The Joy of forgotten Bitcoin accounts...

[Kakmakr]

So, I was just opening my email today....and browsing through the spam and the unsolicited junk email and phishing scams, when my eye caught a name that I have not seen in a few years. I clicked and opened the email and saw that it was a site that I joined over 5 years ago.. but I totally forgot about it.

This email warned me that the site are going to delete all the dormant accounts, so I navigated to the site (manually... not clicking on links) and tried to login. I obviously forgot the password, so I clicked on the "forgot password" option and it allowed me to change my password.

To my surprise, the account was still funded with coins that I deposited almost 5 years ago... and it was worth considerably more now... than what it was worth back then. (I think the Bitcoin price was around $7000+ at the time)

This put a huge smile on my face, because it is the EXPENSIVE holiday season and I need all the money that I can get to fund this silly time of the year.

Have you experienced the same thing..... please share your story with us.  

 

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[Wapfika]

I’m not sure if this is counted.

Not an account but a seed phrase that I save on the drafts of my personal mail. I’m very active on participating to airdrop before that’s why I always save Ethereum as fee was back ETH price is just 100$ each.

My computer got infected by virus that makes my backup .json file for my seed phrase deleted in the process. I knew the existence of my Ethereum wallet and all the ETH inside but I lose hope on recovering it. Luckily, I open my drafts when I’m sending an email then notice the seed phrase. I remember that I temporarily backup my Eth address when I created on MEW to my email through saving it on drafts.

This gives me around 2000$ with just a 0.6ETH

[tbct_mt2]

Have you experienced the same thing..... please share your story with us.  

I am not sure it is a true story but I have reasons to believe you are telling a truth. Because I knew some people who bought Dogecoin in years like 2017 and 2018 and left them on exchanges like Bittrex, Poloniex before they moved to Binance for trading. With Dogecoin in 2017 or 2018, it was traded at low value but suddenly in 2021, it pumped a lot by Elon Musk. Those guys got considerable money from Dogecoin they left on exchange accounts which they did not touch for years.

Not an account but a seed phrase that I save on the drafts of my personal mail.

Storing your seed phrase in a personal email's draft. Oh, it' is a very bad practice. You have to stop doing this since today.

[CryptoHeadlineNews]

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To my surprise, the account was still funded with coins that I deposited almost 5 years ago... and it was worth considerably more now... than what it was worth back then. (I think the Bitcoin price was around $7000+ at the time)

This put a huge smile on my face, because it is the EXPENSIVE holiday season and I need all the money that I can get to fund this silly time of the year.

Have you experienced the same thing..... please share your story with us.  

You just need to see the smiles on my face right now while reading this post, as if I'm the one who discovered the forgotten Bitcoin. Lolz... And, I understand the joy you must be feeling right now, knowing you have an extra $7000 to spend this forthcoming Christmas, as it's really something worth to celebrate, and I'm very much happy for you. But however, there are two lessons I got to learn from this, which include;

1: To always diversify your funds and not storing it all in just one basket, because if only had you not diversify your Bitcoin asset into different wallets, you never would have discovered this whooping huge sum.

2. To always store your coin on a very secured wallet, because only if had you not stored this amount of Bitcoin on a reputable wallet, I'm sure by today the exchange or wallet is likely to have gone bankrupt or shutdown and you losing all your funds.

[Kakmakr]

Have you experienced the same thing..... please share your story with us.  

I am not sure it is a true story but I have reasons to believe you are telling a truth. Because I knew some people who bought Dogecoin in years like 2017 and 2018 and left them on exchanges like Bittrex, Poloniex before they moved to Binance for trading. With Dogecoin in 2017 or 2018, it was traded at low value but suddenly in 2021, it pumped a lot by Elon Musk. Those guys got considerable money from Dogecoin they left on exchange accounts which they did not touch for years.

Not an account but a seed phrase that I save on the drafts of my personal mail.

Storing your seed phrase in a personal email's draft. Oh, it' is a very bad practice. You have to stop doing this since today.

Now why would I want to lie about something trivial like this? It is a "crash" type gambling site and I think a lot of people are getting these emails from them, because they are busy with house cleaning. (I checked my other webmail addresses and found another email from an Alt account that I created on the site... but that account was empty.)

I also had a small amount of Dogecoin on faucet site... but they closed it down. (Freebitco.in also had a dogecoin faucet) ...would be nice if I found that info.... because Dogecoin was shit back in those days. (The whole Elon Musk thing... hyped it a little... but I cannot seem to find anything I kept.. from the account I created for that)  

[NeuroticFish]

Have you experienced the same thing..... please share your story with us.  

This kind of stories are very rare. (PS. I am genuinely happy for you!) People who are for this long crypto aware (to say to) know that it's not safe to keep money for long at exchanges, hence if there was something valuable, it was withdrawn.
On the other hand, I am certain that I've left a long trail of worthless altcoins (lower than the minimum to withdraw) along the exchange I've used, especially in my early years of my crypto adventure, but I am not aware that any of those would suddenly become of any value (and I will also not start now to hope or look for that)

[cr1776]

With the various forks, e.g. bitcoin gold etc, many people may have "forgotten" holdings out there.  It is difficult to know unless you are aware of every fork that has happened, so don't forget to look and see there too.

[Lucius]

Speaking of forgotten things, I've also had some discoveries over the years, although I've always been very careful with Bitcoins and I haven't (at least as far as I know) lost anything. Given that I started collecting dogecoins almost 10 years ago and that at that time 1000 of those coins were worth even $0.14, at one point I collected them all in one pile and discovered that I had enough of them to buy a car in a medium range. After that I remembered another "forgotten project" and dug up another forgotten treasure.

The bad news is that I didn't sell any of it because I simply didn't need the money then, and if Mr. Mars doesn't perform his magic again, it will just be another in a series of stories that I will remember. I won't regret it though, it's just money

[LogitechMouse]

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This put a huge smile on my face, because it is the EXPENSIVE holiday season and I need all the money that I can get to fund this silly time of the year.

Have you experienced the same thing..... please share your story with us.  

 

I just hope that I also did the same as you did years ago, but no I didn't. I know all my accounts, and I still have their username and passwords.

What I only remember is a cloud mining website called Eobot, and I remember that I did put some Bitcoins there. Those Bitcoins are the ones that I got through doing some faucets back when I was a newbie. By the time I saw this thread, I tried visiting that website, but it wasn't existing anymore. I was a newbie at that time, and I don't care about it anymore because, after all, I got it for free.

TBH, you're lucky that you still have those coins that you deposited 5 years ago. Most of them either forgot it already or if they kind of remember it, they already forgot the username and password that they used. I guess I need to congratulate you because you will have some money to be used in this upcoming holiday, or you will have some coins that you can sell when the bull run happens.

[EluguHcman]

I would say it was a lottery won but no maybe I should say it was an income on your long term investment that has done you such good.
I haven't had one the experience but sometimes ago around 2016, I learnt about from someone who sold his Bitcoin but left with some unreasonable fractions.
He literally said he had to go a different phase of life because Bitcoin is not a journey one could Lean on since he needed to go into some conventional businesses.

He said he left over a minimum fractions of the Bitcoin intensionally with the aim that he wanted the limited Bitcoin in that of his wallet to serve as services to the wallets account so it doesn't get dormant. That was his mentality. He basically forgot about it but around April 2023 he has to retrace and could manipulate and succeeded access to the account again after all the pros and the cons of Bitcoin. Then he said to had been shocked over the rate of accumulated Bitcoins in that of his account and then he was impressed and had to accumulate more and sets to hodl for a long term.

I think at most cases in long-term investors runners, something experienced impressively are triggered them with the courage to hodling for the long periods of time and not mostly like they just want hodl for a long term.

I have heard a lot about this and hello, I keep my private keys to myself and hover along them after some periods of time and hoping if related testimonies would happen too 😆.

[adultcrypto]

So, I was just opening my email today....and browsing through the spam and the unsolicited junk email and phishing scams, when my eye caught a name that I have not seen in a few years. I clicked and opened the email and saw that it was a site that I joined over 5 years ago.. but I totally forgot about it.

This email warned me that the site are going to delete all the dormant accounts, so I navigated to the site (manually... not clicking on links) and tried to login. I obviously forgot the password, so I clicked on the "forgot password" option and it allowed me to change my password.

To my surprise, the account was still funded with coins that I deposited almost 5 years ago... and it was worth considerably more now... than what it was worth back then. (I think the Bitcoin price was around $7000+ at the time)

This put a huge smile on my face, because it is the EXPENSIVE holiday season and I need all the money that I can get to fund this silly time of the year.

Have you experienced the same thing..... please share your story with us.  

First of all, congratulations on your treasure discovery... I have seen beauty of holding Bitcoin for long, I guess the website just helped you to achieve that.

From your impression, the holiday season is settled for you and that is something amazing, after all,  what is wealth without enjoying it? However, I will suggest you don't blow all away, just discipline yourself to use half of the funds and you will still have enough fun while holding some Bitcoin as we enter the halving year. The portion you are holding might just yield as much profits as the money you saw in that account. Just my suggestion, it is up to you to do what is suitable for you.

[Pmalek]

My experience is somewhat similar. An old Bitcoin casino I joined several years ago was closing, and they sent email notifications to all registered players. I hadn't visited the site for years and forgot that I even have a balance there. When I saw the email, I logged in to see if I left anything in my account. I found over 0.06 BTC and had no problems withdrawing it.

If they hadn't been honest about their intentions or if the email had landed in my spam folder, I would probably not have seen it because it's not an email address I use regularly. If the email spent 10 days in the spam folder, it would have been deleted. The email was a few weeks old and luckily my email client didn't classify it as spam.   

[avikz]

So, I was just opening my email today....and browsing through the spam and the unsolicited junk email and phishing scams, when my eye caught a name that I have not seen in a few years. I clicked and opened the email and saw that it was a site that I joined over 5 years ago.. but I totally forgot about it.

This email warned me that the site are going to delete all the dormant accounts, so I navigated to the site (manually... not clicking on links) and tried to login. I obviously forgot the password, so I clicked on the "forgot password" option and it allowed me to change my password.

To my surprise, the account was still funded with coins that I deposited almost 5 years ago... and it was worth considerably more now... than what it was worth back then. (I think the Bitcoin price was around $7000+ at the time)

This put a huge smile on my face, because it is the EXPENSIVE holiday season and I need all the money that I can get to fund this silly time of the year.

Have you experienced the same thing..... please share your story with us.  

Congrats! You should buy a lottery ticket today. Luck is on your side.

I too had a similar incident couple of years back on Litecoin. I had an account with Litecoin foundation when the price was in cents and we used to get a good amount of litecoins from faucets. I had stored my entire faucet earnings in the wallet and due to low price, I didn't care much.

When I discovered that account, the price of Litecoin was around 30 dollars. So I had recovered them and moved them to my secret wallet. I am holding them still today. It's feels great to find such treasures sometime. I totally understand the feeling.

[Upgrade00]

The closest I have come to this is creating a Bitcoin wallet to test run something. I sent a small amount of Bitcoin to that wallet ran the test I wanted to and left them on the wallet without opening it for the next 3 years.
When I returned to the wallet later when I was verifying my different seedphrases I discovered it and the then insignificant amount had become a bit more significant. It felt like a gift to myself from the past.

You were really lucky to not only get notified of the plan to close dormant accounts but to still find your funds on it. In my experience platforms will close shop with whatever was left on it in the hopes that no one will check their dormant accounts.

[kentrolla]

Happy for you mate, atleast it allowed you to change the password or maybe you had saved the seed phrase somewhere but unfortunately not the case for my blockchain wallet as seed phrase is lost and it been over 8 years but unable to retrieve my account with some amount of Bitcoin in it.

Just want to give you an advice since you got to know the growth and return on investment through Bitcoin, why don't you start hodling Bitcoin? I mean even I am doing it as i buy in parts whenever I can and down the line this would yield more profit to us.

[buwaytress]

Anything I would have forgotten or overlooked wouldn't be much. Usually too small to even withdraw, am pretty careful of keeping track of it all so doubt this will happen to me.

A few years ago I deliberately threw away/deleted a huge number if silly alts. Mostly actual qt wallets. I know at least one pumped in the ATH aftermath  of 2018/19. Sadly, no way to recover them as these were all only recoverable with seed phrases or private keys.

I'm over them.

Now if someone left me some Bitcoin posthumously, heh. A fantasy I have had when really, really sleepy.

[Captain Corporate]

OHHHH that feeling... That is one of the all time greatest feelings in the world. I havne't felt it recently, and unfortunately when I felt it was much less than what it is today, it was 2018 when I found an account, and the price of bitcoin was 3 thousand dollars, I had not even a full one bitcoin, so the return wasn't that great. I can't help but think what would have happened if I didn't touch it all the way to today and if I cashed out today, I would have solved every single economical problem I have today. Between having sickness and debt all the same time, I think I would have paid it all, and would still have a lot of money left to put aside. Kudos to you mate, it is a great feeling, I wish you get many like that.

[SatoPrincess]

I had a similar experience sometime this year. A friend messaged me that he needed a small amount of Tron for gas fee to complete a transaction and wanted to purchase from me. I remember a local exchange I used back in the day, and recommended it to him. I had not used the exchange in a while but knew it was still running because of the ads I keep seeing.  Luckily, the password was saved to my browser and when I opened the wallet and discovered I had a reasonable amount of Ethereum in there. I was so happy and couldn’t believe my eyes. It surprised me that I would have money somewhere and not remember.

[ajiz138]

Interesting story.... The money you never expected to come back for on the day of the holiday season you'll be smiling from ear to ear when you find this out. 

I completely forgot what I stored altcoins in several sites but I used to record all of them in notepad but because the laptop was broken and left it alone because I thought altcoins were meaningless but now the price has started to be quite high, but I regret having sold the laptop.

My story will not be as interesting as yours, and I have lost everything because I did not save the seed phrase properly, forgot how much the total was but it will not be a regret because it has been forgotten.

[Mame89]

Have you experienced the same thing..... please share your story with us.  

I'm not as lucky as you, bro. I have a story like yours but not about BTC assets but about altcoins, more precisely on ETH. I remember at that time eth was still cheap and there was no BNB. At that time, most altcoin transactions still used ETH and the fees were still cheap at that time. I often use transactions using the eth network, I remember very well I used an eth address and I didn't save the private key properly even though there were still eth assets in it, it's just that at that time the price of eth was still cheap, and at that time I didn't get any education about saving private keys is important I underestimate this problem. In the end when ETH rose and reached ATH I couldn't access the wallet anymore, the assets weren't much but it was very painful to remember.

However, from that incident until now, I keep all my private keys or wallet phrases, basically everything related to my wallet I keep carefully. because I don't want to repeat the same mistake I made before, namely not being able to access a wallet that still has assets in it.