I heard about the second guy and how he lost his hard drive and Bitcoi. I feel really sorry for them, though losing Bitcoin means donations for the entire Bitcoin community. I don't feel they could recover their bitcoin, especially the second person. It's quite impossible to recover hard drive storage, even after he finds his device. It might already be damaged, and the date would be destroyed. However, people weren't thinking too deeply about Bitcoin at the beginning. That's why they lost their funds. Now people are starting to secure their funds since we realised the value of Bitcoin.
It's just impossible when years have passed and then the James is still hoping for it to be found. The tendency that it was already gone on the land fill is high or if it's found, you're right that it has already been damaged.
Is the second guy the same person who used robot dogs or something like that, to look for his HDD? But going back, we cannot blame them for being too eager to get back with their lost assets due to its huge value. It is easy to say that we should take extra care with important things, which is correct, but we are talking about early investors of Bitcoin. It might be because they did not see its potential before which did not push them to be more protective as with us today. Remember the guy who used multiple bitcoins for a pizza? They are just having regrets now ‘coz they already saw how huge it value would be but if we would place ourselves on the time they lost it, we night as well suffer with the same problem by now.
Yes, that's him based on the article provided. They're eager to recover it because it has got a value now but before, when they're already eager in keeping it, they probably didn't became careless keeping it. And about laszlo? I heard him said it on an interview that he didn't regret purchasing pizza with 10k bitcoins.
The first guy made a double mistake.
Using wallets we can access our coins in two ways: password and seed.
He lost the seed and the password, containing millions of dollars. This is so basic, but we need a back up and a back up of the back up. Everyone needs the second backup
Terrible mistake that he did, I think that on the early days, there were too many of the early adopters that have done the same mistake.
This is a story of the past that continues to be talked about, but even so stories about losing Bitcoin like this make us as users or who still want to have bitcoin must be careful about the security of private keys and wallets owned.
Don't let this happen to us when holding quite a lot of Bitcoin or altcoins that have potential in the future.
A clear loss like this will be very painful and all efforts have been made to open the wallet or search for an HDD containing thousands of Bitcoins.
Create a backup that is safe, easy for you to access and safe from others and of course everything can be accessed properly.
Imagine that it was years ago and then the value has grown over time. The pain was even more impactful to them, watching and calculating how much they should have now if they'd just kept it and it's still on their possession.
People lost such huge value at today's price because back then those thousands of coins were only worth a few bucks. Would you setup a robust storing system for $5, or would you just write down the words and put the paper somewhere in your room?
But yes, it's a good cautionary tale to illustrate how easy it is to permanently lose coins. Everyone who owns Bitcoin should have many different backups that can't fail all at once.
That's true, way back then it wasn't that important at all to think that it will skyrocket a lot. We learn a lot of things from them, aside from keeping our own keys safely, the contribution that they've left to the entire market is such a huge distribution that will be credited to them.
Well, it's easy to forget something or put a little to no attention to it when it doesn't have value yet. This happens to us in our daily life, not just only with Bitcoin. There were a lot of things that we ignore, but turns out to be completely useful on the latter.
These guys might have never thought of backing up their wallets or tried to secure them because they didn't see this one coming. Nobody was expecting bitcoin to be valued this high. So, I understand where these guys are coming from, they have lost a huge amount of money, but there's nothing much they can do about it because it already happened.
This will now serve as a lesson for those who planned to put their money into something and then totally forget about it when good things didn't happen in like a couple of years.
Exactly, they haven't anticipated that it is going to grow a lot in the next years and all the regret was there but it's too late.
yes sure, we have to thank to them. Because they lost 15,000 BTC, that make the bitcoin supply was limited. and maybe enough to make a new ATH if the request always is the same as the missing one. There was nothing they could do now, they were just giving up, and let's try to start Bitcoin again from zero. So if they continue to wail and keep trying to restore what they was lost that will waste a lot of time and energy. As I know, many people out there has lost their Bitcoin were greater than Stefan and James, but it was not revealed to the public because they were realize it could not be returned to their pocket again.
Right, there are many others that aren't exposed in the public. Actually, I'm trying to remember someone that I've watched that has given a lot of BTCs but then lost it all. It's not just yet clear on my mind on who was that guy again.
Technologies are developing day after day, and recovering these coins may give a value greater than their actual value because they are proof, for example, of the device’s efficiency in searching for junk, or proof that data can be recovered from an old USB, even though I thought that the actual data lifespan for a USB is less than 10 years. If we assume that this USB is from 2011, we can consider that this data has already been lost.
It is impossible to say that these currencies have been lost, but they will definitely not have the same value as current currencies due to the additional costs of recovering them, and you may not succeed in doing that.
I think that preparing a multi-signature wallet is a better option, as we have had devastating natural disasters in recent years.
They also don't have any accuracy rate on how much percentage will they be able to recover it, so better leave it there as zero or say 1% chance of recovering them. The USB/flash drive likely have been destroyed and aged over the period of time.
I did not know about the first man but knew about the second man who is famous, James Howell with his attempt to dig a massive landfill to recover the hard disk back. I don't know will the first man retrieves his coins back but the second man surely lost it forever.
His attempt to convince the county to approve him to dig the landfill is impossibly be accepted. Even he has their approval, it is still impossible to have a usable, recoverable disk.
The story of first man is a red flag for anyone who don't make good wallet backups. They always have to back up their wallets as accidents can occur and they must have backups to use and recover wallet.
Ignoring the loss of that man, I thank you for sharing the story because the man story is interesting as it contains another massive giveaway in early days of Bitcoin community history. Pizzas, faucet from Gavin Andresen and awards in a Star Craft game. They are all massive award, giveaway, faucet in bitcoin amount.
Those stories were like the legends in our time and will always be part of the history. But these two guys, these are just like the few sad stories of their lifetime that are likely haunting them until now. Too many life lessons are in there already.
Can you see the irony? He produced an animated video about how crypto works but why didn't he listen to his own words, of course if the video had anything to do with wallet/security, one has to wonder though, if he was considering bitcoins to be valuable, that's why he kept them in that stupid usb drive right? Why didn't he create a back up for it and put it in a deposit box? After all he was protecting something valuable.
Maybe he was just too confident or became out of focus during that time. And there's not that much difference in modern day influencers where they are not putting where their mouth is.
The story of these two people continues to be discussed because they lost their opportunity to become billionaires due to their mistakes. Both stories are almost the same, because they ignore how important access to opening a wallet is. The heartbreaking incident experienced by both of them is a valuable lesson for the next generation who want to be involved and are already involved in Bitcoin, always be careful about maintaining and saving access to open wallets even if the assets contained in them are small. I can never imagine how both of them would feel due to their negligence or ignoring how important access to opening a wallet is, they would be very depressed and continue to think about assets that could never be cashed out again.
It is more than a heartbreak, we can imagine ourselves filling their shoes and I guess even less than a bitcoin and just a few mbtcs will already make us disappointed and depress and would have bad thoughts in our minds coming to the extent that I won't mention....
Not yet forever I guess. Have they completely given up all hope? In the first case, there are still two last attempts. In the second case, last I heard the man was still looking for ways to locate that multimillion-dollar hard drive.
If in the end they both lost all those coins, I thank them for the donations. That's more than 15,000
BTC. A big donation for everybody.
Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone.
On the same thread where Satoshi mentioned this, Gavin Andresen, the man to whom Satoshi entrusted his/her/their creation before he/she/they left, had this prophetic thing to say:
And the more valuable they become, the more careful people will be not to lose them.
It's unfortunate both men got those coins much earlier. Mr. Thomas wouldn't have lost that password; Mr. Howells wouldn't have accidentally thrown away that hard drive had those coins were already worth millions.
They likely have lost their hope already, how many years has it been and there's no signs of light at the end of their tunnels. Those quotes that you've included from our OGs really make sense and prophetic that has come into reality these days.
Today, we're near the 19.5 million mark, and what OP said is true and it's estimated that millions of Bitcoins have been lost by people throwing away their wallets or forgetting their private keys. But behind all this maybe users need to look for this type of wallet which is the safest where the user does not need to open his private key to the network and Hopefully, We now understand what Bitcoin is and why everyone in this world is going crazy for it.
It's still important that whatever wallet we use, we should get the keys from it. Because what if you don't have it and you forgot your password just as what happened to Stefan then it's useless and you just have donated to the community as well.
I think that only happened in the past when bitcoin didn't have too much value and many people didn't have faith in it. But that will be difficult to happen these days when everyone knows the value and potential of bitcoin in the future. I even know many people who only hold a handful of bitcoins but are also very concerned about protecting their seed phrase carefully, let alone those who hold large amounts of bitcoin. Things have changed a lot because the value of bitcoin is huge now.
Yes, although there's a lesser chance that it may happen to some on these days but we'll never know if there are some careful and reckless guys there that are confident of themselves that also miss to back up their keys.
Haven’t heard about IronKey. Was this some hardware wallet? Back then didn’t think they existed. It seems it’s some encrypted usb drive by Kingston.
So just wondering how he only has 2 tries left. Can’t he just clone the usb and keep trying using different PINs until he gets it correct. I know there was a vulnerability with a Trezor or Ledger a few years back that had a vulnerability which could be bypassed if the PIN was forgotten.
I'm not technically good with that but there could be some like password protection and attempt that's set. Stefan do understand how much he got that time and trying to protect it but it seems became too much when he has forgotten the most necessary thing, to back up.
Well, there would be several things to qualify here. Firstly, if your bitcoin holdings become important, consider having them in several HWs or the system you use, as well as considering multisig or other systems for each HW. The other would be, as the fiat price rises, cashing out and buying things that you can't lose just like that, tangible assets for example, such as real estate, land, even gold, which is much worse than bitcoin but is a way to diversify and protect yourself against real boating accidents.
People were less experienced way back then and I think that they've got an idea on what they do. It's just that they've f themselves during that time and didn't anticipate it that the ones they're keeping will grow such in vast.
Well, I think right now they regret it so much, but it's not their fault because they never knew bitcoin would increase in price so much. But think of it: the amount of bitcoin they have, it's a lot of bitcoin. We can say this bitcoin will be classified as "lost bitcoins." There is an article about
How Much Bitcoin Is Lost Forever and How Did It Get Lost? According to Cane Island investment manager Timothy Peterson, around six million BTC have been lost, a substantial chunk of Bitcoin's 21 million supply. which is a lot, and it tackles in the article what is the common reason why there is lost bitcoin, and as the situation happens between the two people mentioned on the topic, their case is the common reason. So imagine you are also one of them who lost a lot of potential fortunes. I guess you will also regret it for life. Anyway, what has been done is done; all they can do is regret it and hope they can still retrieve it, which is little to no longer possible.
Yes, truly regret that this happened for both of them. They will never need to work if they've just keep it so that's a big remorse being shown by them. If we're going to estimate all of those that have been gone or lost forever as per that number of 6M then that's around 28.5% of the entire total supply of Bitcoin. That's why it's such a huge donation to everyone that's holding it.
The seconds story is pretty insane. He wants to use AI and robot dogs and is being backed by hedge fund investors. I can see why his city council would be reluctant to accept his proposal. If I was a landfill worker I would probably be upset about having my work disrupted by a guy hoping to get rich quick. I can understand his desperation but he isn't entitled to any help that would massively inconvenience many peoples lives in order to correct his mistake.
I think that the landfill management just did the right thing. They're also optimistic about that he may find it soon but if it's about the operation outside crypto or just looking for the USB, they have other better things to think of.
As for me, the lesson I learned: You have to own your own landfill!!!
I was most affected by the last story. When I heard the story for the first time, I could not believe that all this great wealth was thrown into a landfill and the man was unable to convince the municipality to recover it!!!
Sad stories indeed. All these large amounts of Bitcoin have been forgotten. I do not expect their owners to ever be able to recover them. Totally unfortunate.
I am surprised that most of these are professionals and not beginners. I do not know how they committed these simple (fatal) mistakes. Two of them lost their passwords and the last one threw the hard drive in the garbage!!!
We have a popular proverb that says: “A smart man’s mistake is worth a thousand.”
Haha! That was one big lesson and that quote that there's cash in trash is for real. Kidding aside, these are horrible stories that has happened and we don't know how many are there to be heard of when those people will expose it to the public. And that's another lesson there, they're not beginners and knows their thing but still became careless.
I think the first guy might have a chance at recovering his Bitcoin though it looks very slim. Since there are two attempts left, we never can tell he might get lucky and finally unlocks it. As for the second guy, I don't think he has a chance at getting back his lost Bitcoin. Even if he finally gets the approval from the city council to dig the landfill, there's the possibility that he might not find the hard drive there. Both of them didn't believe in Bitcoin initially that's why they find themselves in this predicament. The take home from both stories is that whatever investment we've, no matter how small the value might be, we should guide it jealously.
I give it a hard time when my memory cells are already gone. It's been years and it's impossible to remember that anymore and the same with the landfill incident.
People are very negligent and they lose valuable items every day ..all over the world. We should learn from the mistakes that other people are making to prevent that from happening to us.
It is a huge responsibility to take control of your own wealth and not to rely on intermediaries or third parties to secure it for you. These actions come with risks and we should adapt our behavior to the change or we will lose that wealth.
Make copies of your private keys or recovery seed phrases and store them in a safe place... and make sure that it is protected from the environment.
We're like in an era that we know how to learn from others experience and that's leaving us the valuable that they've left for the community. While it's true that many are losing everyday the valuables that they've got and that's why don't be the next one especially the newbies.
Read full stories of two people losing bitcoins. But the first person has no chance of getting his bitcoins back and the second person doesn't seem to be able to complete his bitcoins even though he takes various AI steps to get his bitcoins back. Two people lost their bitcoins when the price of bitcoin was very low. Little did they know then that Bitcoin would become so valuable. They used Bitcoin carelessly and lost it, but they didn't think it was a big deal. Now that Bitcoin has become so valuable, they have realized their negligence. One should always remember in life that nothing should be neglected that all the things we neglect will one day be most beneficial. So we who work in crypto currency will not neglect anything, we will keep a close eye on everything and keep everything carefully. And yes, we will keep the seed phrase of our wallet very safe so that we can find it immediately if needed.
Just set your mind to take care of important things and even those non important because who knows what will be the value of it someday. But straight to the point, just don't forget to keep yourself a back up and never ignore that most important part when you're holding your assets.
It is a valuable lesson for all of us to back up everything related to Bitcoin wallets. Many people have experienced losses like the two people above and this should be a concern for us to be more careful. And don't underestimate what you see because it may become big without us realizing it.
But if they lose in the early years of Bitcoin's release, it might be understandable because no one knows how Bitcoin will travel in the future. People tend to underestimate Bitcoin and think it is a new toy they can play with. But when they see nothing changes drastically, they forget about Bitcoin.
But when the price of Bitcoin can increase drastically, they are even willing to do anything to get their Bitcoin. But it's already past. They can't do anything and lose their Bitcoins. We must save Bitcoin by backing it up and storing it in a place we only know.
That's true, they just can't let go because the real value of Bitcoin is there and very visible. I think that everyone will also think of something just to try to retrieve it if there's any possible way but that's how the reality sucks that when it's gone and there's no chance anymore, it's hard to accept the reality and truth mostly for these two.
This is what we call expensive mistake. Imagine, you are one of those lucky people to have Bitcoin at an early stage, but you didn't manage to store your keys on the safe place. There are a lot of people wishing to have invested in Bitcoin during that time but have doubts, then, these two guy did not make an effort to keep it safe.
Well, maybe they really don't expect for Bitcoin, like anyone else, to be this valuable. This is a huge mistake that they will regret forever. All the Bitcoin they hold before will just be a memory.
During that early stages, they don't know that they're still at the early stage. Like what we're wishing for, what if we're already on that time and we'll hold. But there's no way that someone can do that and regret is always at the end of one's experience.
Well, thanks for reminding us I guess.
I wonder how these 2 people are feeling right now that the coins that they're holding just because they want to hold it, but wasn't that important for them many years ago are now worth millions. I mean it's just like you threw money out of the blue. Aside from what you said, maybe I'll just add the fact that we need to trust the process. If we believe that an asset like Bitcoin will grow it's price a few years or a decade from now, then at at all means we need to protect it as much as we can. That includes backing up the seed phrases.
I guess it's good on my part that I didn't, and I will not experience this one. I'm already keeping my seed phrase in a safe place already.
I agree, trusting the process. And from their experience, we all know that we're just going through the process and there's gotta be more in the future. Maybe in the next couple of years?
a very surprising number, I am sorry for the loss they feel. that is a huge amount nowadays. I may have heard of the second person, but this is the first time I have heard of the first person. That is something that may be very regrettable.
It's just that, when we think that we bought a lot of Bitcoin in 2011, we will try hard to find the private keys that we have. In fact, to this day, I am still looking for some of the private keys that I have used, and I hope that these private keys still have the bitcoins that I forgot about.
Until now, I continue to backup the private keys that I have in stages and store them in several different places. However, this story can be a valuable lesson for us.
Honestly, when I was making this thread, I thought that it's just the same story until I get to see the clearer picture of it that they're two different people and two different scenarios of devastations.
This is not the first time bitcoin have been lots and remained unclaimed by anyone except they have the access to the private keys that unlock it's access on its encoded means on the blockchain, same applies to every lost coins due to wrong address, they all constitute to the bitcoin network and market value we have today, ones a bitcoin transaction is made, it's irreversible, this should always be noted and we should stop deceiving ourselves from patronizing those that promises funds recovery if lost or hacked, they will rather take more from you by charging you for their service while the coin remain irrecoverable.
Those were a scam but in fairness to the recovery plan of James, it's interesting but it didn't just came into reality while it looks there's a very low chance.
He didn't throw away the HDD, but his wife, and all that nonsense about how AI and some kind of robots will help him find what was lost a long time ago are nothing but a bunch of ordinary nonsense with which he wants to draw attention to himself. He used to ask for 250 pounds for an interview, maybe today he asks twice as much, or he hopes that someone will make a movie about him.
In addition, a hard drive that has been buried for so long in a pile of who knows what kind of junk is probably completely unusable, in other words, the chances that the data can be saved are almost nil.
Wooah, those are some nice catch and twist. Maybe that interview is what he can fulfill to at least make money from the exposure that he's got from his experience.
Here we are talking about some 15 000 BTC, and that is completely insignificant considering the max supply and the fact that some, based on very strange methodologies, say that millions of BTC have been lost. The fact is that these two people in question here did not appreciate BTC at the time when the wrong move happened to them in life, and now they are crying for spilled milk.
What about the man who hid his backup in fishing poles and the owner of the apartment where he lived threw them in the trash?
Although that's a lot and they've been careless after all since it was the early days. That's how it goes and a lesson that can afford during that time but not anymore today. And for the other guys, I'm trying to remember if it was Max Keiser's friend that he has given a lot of Bitcoins but that friend of his drowned his laptop on the ocean containing those gifted Btcs.
I was thinking about the first guy Stefan why he doesn't try to brute force the drive but when I searched a bit it seems the Ironkey hard drive is encrypted if you made 10 incorrect attempts the whole data will automatically be erased.
Never heard about Ironkey it's a good storage for important data but not a good storage for a Crypto wallet.
How about cloning the whole drive?
It seems not possible for Ironkey so he can't recover the password and its contents.
He's a tech guy and I think he probably thought of that but to no avail.
About the 2nd guy, this is the reason why all my drive is in my safety box and sealed even if their hardware is broken, maybe in the future I could still recover some of my old data and LTC that I earned before from the faucet when the price of BTC is around $200. The drive is undetectable until now I didn't throw it because I can still move the disc into a new host.
Since James mentioned where the hard drive is located I believe some people are attempting to go there and try their luck to find the hard drive.
For sure that there were scavengers out there already trying to pick the lottery ticket from James but it's most likely that they're just waiting their times on it.
The two incidents are yet another reminder that simply collecting bitcoins in a wallet is not yours unless it is secured. Those who lost their passphrases or keys are unlikely to get them back. If it could be done, they would have been trying to figure it out. They tried but failed. Day by day that hard drive is getting more and more useless. As a result we can be almost certain that it is not possible for them to recover those bitcoins. Bitcoins they kept in their wallets were worthless at the time, but now they are skyrocketing. But I can definitely say that there is a big difference between that time and the current position. Now those who are collecting or holding bitcoins are concerned about how to keep bitcoins safe.
Truly far from each other if we're about to compare the time they've lost it and the time they're trying to recover it. There's a big disparity obviously on the value on it and that's why they're more interested in recovering it.
OP, thank you for sharing.
This is going to be more inspiring on why I have to tattoo my passwords and private keys on me 😆.
As at the inflation of my national economy, I cant even afford to lost a $100 worth BTC talk more of seeing it growing virtual at when I can't get access to it. God forbid
NP.
Btw, Seriously? Don't do that.
Well, surely the case that is repeated the most, and known or they disclose it, so, imagining the amount of bitcoin losts is like thinking about what price bitcoin could be tomorrow at 00: 00:00 you can only be close to the amount.
The second case I have followed more closely, the last I heard is that the guy plans to sue the mayor's office, who is in charge of issuing the permit.
If we analyze the possibilities of both, the first would have it better, we see that neither has it, but in the comparison in the "physiological" analysis (
) of what was stated in your OP, the probabilities are better for the first case, on the second case it is very possible, in fact it is a 99% certainty, that the hard drive is not in good condition.
In the case of the landfill, come on, it guy2 can them sift through the garbage, it would be interesting for the "archeology" of hard drives to demonstrate something before they disappear.
I don't know, they let billionaires play with space rockets and they don't let a guy dig through the trash and find nothing of value.
What a developing story, James is even planning to do that because he's not allowed to search onto the landfill with the plan that he's got? He seriously is going far with that and I think it's not all about anymore the recovery but more on clout chasing if that's so.
