James Howell and his lost passphrase!!!

[Wind_FURY]

He needs a so-far nonexistent AI operated ground penetrating scanner that only looks for laptop hard drives, to search the area of the landfill, were he knows the hard drive is.

His story is constantly changing. Wonder what his story is in the upcoming film about him ?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74zel3ng1vo

Did James Howell release his NFT? I believe that he would have more success in making some money back from the loss of his private keys than actually getting all his money back by finding his lost hard drive.

Shower thought. What if he's actually a Bitcoin billionaire with good OPSEC pretending to have lost his private keys? He's probably cashing out today while everyone believes he has no Bitcoin.

That is a valid point, you just made. I am beginning to think why he would not have moved on. And even the thought of inventing devices that would help with the excavation, there is more to this than meets the eyes.

There's also the profit side of things. To give him the benefit of the doubt, if he finds his hard drive, he'll be a billionaire. To not give him a benefit of the doubt, the attention he'll get from his "story" will make him - merely - a millionaire. But both of those conclusions leave him having money, although it would definitely be more preferable to recover the hard drive. It would give him both the billions from the Bitcoins, and the millions for his story.

[Glowy]

He needs a so-far nonexistent AI operated ground penetrating scanner that only looks for laptop hard drives, to search the area of the landfill, were he knows the hard drive is.

His story is constantly changing. Wonder what his story is in the upcoming film about him ?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74zel3ng1vo

Did James Howell release his NFT? I believe that he would have more success in making some money back from the loss of his private keys than actually getting all his money back by finding his lost hard drive.

Shower thought. What if he's actually a Bitcoin billionaire with good OPSEC pretending to have lost his private keys? He's probably cashing out today while everyone believes he has no Bitcoin.

That is a valid point, you just made. I am beginning to think why he would not have moved on. And even the thought of inventing devices that would help with the excavation, there is more to this than meets the eyes.

There's also the profit side of things. To give him the benefit of the doubt, if he finds his hard drive, he'll be a billionaire. To not give him a benefit of the doubt, the attention he'll get from his "story" will make him - merely - a millionaire. But both of those conclusions leave him having money, although it would definitely be more preferable to recover the hard drive. It would give him both the billions from the Bitcoins, and the millions for his story.

Absolutely, correct. Either ways its a win for him. Well, I hope that eventually, we will know what comes out of the whole project, as it were.

[Forsyth Jones]

There is never an excuse for such a failure to take a backup but in early days keys weren't produced deterministically. They were randomly generated and they needed to take a new "digital" backup every time they created new set of keys which is what happens during mining (each block mined to a new address). Since the process was not as straight forward as writing down a mnemonic, it was easy for people to get lazy and not do it at all.

Even so, this is no excuse. If he had made at least one copy and kept it separate from the original location, the chances of avoiding this tragedy would have increased considerably. The wallet's keypool was updated every 100 transactions (both receiving and change addresses). When using the first 100 addresses, 100 new keys were generated.

He wasn't going to make more than 100 transactions in that period, so he would have been able to restore 100% of the funds if he had made a backup of the file.

As many have said here, he should give up and focus on accumulating bitcoins from now on (he should have accepted this in the first few months).

I know it's not easy, but unfortunately life is like that. We have to accept it and try to start over. Bitcoin is like a train that only passes through the station once... and that's what happened with Hames Howell's story. He grabbed onto the train, but didn't follow the safety rules, and that's why he fell. His story should serve as motivation for us users to follow basic digital security rules: backups and strong passphrases!

[Glowy]

There is never an excuse for such a failure to take a backup but in early days keys weren't produced deterministically. They were randomly generated and they needed to take a new "digital" backup every time they created new set of keys which is what happens during mining (each block mined to a new address). Since the process was not as straight forward as writing down a mnemonic, it was easy for people to get lazy and not do it at all.

Even so, this is no excuse. If he had made at least one copy and kept it separate from the original location, the chances of avoiding this tragedy would have increased considerably. The wallet's keypool was updated every 100 transactions (both receiving and change addresses). When using the first 100 addresses, 100 new keys were generated.

He wasn't going to make more than 100 transactions in that period, so he would have been able to restore 100% of the funds if he had made a backup of the file.

As many have said here, he should give up and focus on accumulating bitcoins from now on (he should have accepted this in the first few months).

I know it's not easy, but unfortunately life is like that. We have to accept it and try to start over. Bitcoin is like a train that only passes through the station once... and that's what happened with Hames Howell's story. He grabbed onto the train, but didn't follow the safety rules, and that's why he fell. His story should serve as motivation for us users to follow basic digital security rules: backups and strong passphrases!

Finally He quits! James is done trying to find his lost drive.

https://www.paris2018.com/news/12-years-failed-attempts-man-who-lost-his-hard-drive-containing-742m-bitcoin-finally-ends-his-search/

[pooya87]

Finally He quits! James is done trying to find his lost drive.

I haven't really followed up on this but I remember he was trying to raise money selling tokens, does anyone have any report on what happened with that. Did he manage to make millions raising funds as some were speculating?

[Wind_FURY]

There is never an excuse for such a failure to take a backup but in early days keys weren't produced deterministically. They were randomly generated and they needed to take a new "digital" backup every time they created new set of keys which is what happens during mining (each block mined to a new address). Since the process was not as straight forward as writing down a mnemonic, it was easy for people to get lazy and not do it at all.

Even so, this is no excuse. If he had made at least one copy and kept it separate from the original location, the chances of avoiding this tragedy would have increased considerably. The wallet's keypool was updated every 100 transactions (both receiving and change addresses). When using the first 100 addresses, 100 new keys were generated.

He wasn't going to make more than 100 transactions in that period, so he would have been able to restore 100% of the funds if he had made a backup of the file.

As many have said here, he should give up and focus on accumulating bitcoins from now on (he should have accepted this in the first few months).

I know it's not easy, but unfortunately life is like that. We have to accept it and try to start over. Bitcoin is like a train that only passes through the station once... and that's what happened with Hames Howell's story. He grabbed onto the train, but didn't follow the safety rules, and that's why he fell. His story should serve as motivation for us users to follow basic digital security rules: backups and strong passphrases!

Finally He quits! James is done trying to find his lost drive.

https://www.paris2018.com/news/12-years-failed-attempts-man-who-lost-his-hard-drive-containing-742m-bitcoin-finally-ends-his-search/

Is it a coincidence that he "quits" his search, and then 80,000 Bitcoin that were untouched since the Satoshi-era were moved?

  👀

Finally He quits! James is done trying to find his lost drive.

I haven't really followed up on this but I remember he was trying to raise money selling tokens, does anyone have any report on what happened with that. Did he manage to make millions raising funds as some were speculating?

Someone posted that he would be selling NFTs to raise the money to fund his search, and that NFT holders will have their share of the Bitcoin if the hard drive is recovered.

He probably didn't want to do it because of the low probability of success, plus no one is allowed to enter the dump site without a permit because of high toxicity levels?

  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Cricktor]

Is it a coincidence that he "quits" his search, and then 80,000 Bitcoin that were untouched since the Satoshi-era were moved?

I'm a bit puzzled what kind of odd connection you try to draw from James Howell's 8,000ish bitcoins to those 80,000ish bitcoins from Satoshi-era? This seems like quite a wild speculation, don't you think? But please, go ahead and elaborate! I'm eager to be surprised and entertained. 

I wonder if there were some sponsors to James' legal battles who actually invested some money which they gave him in advance and where there won't be the promised ROI. Anyway, I didn't follow all the gossip about his case.

[Wind_FURY]

Is it a coincidence that he "quits" his search, and then 80,000 Bitcoin that were untouched since the Satoshi-era were moved?

I'm a bit puzzled what kind of odd connection you try to draw from James Howell's 8,000ish bitcoins to those 80,000ish bitcoins from Satoshi-era? This seems like quite a wild speculation, don't you think? But please, go ahead and elaborate! I'm eager to be surprised and entertained.  

I wonder if there were some sponsors to James' legal battles who actually invested some money which they gave him in advance and where there won't be the promised ROI. Anyway, I didn't follow all the gossip about his case.

Pardon me, but I made the wrong assumption.

  

Although what was truly impressive was how those 80,000 coins were sold to the market and it didn't make Bitcoin go down by more than a small percentage. I believe that it will show institutional investors that Bitcoin is ready for a larger portion of their capital.



$9 billion United States Freedom Dollars

[philipma1957]

Is it a coincidence that he "quits" his search, and then 80,000 Bitcoin that were untouched since the Satoshi-era were moved?

I'm a bit puzzled what kind of odd connection you try to draw from James Howell's 8,000ish bitcoins to those 80,000ish bitcoins from Satoshi-era? This seems like quite a wild speculation, don't you think? But please, go ahead and elaborate! I'm eager to be surprised and entertained.  

I wonder if there were some sponsors to James' legal battles who actually invested some money which they gave him in advance and where there won't be the promised ROI. Anyway, I didn't follow all the gossip about his case.

Pardon me, but I made the wrong assumption.

  

Although what was truly impressive was how those 80,000 coins were sold to the market and it didn't make Bitcoin go down by more than a small percentage. I believe that it will show institutional investors that Bitcoin is ready for a larger portion of their capital.



$9 billion United States Freedom Dollars

some rich old fuck. has an angle for his heirs to avoid inheritance taxes.

and we dropped are 7% 123.1k to 114.9k  plus we rallied back. and are around 117.8k

[Wind_FURY]

Is it a coincidence that he "quits" his search, and then 80,000 Bitcoin that were untouched since the Satoshi-era were moved?

I'm a bit puzzled what kind of odd connection you try to draw from James Howell's 8,000ish bitcoins to those 80,000ish bitcoins from Satoshi-era? This seems like quite a wild speculation, don't you think? But please, go ahead and elaborate! I'm eager to be surprised and entertained.  

I wonder if there were some sponsors to James' legal battles who actually invested some money which they gave him in advance and where there won't be the promised ROI. Anyway, I didn't follow all the gossip about his case.

Pardon me, but I made the wrong assumption.

  

Although what was truly impressive was how those 80,000 coins were sold to the market and it didn't make Bitcoin go down by more than a small percentage. I believe that it will show institutional investors that Bitcoin is ready for a larger portion of their capital.



$9 billion United States Freedom Dollars

some rich old fuck. has an angle for his heirs to avoid inheritance taxes.

and we dropped are 7% 123.1k to 114.9k  plus we rallied back. and are around 117.8k

I believe that the sale didn't start when Bitcoin was on the price point of $123,000. It probably started when it was already in the price level between $117,000 and $118,000, then it had a "mini-crash" to the $114,900 to the $115,000 price level. That was a small drawdown considering that Bitcoin is supposed to be a "volatile asset".

Plus Bitcoin is currently trading back in $118,000 - very good price movement.
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