Google has brought Google Earth’s long-hidden flight simulator to the web, making it **playable at earth.google.com** with no installation required. Launched June 12, 2026, the experimental mode lets users **pilot a fighter jet** over the platform’s 3D satellite imagery. The feature originally appeared as a keyboard-shortcut easter egg in the 2007 desktop app.

## Key Takeaways

- Google moved Earth’s 2007 flight sim to the web June 12, 2026, with no app needed.
- Google Earth’s free 3D flights point to **heavier browser-based visual tools**.
- Google can pair Gemini with 3D maps next as AI assistants gain spatial context.

For years, one of Google Earth’s most fun tricks lived behind a keyboard shortcut, a flight sim tucked away in the 2007 desktop app like a private joke. As of 06/12/2026, it has been moved into the open, running directly at earth.google.com with **no installation required**. The experience drops you into a fighter jet and lets you skim over 3D satellite terrain using basic keyboard and mouse controls. It is experimental, a little rough around the edges, and oddly compelling once you start threading canyons and clipping city skylines.

If you have not opened Google Earth in a while, it is worth another look. On June 12, 2026, Google quietly added a browser-based flight simulator to Google Earth, letting anyone fly over **real satellite imagery and 3D terrain** without installing software. It is free, it runs on the web, and it feels like a small but telling bet on lightweight, high-fidelity experiences.

For American users, the appeal is immediate: you can skim the Rockies, trace the California coast, or thread between skylines with nothing more than a laptop and a steady hand. It is not pilot training. It is a new way to understand scale and geography, built on the same mapping stack that already powers so much everyday navigation.

## From hidden keyboard trick to a web feature

Longtime fans will recognize the idea. Google first tucked a flight simulator into the 2007 desktop version of Earth as an **Easter egg**, accessible via a keyboard shortcut. For years, the web version simply could not pull it off with the same responsiveness and 3D detail.

This update changes that. The simulator now lives directly at earth.google.com, and it leans on **modern browser graphics capabilities** rather than a downloaded app. The cockpit and instrument panel are intentionally simple, but the sense of motion comes from flying across photorealistic terrain and 3D-modeled cities that Google has been refining for years.

## How it works, and what to expect on your first flight

Getting airborne is straightforward: open Google Earth on the web, pick a place, switch into satellite imagery, and turn on 3D mode so the world is not flat. Then you launch the simulator from the tools menu and take control with your keyboard and mouse.

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Expect the first minute to be bumpy. Controls can feel touchy, and overcorrecting is easy, especially at speed. If you crash, the simulation pauses and offers a simple restart, which makes experimentation the point. How often do you get to “learn” a UI by careening into a mountainside?

## Why Google is doing this now

The timing fits a broader pattern: Google has been pushing more capability into the browser, while threading AI into its core products. The company’s model **Gemini** is already being woven into Maps and other services, and richer 3D interfaces give those assistants more context to work with.

There is also a business echo here. Cloud-delivered experiences, for example **Nvidia GeForce Now**, have trained consumers to expect demanding visuals without demanding hardware. Google Earth’s flight simulator is not cloud gaming, but it carries the same message: **the browser is becoming the default cockpit** for increasingly heavyweight computing.

Google Earth's hidden flight simulator is now web-based, letting users fly 3D terrain directly in a browser.

Google Earth's Secret Flight Simulator Finally Lands in Your Browser – No Download Required

Bitcoin rose to $65,000 Monday morning, recovering part of Friday’s drop below $63,000 but finishing roughly flat on the week. Other crypto majors held steady alongside it: ETH +1% to $1,750, Solana +1% to $73, and Hyperliquid’s HYPE flat at $68.

Fairly uneventful price action, but maybe that’s a win in a week that saw **Strategy's STRC fall to record lows of $83**, the **ETFs saw $227M in net outflows**, and the **Fear and Greed Index spending the entire week squarely in the Fear zone**.

### Macro Drivers

The Iran War ceasefire saw a setback. Permanent U.S.-Iran ceasefire talks opened in Switzerland after the deal was signed Friday, a deal that sent oil down 9%. Then Iran ordered the **Strait of Hormuz closed again** over the weekend, reviving the exact supply risk the agreement was meant to remove. Add the hawkish Warsh Fed and the STRC selloff from last week, and Bitcoin/crypto is certainly in a precarious position to start the week.

For now, **Bitcoin is consolidating rather than trending**, holding above the low $60,000s but unable to reclaim the week’s highs. Until the Iran picture and the Fed path clear up, the range likely holds.

### CME Sues the CFTC

**CME Group** filed a lawsuit against the CFTC on Thursday, asking a court to vacate the agency’s approval of Kalshi’s perpetual futures. CME argues that perpetual futures are actually **swaps under Dodd-Frank** rather than futures, a distinction that would subject them to different and stricter rules. The case matters because if CME wins, the approvals for regulated US perps could be reopened, making it one of the bigger market-structure fights of the year.

### Other Key Headlines

- **Franklin Templeton** filed for ETFs that reinvest US stock dividends into Bitcoin, a novel structure funneling dividend income into Bitcoin accumulation.
- **Charles Schwab** plans to introduce prediction markets with Cboe for wagering on the S&P 500's performance.
- The **Federal Reserve** proposed customer identification rules for stablecoin issuers.
- **Jaredfromsubway.eth**, Ethereum's most notorious MEV sandwich bot, was drained of more than $7.5 million in an ironic exploit.

### Market Overview

- **Crypto majors mixed**: BTC +1% at $65k; ETH +2% at $1,750; SOL -1% at $73.50; HYPE even at $68.25.
- **DEXE (+26%)**, ENA (+5%), and OKB (+6%) led top movers.
- **Oil** +1% at $77; Gold -0.5% at $4,225.
- **Stock futures** flat.

### ETF & Treasury Flows

- **Bitcoin ETFs** saw $6.35B in net outflows over the past 30 days, including $227M last week; ETH ETFs saw $10M in outflows.
- **HYPE ETFs** saw no net inflows on Thursday.

### Meme Coin Tracker

- Meme leaders mostly green: DOGE +1%, SHIB +1%, PEPE +1%, PENGU -1%, TRUMP +1%, BONK +1%, SPX +3%, FARTCOIN +5%.
- **Solangeles (+180%)**, three (+30%), and GTAVI (+65%) led movers on Solana.

### Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

- **Pump Fun’s new bounty feature** covered by NY Post for leading to people humiliating themselves for money.
- **Charles Schwab** plans prediction markets with Cboe.

### NFTs

- NFT leaders mostly red: Punks -7.5% at 31 ETH, BAYC -3% at 9.2 ETH, Pudgy +6% at 4.8 ETH; Hypurr’s -2% at 227 HYPE.
- **Trolls (+12%) and Axie (+8%)** led top movers.

Macro uncertainty, STRC finding a new low and another $227M in ETF outflows weren't enough to keep Bitcoin down over the past week.

Bitcoin Holds Strong at $65K Amid Iran Deal Uncertainty and Market Jitters

**Sixteen years ago today, Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, told a Bitcointalk user that losing coins was not a flaw in the system. It was a feature.**

### Key Takeaways
- Researchers estimate **3.1 million BTC** permanently lost as of June 20, 2026.
- River’s 2025 report found **1.57 million BTC lost in self-custody**, mostly before 2020.
- El Khatib and Legout confirmed only **3,197.61 BTC** as provably burned through April 2024.

The discussion happened 16 years ago today, on June 21, 2010, in a Bitcointalk thread called “Dying bitcoins.” A user had asked whether forgotten wallets meant the network would shrink over time. After replies from Laszlo Hanyecz and Gavin Andresen, Satoshi answered at 17:48:26 UTC with a line that still circulates today:

> “Lost coins only make everyone else’s coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone.”

Satoshi’s lost-coins quote is less a prediction that Bitcoin’s price would rise and more an observation that **scarcity intensifies as coins disappear from circulation**. Still, the premise ultimately relies on the same assumption: that Bitcoin would retain enough value for people to want to hold it in the first place.

Satoshi also told Laszlo that computers would need to become roughly **2^200 times faster** before recovering or stealing lost coins could outpace mining. That statement was a scarcity argument, not a measurement. It left open a question researchers are still trying to answer in 2026: how many bitcoins are actually gone.

Several reports put the number at about **3.1 million BTC**, with a central range of 2.7 million to 3.9 million BTC and a wider envelope of 2.3 million to 5.25 million BTC. Against current circulating supply of 20,045,680.42 BTC, tracked by Glassnode as of June 20, 2026, that midpoint equals roughly **15.5% of all mined Bitcoin**. It should be noted that the estimate of 3.1 million so-called “lost” Bitcoin **cannot be proven with certainty**.

## What Can Actually Be Proven
Very little is provable onchain. The blockchain can confirm certain coins are unspendable. It cannot confirm that an unmoved coin is lost rather than held.

The hardest data point comes from a 2025 study by Mohamed El Khatib and Arnaud Legout, which used entropy filtering and machine learning to identify burn addresses. Their count: **3,197.61 BTC** permanently destroyed through block 840,682, dated April 24, 2024. Add Bitcoin’s unspendable 50 BTC genesis reward, and the provable floor barely moves.

Everything past that floor is based on **probability and speculation**, not proof. Since the 2025 study was published, additional Bitcoin have been sent to known burn addresses, where the coins are effectively removed from circulation and are not expected to be spent again.

## Dormancy Paints a Bigger Picture
Glassnode’s supply-by-age data for June 20, 2026, shows **3.557 million BTC** untouched for more than 10 years, 1.690 million BTC sitting in the 7-to-10-year range, and 1.479 million BTC in the 5-to-7-year band. That puts roughly **5.25 million BTC dormant for over seven years** and about 6.73 million BTC dormant for over five.

Glassnode treats coins inactive beyond seven years as “Inert Supply,” calling it likely lost. But old coins still move. Treating every dormant coin as gone overstates the case.

## The Patoshi Factor
Much of the debate centers on Bitcoin’s earliest miner. Sergio Demian Lerner’s original research identified a single dominant miner active in 2009 and 2010, producing what became known as the “Patoshi” pattern, totaling about **1.1 million BTC**.

![Patoshi pattern chart](https://static.news.bitcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/screenshot-2026-06-21-at-3-25-11-pm.png)

BitMEX Research later argued that the figure runs too high, putting the number closer to **700,000 to 750,000 BTC**. Whale Alert, as reported by Bitcoin.com News, pushed the estimate the other direction, to **1,125,150 BTC** across the first 54,316 blocks.

Whether analysts count that stash as lost, dormant, or simply unattributed swings the total lost-coin estimate by hundreds of thousands of BTC.

## Self-Custody and Exchange Failures
River’s 2025 custody report estimates **1.57 million BTC permanently lost through self-custody**, with 98% of those losses occurring before 2020. River also notes more than 3 million BTC lost or lost through exchanges overall, though it cautions that public lawsuits and bankruptcies only support low-end estimates.

You might ask yourself how coins can be lost through self-custody. In reality, there are several ways this can occur. For example, a person may install a new Bitcoin wallet and neglect to back up the seed phrase tied to the funds. If that individual’s phone is later wiped, access to the BTC held in the wallet could be lost permanently.

**Self-custodial wallet providers do not possess these seed phrases**, meaning the responsibility for safeguarding the mnemonic phrase rests entirely with the user.

![River chart on lost coin estimations](https://static.news.bitcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ghrev9hxyaaox5l.jpeg)

Mt Gox’s roughly **740,000 BTC loss** illustrates the problem. Some of those coins were later recovered and are now moving through a rehabilitation distribution plan, meaning the original loss figure no longer represents permanent destruction.

One of the most well-known examples of loss involves Welsh IT engineer **James Howells**, who accidentally discarded a laptop hard drive containing the private keys to **7,000 to 8,000 Bitcoin**. The drive ended up in the Docksway landfill in Newport, Wales, where it has remained buried beneath hundreds of thousands of tons of waste.

Over the years, Howells assembled a team of specialists and obtained financial backing for an excavation effort, but Newport City Council repeatedly denied permission, citing risks associated with methane gas, asbestos, and toxic leachate. In January 2025, the High Court dismissed his legal challenge, ruling that the case had no realistic prospect of success. At current prices, Howells’ lost cache is valued at nearly **half a billion U.S. dollars**.

## What This Means for Traders
For anyone holding Bitcoin, the dormancy data reinforces a **scarcity case that goes beyond the 21 million hard cap**. If even the conservative 2.7 million BTC figure holds, effective circulating supply runs meaningfully below headline numbers, a detail long-term holders may find more relevant than short-term price swings.

The debate is unlikely to be resolved soon. Burn-address proof remains tiny. Dormancy metrics remain probabilistic. And the Patoshi-era coins, whoever controls them, remain untouched. Many believe Nakamoto’s coins will never move, but that remains a matter of opinion rather than an established fact.

Satoshi's 2010 lost bitcoin remark turns 16 as data pegs permanently lost bitcoin near 3.1 million BTC. But is that figure provable?

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