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.
