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The total number of coins held by every BTC address are always known because it's part of the public block chain that every participant in the network holds a copy of. The guy's 8999 BTC are visible in this chain, he just doesn't have the private key to the address, so they are unusable. Counting the total # of BTC that has been awarded is simply a sum across the block chain.

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Right, but they've essentially been taken out of circulation. So without the knowledge of how many coins are usable, how can one accurately value the currency?

Maybe this is the wrong mental model, but I picture it like a hard disk slowly filling up with bad sectors. Except in this case, the disk controller can't tell you how much free space the disk has.

It's more like hiding a treasure chest somewhere in the ocean (of cryptographic tokens) and then losing the map (private key) when your ship (filesystem) sinks. (Arrrr!) This is something that happens with physical objects of monetary value as well, including cash itself.

So without the knowledge of how much cash I'm hoarding in my closet, how can you accurately value USD? I don't know how much of the answer is “you can't, exactly, but there's enough other trading that it doesn't matter” (which could apply to Bitcoin as well) versus “the value is fixed by external factors such as the US government”.

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