Wired Magazine: Mine BTC in 2013 but...

[Baofeng]

They called bitcoin as,

The world’s most popular digital currency really is nothing more than an abstraction. So we’re destroying the private key used by our Bitcon wallet.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170223144508/https://www.wired.com/2013/05/butterfly_live/

Damn, it's now worth almost $550 million at the current price:

Bitcoin address:

Code:

1BYsmmrrfTQ1qm7KcrSLxnX7SaKQREPYFP

They have deleted the articles already, but its good that it has been archived.

Just include this to the millions of bitcoins that has been lost already, making the supply really that scarce. And we can only speculate what's going on their mind seeing the latest bull run.

[Fundamentals Of]

Is there a way to destroy the private keys? If they did, are we sure there was no one who made a back up of it somewhere and secretly?

Anyway it seems it is true since that happened several years ago. And there was no movement ever since. If this is the case then the amount will indeed go down the drain together with the lost and totally forgotten Bitcoins. That makes Bitcoin more scarce than its 21 million fixed supply.

[Welsh]

Typical tabloid stuff. They make some pretty substantiated claims, and then do the shock horror equivalent by saying they are destroying their coins, trying to imply that its worthless. I imagine the employee that had to delete those articles had a good ol' chuckle.

Is there a way to destroy the private keys? If they did, are we sure there was no one who made a back up of it somewhere and secretly?

Anyway it seems it is true since that happened several years ago. And there was no movement ever since. If this is the case then the amount will indeed go down the drain together with the lost and totally forgotten Bitcoins. That makes Bitcoin more scarce than its 21 million fixed supply.

Destroying usually means just purposely losing it. Although, there probably isn't any way of proving no one didn't keep a backup. I don't you would ever find out, since if someone did make a copy somewhere, that doesn't belong to them. I think it would probably belong to Wired. So, if an employee did, its not their money.

Although, I would like to think that someone would have piped up if they saw the current Bitcoin price, and still has a copy. I imagine Wired would give them a nice bonus that year.

[KonstantinosM]

Typical tabloid stuff. They make some pretty substantiated claims, and then do the shock horror equivalent by saying they are destroying their coins, trying to imply that its worthless. I imagine the employee that had to delete those articles had a good ol' chuckle.

Is there a way to destroy the private keys? If they did, are we sure there was no one who made a back up of it somewhere and secretly?

Anyway it seems it is true since that happened several years ago. And there was no movement ever since. If this is the case then the amount will indeed go down the drain together with the lost and totally forgotten Bitcoins. That makes Bitcoin more scarce than its 21 million fixed supply.

Destroying usually means just purposely losing it. Although, there probably isn't any way of proving no one didn't keep a backup. I don't you would ever find out, since if someone did make a copy somewhere, that doesn't belong to them. I think it would probably belong to Wired. So, if an employee did, its not their money.

Although, I would like to think that someone would have piped up if they saw the current Bitcoin price, and still has a copy. I imagine Wired would give them a nice bonus that year.

You can provably destroy bitcoin. You send them to an address that makes them un-spendable. It's called proof of burn. 

[BrewMaster]

Although, I would like to think that someone would have piped up if they saw the current Bitcoin price, and still has a copy. I imagine Wired would give them a nice bonus that year.

if someone had a copy of the wallet or keys they would never come forward. they would just resign and go enjoy the half a billion dollar that was dropped in their pocket without letting anyone know. how much bonus are they going to get if they revealed it anyways
rise isn't stopping here either, it could reach $1 billion soon.

[Welsh]

You can provably destroy bitcoin. You send them to an address that makes them un-spendable. It's called proof of burn.  

That's true, but what I think Wired meant with "destroyed" is that they simply got rid of the credentials or forgot them. So, in return "destroying" them, but not something that can be verified. Unless, you consider that the coins haven't moved since, verification.

if someone had a copy of the wallet or keys they would never come forward. they would just resign and go enjoy the half a billion dollar that was dropped in their pocket without letting anyone know. how much bonus are they going to get if they revealed it anyways
rise isn't stopping here either, it could reach $1 billion soon.

Depends on where their moral compass is at, but also their confidence tackling the legality side of things. I wouldn't know who would be considered the owner, since Wired stated they destroyed or discarded their coins, surely that's giving up ownership? Although, then there's the issue that Wired employs journalists, or writers to write about these sort of things, so they could probably argue that the employee opened a wallet on their behalf, and discarded the coins without permission.

Obviously, this is speculation since none of us know the exact situation of how this happened. I'm sure they are well aware of that situation now.

[TedMosby]

if someone had a copy of the wallet or keys they would never come forward. they would just resign and go enjoy the half a billion dollar that was dropped in their pocket without letting anyone know. how much bonus are they going to get if they revealed it anyways
rise isn't stopping here either, it could reach $1 billion soon.

if someone really had a copy of it, 2017 should be the year we saw some movement on that wallet.
I assume that people who had the copy have weak hands just like a regular crypto enthusiast me.

maybe they just did it for a test, to make editorial content, and destroy the key to add dramatic effects for entertainment purposes on that article 

[Tstar]

I guess they just deleted it.

You are right about the scarcity and the 21m supply. The real total supply is much lower due to lost keys, forgotten wallets and keys, confiscated coins and other similar reasons. There are speculations that 10%-15% of all coins are lost forever.

[Welsh]

I guess they just deleted it.

You are right about the scarcity and the 21m supply. The real total supply is much lower due to lost keys, forgotten wallets and keys, confiscated coins and other similar reasons. There are speculations that 10%-15% of all coins are lost forever.

It could even be more than that. There was a thread hovering around on the confirmed lost amount I believe, not sure what the total of that was, but I imagine the vast majority of cases go undocumented because your average Joe lost a wallet that he forgot about years ago.

maybe they just did it for a test, to make editorial content, and destroy the key to add dramatic effects for entertainment purposes on that article 

Its the shock, and awe moment basically saying "its so worthless we will just erase it from our existence" by forgetting the credentials. A lot of tabloids, and news sort of sites do this, and to be honest its more entertaining see those words backfiring than anything. I doubt Wired are losing much sleep over it though, since they are probably worth a lot.

[dothebeats]

If they really did 'destroy' it, I wonder how much of an idiot they think of themselves right now. The author could have just created a backup for that wallet and just not told anyone that they didn't do it and reap the rewards later. This surely adds to that statistics of people regretting their actions in the past about bitcoin. That's still 13 bitcoins all in all lost in limbo, that could easily buy you a car and get you a vacation to somewhere nice (away from COVID as well). Welp, I guess some people are really just that thick, and I couldn't blame them though--they never knew back then that it will get this big. Thank those guys at WIRED for making bitcoin scarcer by 13 full coins, though

[hatshepsut93]

Damn, it's now worth almost $550 million at the current price:

Were do you see millions? It's just 550 thousands / 13 BTC.

It's easy to laugh at people for their past mistakes, but how many of us Bitcoin users today have ignored Bitcoin in its early days? Probably a lot. Or how many of us didn't buy Ethereum @ $1 to sell it today for $1,200? The same goes for Apple, Tesla, Amazon and other stocks that have mooned. There's really not that much difference between not buying and selling or in this case destroying the key, all these action mean lack of belief in long-term performance.

[Welsh]

It's easy to laugh at people for their past mistakes, but how many of us Bitcoin users today have ignored Bitcoin in its early days? Probably a lot. Or how many of us didn't buy Ethereum @ $1 to sell it today for $1,200? The same goes for Apple, Tesla, Amazon and other stocks that have mooned. There's really not that much difference between not buying and selling or in this case destroying the key, all these action mean lack of belief in long-term performance.

Its not just Bitcoin either, this is one instance where history has repeated itself over, and over. Some people overlooked the importance of the internet as a recent example, which now dominates probably the majority of the populations time. I believe people are cautious by nature, and therefore tend to not like change. Therefore, they stick with what they know, and there's a few pioneer within the world which start to bring the adoption to the masses, until it catches on like a wildfire.

Hopefully, we don't only just seen Bitcoin skyrocketing in the near future, but we also see more adoption in mainstream companies, since those (pioneers) would be exposing the Blockchain, and Bitcoin to more users. Paypal recently had this effect with them adopting Bitcoin, I've heard numerous people around me talk about Bitcoin, because now all of a sudden they trust it a little bit more that a company like Paypal has shown interest in it.

Although, hearing this is quite entertaining, because of the way they rubbished Bitcoin, I wouldn't laugh at them. They were very close to actually discovering something extremely profitable, or if they broadened their minds a little more, something much more important than that.

[RickDeckard]

This is the kind of news that I'm sure is received as mixed feelings ... Who would have though that after all these years BTC would be in it's current state (with more to come I'm sure). I think that it's safe to say that most people didn't even imagine the impact that BTC would have in their lifes (for the better or worst).

In the end I just can't feel sorry for whoever decided to part ways with their keys / BTC address. It means that they didn't believe in the produce thus they shouldn't also reap the rewards in the years to come...

[hatshepsut93]

Its not just Bitcoin either, this is one instance where history has repeated itself over, and over. Some people overlooked the importance of the internet as a recent example, which now dominates probably the majority of the populations time. I believe people are cautious by nature, and therefore tend to not like change. Therefore, they stick with what they know, and there's a few pioneer within the world which start to bring the adoption to the masses, until it catches on like a wildfire.

But it's not really bad to be conservative, if we started throwing our resources at everything novel, the economy would be very inefficient, and scammers would be thriving, like it was with ICO and altcoins. It's only bad when someone is stubborn about adopting new tech after it has already succeeded, but in this case 2013 was still very early days when the future of Bitcoin was unclear.

[ene1980]

If they really did 'destroy' it, I wonder how much of an idiot they think of themselves right now. The author could have just created a backup for that wallet and just not told anyone that they didn't do it and reap the rewards later.

That is common sense for a market that is yet to explore the possibilities but the author was too cocky and wanted to make a statement to prove that his words were exact and he might have uninstalled the wallet and deleted the DAT file along with the password and looking back he will be regretting as he lost a fortune to make a statement  .

In future this statement will be known as the million dollar statement  .

[RickDeckard]

If they really did 'destroy' it, I wonder how much of an idiot they think of themselves right now. The author could have just created a backup for that wallet and just not told anyone that they didn't do it and reap the rewards later.

That is common sense for a market that is yet to explore the possibilities but the author was too cocky and wanted to make a statement to prove that his words were exact and he might have uninstalled the wallet and deleted the DAT file along with the password and looking back he will be regretting as he lost a fortune to make a statement  .

He wanted to be the cool kid in the yard and just shame BTC but in the end BTC shamed him 

[TravelMug]

Yeah, they deleted that article because they known they have made a big costly mistakes. Perhaps it got a lot of hits during that time, and the company just wanted to show, for publicity.  And now they get the attention they want, but not the one they wanted to, because the opposite happen.

There could be other individual or company during that time that really don't understand bitcoin and it's potential, so I guess that could be there argument to at least not feel bad about it.

[Kemarit]

If they really did 'destroy' it, I wonder how much of an idiot they think of themselves right now.

Don't rub it in mate, 

The author could have just created a backup for that wallet and just not told anyone that they didn't do it and reap the rewards later. This surely adds to that statistics of people regretting their actions in the past about bitcoin. That's still 13 bitcoins all in all lost in limbo, that could easily buy you a car and get you a vacation to somewhere nice (away from COVID as well). Welp, I guess some people are really just that thick, and I couldn't blame them though--they never knew back then that it will get this big. Thank those guys at WIRED for making bitcoin scarcer by 13 full coins, though

They probably did but totally destroyed everything and not thinking that Bitcoin will be huge in just less than ten years. But you can't really blame them though, that time as Bitcoin is still in it's nascent stage and for them maybe it was just a fad that will go away, hence, some little experiments gone bad after many years.

[dansus021]

what the heck is going on  destroying private key maybe just delete it or i agree with you all guys maybe right now the publisher try to remember where it is and you just mentioned the bitcoin and i swat the bitcoin cash only is worth more than $5K 

[so98nn]

They might be burning from inside out to death by seeing such hike in the bitcoin today. I guess there are many more such vases in the history who has gained and lost the bitcoins in the first place. From pizza delivery boy to waitress sisters all of them have done the same and they fought for their dimes in the later stages.

We can't really imagine or track all the bitcoin wallets which are dead right now. By dead I really mean lost private keys and stuff.

Considering the complexity of blockchain and wallet functions I barely doubt they will be ever recovered by us.  

If they really did 'destroy' it, I wonder how much of an idiot they think of themselves right now.

Don't rub it in mate, 

LOL. Seriously don't.