear Ether supply has dramatically surged by 44% from a more modest 636,000 ETH. Oh, how times change!

Despite this delightful uptick, the dramatic culprits remain predominantly unchanged, with Grogan’s recent missive reiterating incidents from his March report—how very traditional of us! Among the highlights: the 306,000 ETH loss from a certain Parity Multisig bug, Quadriga’s charming mishap with 60,000 ETH, and of course, the riveting tale of Akutars and its 11,500 ETH oopsie from a minting fiasco. What a show! 🎭

Ah, but the only shift in the landscape is an additional 1,000 ETH now nestled comfortably in a burn address—such a cozy little fire pit!

“Just to clarify,” Grogan opines, “this $3.4 billion figure is merely scratching the surface of the true lost/inaccessible ETH — we’re only considering ETH locked away for eternity.” How very modest of him! 💁‍♂️

“For instance,” he quips, “this figure does not encompass all the lost private keys or those Genesis wallets that seem to have taken a vacation.” Oh, the nostalgia of forgotten treasures!

CryptoMoon, in its quest for answers, approached Grogan regarding the surging losses since March 2023—yet, curiously, the silence was deafening. How delightfully mysterious! 🕵️‍♂️

Ethereum: The Flexible Friend in Cryptocurrency 🎩

Unlike that rather uptight Bitcoin, which has a strict supply cap of 21 million coins (how rigid!), Ether is quite the free spirit with no hard cap on its total supply. What a libertine!

Nevertheless, ETH issuance has been curbed thanks to two monumental upgrades: EIP-1559 and the Merge—proving that change can indeed be a good thing.

EIP-1559, introduced in a wave of flamboyance back in August 2021 with the London Hard Fork, revamped Ethereum’s fee mechanism, introducing a lovely little burn component. How novel!

Then came the Merge, bringing us into the era of proof-of-stake (PoS) by September 2022, ushering in a plush reduction in ETH issuance. Tidy, right? 🏛️

As per the thrilling data from YCharts, Ethereum’s supply steadily rose from 2020 to 2022, reaching a splendid 120.5 million ETH by September 2022. Oh, how ambitious!

But alas, the supply decided to take a slight dip, decreasing about 0.4% through April 2024, reflecting those reduced issuances and our charmingly persistent ETH burns. However, our friend the supply has since resumed its gentle growth, currently flirting with approximately 120.7 million ETH. What a rollercoaster ride! 🎢

Read More

2025-07-21 14:45