2013-11-27 Guardian: 7,500 Bitcoins thrown in bin

[maurya78]

Pretty tragic story actually

Impossible to imagine what that feels like!

[niothor]

SS Gairsoppa - shipwreck - £137 million in silver recovered

Well , silver doesn't get damaged by water. Data on hdd does.

[qwk]

SS Gairsoppa - shipwreck - £137 million in silver recovered

Well , silver doesn't get damaged by water. Data on hdd does.

True. One might have to estimate the probability of recovering the data and only get at it if there's a reasonable risk/opportunity ratio

[niothor]

SS Gairsoppa - shipwreck - £137 million in silver recovered

Well , silver doesn't get damaged by water. Data on hdd does.

True. One might have to estimate the probability of recovering the data and only get at it if there's a reasonable risk/opportunity ratio

Actually , isn't this the biggest prank one can think about it?
BTC to 10k , and have a earlier adopter , known for his bitcoin stash claiming he lost his usb drive with an unecrypted wallet in a garbage dump.
10's and 1000's of people foraging there ....

[Rotex]

I've just listened to him on the radio and he sounds understandably depressed. Really feel for him. He's an IT engineer and had loads of old drives hanging about and just threw a load of old crap out. Jeremy Vine apologised to the audience for not alerting them to Bitcoin earlier. 'We missed it. We just missed it!'

BBC tech correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones was also on there telling his tale of losing the coins in his mobile wallet.

I thought is was a shame no-one contemplated that it's still relatively early days in the evolution of bitcoin and there's still potential for growth.

[PenAndPaper]

Pretty tragic story actually

Impossible to imagine what that feels like!

Well i guess it was about time for some bad news after all those success stories of ppl realizing that they are millionairs because they remembered their lost forgotten wallet 

[DrahogErusiel]

oops didnt see this post.bleah

[qwk]

SS Gairsoppa - shipwreck - £137 million in silver recovered

Well , silver doesn't get damaged by water. Data on hdd does.

True. One might have to estimate the probability of recovering the data and only get at it if there's a reasonable risk/opportunity ratio

Actually , isn't this the biggest prank one can think about it?
BTC to 10k , and have a earlier adopter , known for his bitcoin stash claiming he lost his usb drive with an unecrypted wallet in a garbage dump.
10's and 1000's of people foraging there ....

If this ever becomes a possibility because of rising value, such an enterprise would try and get him on board.

I seriously think this could become interesting in a few years

[mistress_magpie]

There needs to be a waste company doing Bitcoin salvage. He should find, or found, such a company, and go halfsies on the proceeds of the recovery.

I have tweeted Jeremy Vine Show with such.

[azw409]

The hard disk, if it is still readable, belongs to the council (or waste company) now. It's not like salvage where who-ever recovers it owns it.

I'm amazed that a week or two of mining produced 7,500 BTC back in 2009. I know a guy that was mining back then and, come to think of it, I haven't seen him around work for months - I bet he owns a Caribbean island now.

[mistress_magpie]

I would assume that it can't be decrypted without the cooperation of the original miner

[qwk]

I would assume that it can't be decrypted without the cooperation of the original miner

Encryption was not built into the bitcoin client back then.
And if he didn't even think of making a backup, why bother with encryption?

So, most likely, it's unencrypted

[linuxnewbie]

Utter noob question, but am I right in thinking that if I physically write down the incoming transaction addresses from my wallet and keep it somewhere safe, I am creating a genuine safeguard for my coinage in case of digital wipeout/theft of computer/throwing in trash etc?

NB Date sorted

You need to have the private key for each address. Electrum (electrum.org) makes it easier because it allows you to restore a wallet from 12 words (the seed). Besides securing the 12 words, make sure to either encrypt the wallet if you want to store it on your hard drive, or cut and paste it after every use to a more secure place such as an external drive. Personally, I just delete the wallet after every use because I know I can restore it from the seed. But you should only do this after making sure you can restore the wallet from the seed.

[superresistant]

Howells stopped mining after a week because his girlfriend complained that the laptop was getting too noisy and hot

Can't stop laughing 

[hilariousandco]

Utter noob question, but am I right in thinking that if I physically write down the incoming transaction addresses from my wallet and keep it somewhere safe, I am creating a genuine safeguard for my coinage in case of digital wipeout/theft of computer/throwing in trash etc?

NB Date sorted

You need to have the private key for each address. Electrum (electrum.org) makes it easier because it allows you to restore a wallet from 12 words (the seed). Besides securing the 12 words, make sure to either encrypt the wallet if you want to store it on your hard drive, or cut and paste it after every use to a more secure place such as an external drive. Personally, I just delete the wallet after every use because I know I can restore it from the seed. But you should only do this after making sure you can restore the wallet from the seed.

Thanks for this. I've been hearing good things about the electrum wallets.

[satosh007]

The question that arises is after 50 yrs will half the bitcoins be lost? and after 100?

that's definitely not a good prediction for the future of BTC as a currency, right?
any wise man insights or thoughts?

[hilariousandco]

The question that arises is after 50 yrs will half the bitcoins be lost? and after 100?

that's definitely not a good prediction for the future of BTC as a currency, right?
any wise man insights or thoughts?

I imagine lost coins can only push up the value of the remaining coins.

[superresistant]

The question that arises is after 50 yrs will half the bitcoins be lost? and after 100?

that's definitely not a good prediction for the future of BTC as a currency, right?
any wise man insights or thoughts?

Any Bitcoin lost increase the value of all others. As long as I have my Bitcoin, it is a good thing.

In my opinion, most people that lost Bitcoin don't know yet that they lost it. They are mostly the very early adopters, they mined incredible amount of Bitcoin when it had no value and forgot about it. I think that 1/3 of Bitcoin are already lost.

[polarhei]

This may be the most stupidest thing to hear. May make the market good as At last, there may be only 13Mil available in the mid 21st century as some of them are lost forever.

I hope the team can find the disk.

P.S Media usually labels stupid things.

[Rotex]

Utter noob question, but am I right in thinking that if I physically write down the incoming transaction addresses from my wallet and keep it somewhere safe, I am creating a genuine safeguard for my coinage in case of digital wipeout/theft of computer/throwing in trash etc?

NB Date sorted

You need to have the private key for each address. Electrum (electrum.org) makes it easier because it allows you to restore a wallet from 12 words (the seed). Besides securing the 12 words, make sure to either encrypt the wallet if you want to store it on your hard drive, or cut and paste it after every use to a more secure place such as an external drive. Personally, I just delete the wallet after every use because I know I can restore it from the seed. But you should only do this after making sure you can restore the wallet from the seed.

Marvellous, thanks. I found instructions to display the private keys for each address using the debug window and have made a physical copy which will be hidden away. Feeling a lot more confident about safeguarding my wallet (even though there's not a lot in it!). Will check out Electrum.