The New York Times reports an estimated $140 billions dollars worth of bitcoin is lost / stranded. That is 20% of the total. Still sounds like a profound flaw.
And yes, I would be terrified if most of my wealth was exposed to such risks. All the things that could go wrong. Having to go back to work in order to eat if my housekeeper tossed the wrong thing. And my heirs . . . . Where is grand dad's bit coin wallet? What does it look like? What's the password? Did he make note of this in his will?
I can appreciate how someone holding $100 bucks worth of bitcoin doesn't care about this issue. How a person barely old enough to buy a scratcher might not have experienced enough of life to appreciate the way day-to-day life abrades unexpected things. It is easy to imagine you wouldn't forget such a vital password. Surely no one would trash some strange looking bit of hardware that looks like it should be in the kitchen junk drawer. The kids don't get into mom's office desk, do they?
Amateurs -=- DrStrange
PS: Test from the NTY: "Of the existing 18.5 million Bitcoin, around 20 percent — currently worth around $140 billion — appear to be in lost or otherwise stranded wallets, according to the cryptocurrency data firm Chainalysis. Wallet Recovery Services, a business that helps find lost digital keys, said it has gotten 70 requests a day from people who want help recovering their riches, three times the number of a month ago.
Bitcoin owners who are locked out of their wallets speak of endless days and nights of frustration as they have tried to access their fortunes. Many have owned the coins since Bitcoin’s early days a decade ago, when no one had confidence that the tokens would be worth anything." NY Times, 1/12/2021