Lose a key and the coin is removed from circulation.
We don’t even know how many coins actually exist at the moment, for example this guy’s — https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-55658942
Or with the wiping of the keys shown in big bang theory for example.
While there continues to be steady demand powering things like ransomware, and we know the supply of bitcoin reduces every day, we don’t know the current size of supply or the rate of reduction.
How is that so? I know that the maximum nr of BitCoins is limited and that generating new ones is designed to become more difficult over time. But how does that make them deflationary? I would say that as long as the supply of BitCoins will increase, however slightly, BitCoins are in principle inflationary? The only reason for its value going up would be that demand increases more than BitCoin supply, but increasing demand is in no way guaranteed by design.