I was reading 20% of all wallets are lost. People have lost millions by up dating software etc. Like space junk floating around and cant be retrieved.
yea, this is due to lost passwords and phrases. If you still have the phrase then password can be recovered.
Check the techs on what they say about this...
'How to recover bitcoins from lost or corrupted wallet.dat'
Code:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5308461.0
There are some that have not or care not to back up their wallets or record and save their passwords in a save place.
I have heard that people may save the password on a hard drive or their laptop and then at a future time they reformat that drive or Laptop and that deletes the saved password forever.
Or as you mention, an Android phone gets an auto updated which for some reason deletes the wallet.
There would be other scenarios that are similar I suppose.
With these Wallets, you have a password and also have a phrase that you should have saved. That phrase will restore your wallet onto any platform.
There are also the chances that an online Exchange may close its doors and go into hiding. This has happened and those people that had bitcoin stored on their exchanges would loose all that. But that is when a person converts bitcoin into an account similar to a savings account. They do this to receive annual interest. This coin would no longer act the same as your bitcoin in your wallet, in the sense that it is not active coin which fluctuates with the market. The value of the bitcoin when it was deposited would always be be that same value (plus interest)...meaning that would not change with market fluctuations.
If the Exchange drops off from site and forever gone, then so are your savings. But not your wallet, as long as you saved that phrase and your password and Wallet ID, then you can always access your wallet no matter even if the Exchange jumped ship.
Crypto currency was not meant as a savings type platform, but does have the options for that when using an Exchange.
I know it sounds old fashion, but a writing tool like a pen or pencil and a piece of paper is needed to securely save your Wallet info..
These people that invest 100s or 1000s or dollars and do not save and protect their passwords are ummm, well they are just silly.
I have heard that some wallets will give you 10 tries to get your password correct. If after 10 tries and no success, then the wallet would be permanently lost.
If I had any amount of money in my online Wallet (which I do), I would not be relying on anything to keep my wallet save except a hardcopy of my info, saved in secure place and with my next of kin notified of this, in case of my death
There is a possibility of hackers too that may get into your stuff and hack your wallet and you loose. This my be somewhat rare and getting more rare all the time, as these exchanges are reputable and secure, but it can happen.
There are also
off-line Wallets that can be had too, then that gives you 100 % security, as long as you back them up too and keep in secure place.
And again for those investing huge or even us people with not so high of investments, this off-line wallet would be a good option to have.
The moral of all this.... Keep your passwords and other important info secure and safe and backed up... easy peasy
Bitcoin's or Cryptocurrencies main goal is to be a currency to be used in daily transactions around the world.
It's high points is that it can not be controlled or manipulated by governments or banks. And the coin itself can not be hacked due to how these Blockchains work. Of course an insecure wallet or an Exchange could be hacked, but when engaged in bitcoin transactions the coin itself can not be hacked during this process.
If you got in at bottom level back in late 2009 and bought some bitcoin and left it 'ride', then you probably made some big dollars considering that in 2009 one bitcoin could be bought for fractions of a cent and now as we see this week that same one bitcoin is worth any where from $29,000 to $42,000 --
Selling or trading bitcoin does not always get you the full value as seen/posted at these on-line coin Exchanges.
It's a market
A Canadian based website is LocalBitcoins(dot)com , that allows selling bitcoin to reputable buyers.
Using bitcoin in transactions thou, does give you full value.
And playing it right, you could in theory purchase products and walk away with remaining bitcoin, depending on how the Market is.
In otherwords, if you bought $150 USD bitcoin yesterday, which gave you say 0.00503497 BTC
And you wanted to buy a product from an online store which costs $150 USD and they accepted bitcoin of same value.
But you waited one full day and the next day, that same bitcoin of 0.00503497 BTC is now worth $180 USD
So with that $150 you put towards bitcoin, you were able to purchase the product for the full price with yur bitcoin wallet and still have the earned $30 of bitcoin in your wallet (depending on current value).
Of course this could also work the other way and you'd loose money.... thems are the risks
Does not look like bitcoin is going away thou and even with its crashes (which aren't really crashes at all, but fluctuations), bitcoin is and and has been consistently rising in value.
Disclaimer
Do much more research in all this before or if for first time you invest any amount of dollars in this.
I am not an analyst, do not trust my word nor anything I may seem to be excited about.
There is alot to learn.
For instance... halving every 4 years or rate corrections or Bull Markets or Whale Entities and taxes due can be examples of things that you would not ever know about until you look into things. And its important things
