18-23% of the total cryptocurrency supply of bitcoin (BTC) in circulation is immobile for long periods of time. What if it's lost?

"It's estimated that between 3.89 million and 4.87 million BTC are missing," Twitter user Checkmatey (@Checkmatey), a senior analyst at cryptocurrency on-chain data analytics firm Glassnode, told X. "It's impossible to directly measure how many BTC are missing," he said. "It's impossible to directly measure how many BTC are missing. Some BTCs are in long-term storage, others have lost their private keys. From a probabilistic point of view, we estimate that between 18.56% and 23.19% of the BTC supply (21 million BTC) is missing". 3.89 million BTC equals about $167.6 billion. That's a lot of money, and it makes you wonder what role the missing bitcoin will play in the future. Will a project emerge with the answer to unlock or solve it?