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Up To 37% Of Circulating Bitcoin May Be Lost Forever In Silent Supply Shock

While Bitcoin’s fixed 21 million coin cap was designed to counteract fiat inflation and mirror gold’s scarcity, a massive pool of permanently lost coins further tightens supply.

Estimates from on-chain analyses suggest that between 2.3 million and an incredible 7.8 million BTC (roughly between 11—37% of total supply), may have vanished forever, trapped in lost wallets, forgotten keys, or in addresses abandoned due to unexpected deaths. These ‘zombie’ or ‘ghost’ coins then effectively reduce Bitcoin’s effective circulating supply from the current 19.9 million to as low as a range of 12.1—17.6 million BTC.

A Donation to Everyone

As well as intensifying Bitcoin’s existing inherent scarcity, coins that permanently vanish boost the true value of all remaining Bitcoins. As Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator/creators, stated in a foresightful observation in April 2010 in a post on the BitcoinTalk forum: “Lost coins only make everyone else’s coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone.”

The lost coin range estimate (2.3—7.8 million) also comfortably exceeds the combined total of Bitcoin ETF and corporate treasury holdings which together total approximately 2.2 million BTC, a point rarely highlighted by a mainstream financial media fixated on the latest Blackrock Bitcoin ETF inflows and [Micro]Strategy’s latest BTC purchases.

No Keys, No Coins

Bitcoin’s rarity is thus magnified by these permanent losses, as the lost coin supply shock increases the value of every remaining coin, in contrast to traditional centralised assets such as stocks or bonds, In Bitcoin, there is no safety net. Once access is gone, the coins are effectively removed from circulation.

With a self-custodial architecture of ‘be your own bank’ but on an immutable blockchain, any lost and inaccessible coins on the Bitcoin network remain visible but untouchable. There is no bank and no bailout – only the owner and their private keys.

The familiar warning about exchange-held BTC of “not your keys, not your coins” now becomes the even more dramatic “no keys, no coins” in the off-exchange world.

Bitcoin relies on private keys (unique 256-bit cryptographic strings) to control and transfer ownership between addresses. Forgotten passwords, lost seed phrases, overwritten files, corrupted drives, or discarded hardware all result in irreversible inaccessibility.

Real-World Losses

Real-world cases highlight the dramatic scale and drama of lost Bitcoin. In 2013, the now infamous Welsh IT engineer James Howells accidentally discarded a hard drive containing private keys to 8,000 BTC in a landfill, worth roughly USD 900mn at current prices. But local city council rulings about environmental regulations prevent the obsessed Howells from launching a search for the lost hard drive.

Stefan Thomas, former Ripple CTO, lost access to 7,002 BTC (circa USD 777mn today) after forgetting his IronKey hard drive password, which locks permanently after 10 failed guesses. In January 2021, with two attempts left, Thomas described to the New York Times his repeated, desperate, and unsuccessful efforts to regain access.

Deaths also contribute to Bitcoin inaccessibility when holders die without succession plans. Gerald Cotten, CEO of Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX, allegedly died in 2018 without revealing how to access USD 190mn in client funds, which included substantial Bitcoin holdings.

Romanian early Bitcoin miner Mircea Popescu drowned off a Costa Rica beach in 2021, widely rumoured to have left up to 1 million BTC inaccessible. (potentially worth USD 111bn). While the size of Popescu’s BTC holdings is unproven, he was known to have had sizeable holdings.

And then there’s Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, who pulled his own vanishing act in April 2011, leaving behind an estimated 1 million BTC mined between 2009— 2010. This Satoshi stash is now possibly ‘lost’ forever, or has been left intentionally dormant as a ‘donation’ to the network.

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Texas Woman Sentenced for ‘Devastating and Dangerous’ Arson Attack on Washington Church

A 38-year-old woman from Temple, Texas, was sentenced Thursday for setting a Washington state church on fire in 2023.

Natasha Marie O’Dell will spend the next six years in prison after her sentencing on three felonies, Fox 7 reported on Saturday.

In a press release on Thursday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington said O’Dell committed arson in targeting the Seattle Laestadian Lutheran Church (SLLC) in Snohomish County on August 25, 2023.

She was visiting relatives in Woodinville at the time, and officials later linked her to the crime through cell phone records, credit card records, and surveillance video.

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Critics say ‘woke’ Liberal approach to crime led to alleged child assault

Critics lambaste the Carney government’s “show about nothing” on crime, arguing their policies worsen the issue and create a “horror show” in communities, citing cases of child assault, and a father’s death defending his children. 

Panellists highlight the “catch and release” justice system, which even liberal mayors condemn, saying their streets are overrun by criminals. They also criticize Carney’s minister for attacking self-defense. 

Rebel News reporter David Menzies emphasizes that after 10 years of liberal laws, Canada is like the “Wild West,” with citizens fearful and drug deaths at a record high.

Panellists criticized Canada’s handling of alleged child rapist Daniel Senecal, who identifies as female and is treated accordingly in custody, including strip searches by female officers. They labeled this a “farce,” arguing that Canada is no longer a “serious country” if it accepts such claims without question, especially given past prison rapes by men claiming to be women. 

Sue Ann Levy critiques “gender identification nonsense,” citing statistics that over 80% of “transgender women” are imprisoned for sex assault, likening it to “the fox in the chicken coop.” She attributes this to a decade of “woke policies” under Trudeau and Carney, “woke judges,” and DEI, leading to an “oppression Olympics.” 

She suggests many men claiming to be women have a fetish.

Another panellist argued that while peaceful coexistence with trans people is acceptable, issues arise when “transgender women” enter female-only spaces (changing rooms, bathrooms, sports, shelters, prisons), negatively impacting biological women. He doubted Carney’s policies would resolve this “trans sanity,” given Carney’s daughter identifies as male. 

They denounced the imposition of gender identity on Canadians as “despicable” and an example of “wokeism” overriding common sense.

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Censorship Concerns Surge As China Yanks Video Of Xi–Putin Organ Transplant Discussion

China’s state-owned broadcaster has rescinded international wire agency access to a hot mic video of Chinese and Russian leaders discussing longevity and organ transplants, an effort that shows the Chinese regime’s fear of attention on the topic, critics say.

The open mic exchange between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping took place in Beijing on Sept. 3, as the two leaders walked together ahead of a military parade commemorating World War II.

Xi at the parade told Putin that “these days at 70 you are still a child,” prompting Putin to remark that continued organ transplants could allow one to live younger and even reach immortality. Xi in response said that it is predicted that there’s a chance of humans living to 150 years old.

The conversation became global news and sparked discussions about the Chinese regime’s state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting, a taboo topic in China. CCTV has since taken down the livestream video that captured the exchange and removed the moment from replays.

CCTV also sent a letter through its lawyer to Reuters—which licensed the video through CCTV and edited it into a four-minute clip—requesting the news agency to remove the footage on the grounds that the clips Reuters published exceeded the agreed-upon scope.

CCTV lawyer He Danning claimed Reuters’ “editorial treatment applied to this material has resulted in a clear misrepresentation of the facts and statements contained within the licensed feed.”

Reuters withdrew the video and issued a “kill” notice to its clients on Sept. 5. The agency said it had earlier distributed the clip to more than 1,000 media clients around the world, including major international news broadcasters and TV stations.

In a statement, Reuters said it was removing the content because it no longer has the legal permission to publish this copyrighted material.

“We stand by the accuracy of what we published. We have carefully reviewed the published footage, and we have found no reason to believe Reuters longstanding commitment to accurate, unbiased journalism has been compromised,” Reuters stated.

According to the London-based China Tribunal, forced organ harvesting has taken place in China for years “on a significant scale,” and practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual group are the primary victims. It said that persecuted religious minorities including Uyghurs are also potential targets. Since 1999, millions of Falun Gong practitioners have been incarcerated in prisons, labor camps, and other facilities, with hundreds of thousands tortured and untold numbers persecuted to death, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.

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The Surveillance Net Is Closing, But the Smart Ones Can See the Writing on the Wall

The privacy coin Zano just rallied nearly 70 percent in the last 30 days, lifting its market cap toward a quarter billion dollars and pushing daily trading volume close to three million. The spike isn’t about speculation alone. It reflects a shift underway as people begin to hedge against a tightening surveillance state.

The latest proof of financial control came just last month, when Tether froze $49.6 million in USDT at regulators’ request during a coordinated international crackdown. Regardless of the guilt or innocence of the targets, the lesson is obvious. These assets can be frozen in an instant, with no trial and no process, making them less a hedge against the state and more a compliant extension of it. 

Congress reinforced this fact with the GENIUS Act, a law that hard-wires surveillance into stablecoins by forcing issuers to operate under bank-style oversight, AML regimes, and reserve mandates. The fact that Democrats and Republicans both lined up behind it should tell you everything. In Washington, true bipartisan consensus only happens when war, debt, or control are on the line.

That same logic now extends to the streets. National Guard units are being deployed into American cities to “fight crime,” but the justification is always the same: safety over freedom. Deployments like this normalize militarization at home and make clear that the tools built for foreign wars are now being pointed inward. 

The grid doesn’t stop at the barrel of a gun either. It runs through data. Federal agencies have been caught buying location data from brokers like Venntel to track millions of Americans without warrants. The AT&T Hemisphere program continues to funnel call records to law enforcement, building a quiet dragnet with virtually no oversight. License plate readers vacuum up hundreds of millions of scans, with databases shared across jurisdictions and tapped for immigration enforcement. Flock Safety’s license-plate readers generated 1,400+ immigration-related searches in Denver and 113 million scans in a year in Austin, triggering local backlash over data-sharing and policy violations. This is mass movement tracking, normalized street by street. All of this happens without a vote, without consent, and in most cases without warrants.

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Undersea Cable Cuts Kill Internet To Parts Of Asia, Mideast

Undersea internet cables in the Red Sea have been cut, disrupting internet access to parts of Asia and the Middle East. The cause of the cuts weren’t immediately clear, though China does have a shiny new deep-sea cable cutter (which we’re sure a bunch of countries have too). 

Associated Press (via NBC) seems to think (‘there has been concern’) that Houthi rebels from Yemen have been targeting the cables, which sounds absurd – though parts of the red sea are only as deep at 100m (330 ft). 

While the Houthis might not have submarines, undersea robots, or the ability to hit the deepest parts of the Red Sea, it’s possible to inflict damage on subsea cables without the backing of a major navy.

In March 2013, three divers were arrested by the Egyptian Navy off the coast of Alexandria after cutting the SeaMeWe-4 cable by detonating underwater explosives. Internet speeds reportedly fell around 60 percent after the incident. A motive wasn’t revealed and it’s unclear if they were charged and/or sentenced for the damage.

In 2007, it was reported that police had seized more than 500km of telecom cable taken by fishing vessels to sell for scrap – including an 11km segment identified as belonging to the SeaMeWe-3 cable. –Data Center Dynamics

So, who knows – but AP (deep state) spends considerable ink on the Houthis 

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California Dems Kill Bill Backed by Jay Leno That Would Have Exempted Classic Cars from Emissions Regulations

Not even classic car collector Jay Leno could convince California’s legislative Democrats to give an inch on what a critic called the state’s “regulatory hellscape.”

The Assembly Appropriations Committee blocked Republican Sen. Shannon Grove’s Senate Bill 712, informally known as Leno’s Law, from advancing, according to KABC-TV.

“SB 712, also known as “Leno’s Law,” offers a practical solution for owners of collector vehicles that have difficulty complying with the state’s smog check law,” according to a fact sheet issued by Grove.

“Leno’s Law is sponsored by renowned car enthusiast and television icon Jay Leno. The bill would exempt, on an ongoing basis, collector cars whose model year is 35 years or older from the state’s smog check law,” the fact sheet said.

“The bill would also exempt classic cars from the smog check program upon transfer of a vehicle. These classic cars are infrequently driven, carefully maintained, and make up only a fraction of cars on the road,” the fact sheet said.

“Exempting them from the biennial smog check would strengthen California’s ‘car culture’ by helping preserve these historical treasures,” the fact sheet said.

The fact sheet said forcing classic cars to meet current standards “is an overreach by the government.”

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Sparks Fly as RFK Jr. Tells Senators CDC Failed Americans During COVID

In a contentious Senate hearing today, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. engaged in fiery exchanges with senators on both sides of the aisle who questioned his record in office, the administration’s vaccine policies, and the ouster of top officials and advisers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

During the hearing held by the Senate Finance Committee, which has oversight over the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), many senators used their allotted five minutes to make impassioned speeches and air their grievances, often leaving Kennedy little or no time to respond.

The New York Times described Kennedy, who was visibly annoyed at times, as “remarkably salty and dismissive with senators at times today.”

“You don’t want to talk,” Kennedy told Sen. Elizabeth Smith (D-Minn.). “You want to harangue and have partisan politics. I want to solve these problems.”

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) called for Kennedy to resign or be fired by President Donald Trump during the hearing. This morning, Democratic senators on the committee issued a statement calling for his resignation.

Kennedy clashed with senators over the administration’s recent firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) narrowing of the COVID-19 vaccine approvals, the recent cancellation of $500 million in research funding for mRNA vaccines, Kennedy’s restructuring of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices) and the upcoming agenda for that committee, which will address the universal hepatitis B vaccine recommendations.

Several senators also pressed Kennedy on whether Operation Warp Speed was a great accomplishment, and raised concerns about cuts to Medicaid and funding for rural hospitals.

Kennedy shot back at his critics, promising to fix the “malpractice” within the public health agencies, and touting his agency’s many accomplishments since he took the helm.

He blasted the CDC, which he said, “is the most corrupt agency in HHS,” for its history of failing to protect Americans’ health, particularly during the COVID-19 crisis, during which the U.S. “did worse than any country in the world.”

“The people at CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving,” he said, adding, “That’s why we need bold, competent and creative new leadership at CDC. People who are able and willing to chart a new course.”

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The Battle Brewing: Mass Surveillance Vs The People

Behind the scenes of breaking news, culture wars, and moral division, a significant battle is brewing: mass surveillance vs. the people.

One surveillance technology in particular is rising to the surface of the national conversation: automated license plate readers (ALPR).

Flock Safety, a leader in ALPR technology, is one of the companies in the eye of the storm. Last week, Flock’s CEO and co-founder Garrett Langley made headlines when he released a statement announcing the company was going to “pause” its pilot programs with the U.S. government.

The company said that while it has no current contracts with any U.S. Department of Homeland Security agencies, it did engage in “limited pilots with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), to assist those agencies in combatting human trafficking and fentanyl distribution.”

So why would a company decide not to aid their own government in the fight against human trafficking and fentanyl distribution? Who are the voices that swayed them?

The company’s statement likely stems from criticism (or demonization) of Flock Safety for developing technology that has been adapted for use by ICE agents.

In a July interview with 9News Denver, Flock Safety CEO Langley was asked about the Denver city council voting against extending the city’s Flock contract “out of concerns the system would be exploited for immigration matters.”

Langley straddled the fence:

“Every city needs to make a decision what’s right for them. Some cities work really closely with federal authorities … Now in the case of Denver, if there’s no desire to work with ICE, that’s great. We need to create a safer city while still upholding the values we have.”

Ultimately, however, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, a Democrat, extended the contract through October 2025 after the dollar amount was reset to a figure that didn’t need council approval.

A spokesman for the mayor said the cameras are “an important tool for fighting crime.”

Meanwhile, Denver city leaders formed a special task force to discuss the technology’s privacy concerns. The policy director for the ACLU of Colorado said he would like the cameras turned off entirely—”until there are policies in place to regulate the use of them …”

Reason magazine claims that that “Flock Safety’s 40,000 cameras present in over 5,000 communities across the U.S. are being used to detain undocumented immigrants, many of whom have no criminal history.”

To be clear, it’s not a matter of Homeland Security or ICE agents directly accessing the Denver system—or any ALPR system. It’s a complex issue of state and local law enforcement agencies sharing information or granting access to other agencies. As Denver7 reported, “Flock Safety’s cameras capture billions of photos of license plates each month. However, it doesn’t own that data. The local agencies in whose jurisdictions the cameras are located do, and they’re the ones who receive inquiries from other law enforcement agencies.”

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Scientists just made the first time crystal you can see

Imagine a clock that doesn’t have electricity, but its hands and gears spin on their own for all eternity.

In a new study, physicists at the University of Colorado Boulder have used liquid crystals, the same materials that are in your phone display, to create such a clock — or, at least, as close as humans can get to that idea. The team’s advancement is a new example of a “time crystal.” That’s the name for a curious phase of matter in which the pieces, such as atoms or other particles, exist in constant motion.

The researchers aren’t the first to make a time crystal, but their creation is the first that humans can actually see, which could open a host of technological applications.

“They can be observed directly under a microscope and even, under special conditions, by the naked eye,” said Hanqing Zhao, lead author of the study and a graduate student in the Department of Physics at CU Boulder.

He and Ivan Smalyukh, professor of physics and fellow with the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI), published their findings Sept. 4 in the journal Nature Materials.

In the study, the researchers designed glass cells filled with liquid crystals — in this case, rod-shaped molecules that behave a little like a solid and a little like a liquid. Under special circumstances, if you shine a light on them, the liquid crystals will begin to swirl and move, following patterns that repeat over time.

Under a microscope, these liquid crystal samples resemble psychedelic tiger stripes, and they can keep moving for hours — similar to that eternally spinning clock.

“Everything is born out of nothing,” Smalyukh said. “All you do is shine a light, and this whole world of time crystals emerges.”

Zhao and Smalyukh are members of the Colorado satellite of the International Institute for Sustainability with Knotted Chiral Meta Matter (WPI-SKCM2) with headquarters at Hiroshima University in Japan, an international institute with missions to create artificial forms of matter and contribute to sustainability.

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