Bitcoin graveyard - The most infamous cases of lost bitcoins

[Dogedegen]

IMO, these case are result of their own immature attitude. There is no bravery in keeping asset worth millions of dollar on a single drive or in fishing rod case. It is sheer recklessness.

Yeah immature and lazy. There is no justifications for stuff like this. I have many backups of my own data and they don't even have real value like Bitcoin, not even emotional value because a lot of it is just downloaded content like software and shows. If you have assets worth many millions that I expect a good person to have many kinds of backups simultaneously, so that they are addressing all kinds of risks that could go wrong. Like having a backup of everything is good but if it is in the same house as the main storage of the wallet then it is vulnerable to many problems like physical attacks, fires, floods and issues like that. As the value is higher, more money must be invested in order to properly keep it safe.

The case of Gerald Cotten is a lesson that people shouldn't joke with. Imagine spending years accumulating wealth that would become useless when you're dead, it's not what anyone would wish for but would happen to any investor that doesn't make plans to what happens to their coin they're dead.

Unlike the banking system where ones wealth can be claimed by a next of kin after demise with the help of the account manager, every investor should have someone trustworthy that they can give access to their keys cause without it the investment would be wasting in your wallet when seize to exist.

A lot of people would not care about what happens to the coins after since they are dead, and there is also a big danger of giving it to someone when it is highly valuable. Sometimes people get ruined by inheriting a lot of money or winning a lot of money easily. You could donate it to good causes and let them inherit a smaller amount.

[Pablo-wood]

IMO, these case are result of their own immature attitude. There is no bravery in keeping asset worth millions of dollar on a single drive or in fishing rod case. It is sheer recklessness.

Yeah immature and lazy. There is no justifications for stuff like this. I have many backups of my own data and they don't even have real value like Bitcoin, not even emotional value because a lot of it is just downloaded content like software and shows. If you have assets worth many millions that I expect a good person to have many kinds of backups simultaneously, so that they are addressing all kinds of risks that could go wrong. Like having a backup of everything is good but if it is in the same house as the main storage of the wallet then it is vulnerable to many problems like physical attacks, fires, floods and issues like that. As the value is higher, more money must be invested in order to properly keep it safe

If we were in their shoes many of us won't even have kept us either. From 2009-2013 no one ever believed bitcoin will worth this amount. Even until 2016 many were still doubting despite bitcoin making new highs and maintaining it's volatility. We all safe guard our wallets today not because we are more careful but it's because we now know the worth of bitcoin and it costs us more to acquire them compared to when it all started.

The case of Gerald Cotten is a lesson that people shouldn't joke with. Imagine spending years accumulating wealth that would become useless when you're dead, it's not what anyone would wish for but would happen to any investor that doesn't make plans to what happens to their coin they're dead.

Unlike the banking system where ones wealth can be claimed by a next of kin after demise with the help of the account manager, every investor should have someone trustworthy that they can give access to their keys cause without it the investment would be wasting in your wallet when seize to exist.

A lot of people would not care about what happens to the coins after since they are dead, and there is also a big danger of giving it to someone when it is highly valuable. Sometimes people get ruined by inheriting a lot of money or winning a lot of money easily. You could donate it to good causes and let them inherit a smaller amount.

People are prepared ahead of time before taking up inheritances a good investor should have the time to train and prepare his or her successor while they are alive so that they will have value for their assets and continue the trend of accumulating more thus strengthening their generational wealth.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

The case of Gerald Cotten is a lesson that people shouldn't joke with. Imagine spending years accumulating wealth that would become useless when you're dead, it's not what anyone would wish for but would happen to any investor that doesn't make plans to what happens to their coin they're dead.

Their lost coins add more values to ours as they takeout more coins from ever being traded (accessable) and they're doing the community good so we're the beneficiaries for them losing their coins. It isn't a must to pass on your wealth as we have cases of wealthy people donating all they've acquired  while on earth to charity when they pass on.

So for anyone that don't want their wealth to be passed on either willingly o unknownly, they're welcome to forget about passing down their keys to their estates and forget it to help take out more coins from circulation.

It makes no sense to lose your Bitcoin anymore because the awareness are everywhere and anyone who lose his/hers is just their ignorance.

[tabas]

This guy's death is a mystery and has made a lot of conspiracy about his death in India. Because prior to his death a month before, he has emptied his wallets and made several accounts to make it look normal. That's why with the rumors said when he went to India, it's likely that he has changed his identity and reported that he's death. Well, that's one of the interesting stories I've read for these lost bitcoins.

This is a curious case, then, which could be a scam.

That's true, can really be a scam that the world will never find out.

I also did some research and there are others saying that his exchange is a scam that's why he went to India. And after that, we don't know what happened to him as it was reported that the had died. Even the wife doesn't have any clue as to what happened to him or where in the access to the exchange.

Yes, it can be a planned death with the conspiracies that were also said before. We can only tell a guess but we'll never find out the real thing, maybe he's really dead or maybe it's a good play that he did and disappeared forever.

This story always sounds like a fiction. How can an exchange that holds millions of dollars have only one person with access to the keys? That should raise a suspicion automatically. Several thousands of people were affected. It should be mandatory for companies especially exchanges to have multiple people that can access the wallet and authorise transactions. Whether the conspiracy about his death is fake or not, the lesson is still the same. The system was already built on failure and it is only a matter of time to manifest.

Running an exchange before wasn't so tightened and strict. The government doesn't care about it all along as long as it's functional, people just go and register their accounts. But, not just the government and exchanges learned from this mystery but also the users.

[Darker45]

“He took his keys to the grave. Whether he meant to is the question nobody can answer.”

“He hid a fortune so well that nobody could find it — including himself.”

“He built a fortress around his crypto. When he died, his family was locked outside it.”

I'm sure there's a considerable amount of Bitcoin right now that's stored so well they'd die with their owners.

How then should one hit the perfect balance between making sure your funds are strongly protected that nobody could steal it from you but making it also weak enough at the same time so that your family would still find them when you're gone?

It's kind of hard because while still alive the priority is to make sure nobody's able to break into your stash. Some even bury their backups somewhere only they know. Some don't even show a single clue they hodl Bitcoin.

In a way, it seems Bitcoin is paradoxical in that it's an intergenerational asset but the design which requires the hodler to be his/her own bank could mean it only lasts a lifetime.

[Dogedegen]

Yeah immature and lazy. There is no justifications for stuff like this. I have many backups of my own data and they don't even have real value like Bitcoin, not even emotional value because a lot of it is just downloaded content like software and shows. If you have assets worth many millions that I expect a good person to have many kinds of backups simultaneously, so that they are addressing all kinds of risks that could go wrong. Like having a backup of everything is good but if it is in the same house as the main storage of the wallet then it is vulnerable to many problems like physical attacks, fires, floods and issues like that. As the value is higher, more money must be invested in order to properly keep it safe

If we were in their shoes many of us won't even have kept us either. From 2009-2013 no one ever believed bitcoin will worth this amount. Even until 2016 many were still doubting despite bitcoin making new highs and maintaining it's volatility. We all safe guard our wallets today not because we are more careful but it's because we now know the worth of bitcoin and it costs us more to acquire them compared to when it all started.

This argument does not apply because I demonstrated with an example of backing up data that does not really have direct value, it is more about saving you time from having to do it all again and that time loss has value too. So it is good to have regular backing up discipline of things, they do not need to have direct or high value for that to matter. It is better to not provide excuses or justifications for people who don't back up things. We already have way too many who don't do it and then there are big issues if they lose something. It would be better if everyone backed up all their laptops and phones regularly, but not to the cloud.

A lot of people would not care about what happens to the coins after since they are dead, and there is also a big danger of giving it to someone when it is highly valuable. Sometimes people get ruined by inheriting a lot of money or winning a lot of money easily. You could donate it to good causes and let them inherit a smaller amount.

People are prepared ahead of time before taking up inheritances a good investor should have the time to train and prepare his or her successor while they are alive so that they will have value for their assets and continue the trend of accumulating more thus strengthening their generational wealth.

The case that you describe happens very rarely in practice, people are not ready for big money simply by reading some stuff. In most cases things turn out bad when there is a large inheritance, and they can turn out bad in all kinds of different ways. One would be if the inheritance is not clear there are often families that collapse completely over small parts of the fortune, brother betrays another brother and all kinds of stuff.. The studies show that it is better not to leave a lot of money to anyone who does not already have that kind of money.

[Olotu20]

If there is any lesson that we all needs to take after reading threads like this is that we should protect our Bitcoin with outmost importance because, when once you loss the keys to your Bitcoin wallet your Bitcoins are lost for ever. All the cases that is been mentioned here one thing is common and that is they didn't give too much attention to security of their Bitcoin that is when someone will forget his passkeys to his wallet.  Again these cases took place in the early stages of Bitcoin trying to gain attention to main stream market so people didn't give that much attention to it then.

These days it's very rear for someone to loss access to his wallet because, knowledge has increased and people now understands fully what it means not to give attention to the safety of their Bitcoin, by properly keeping their seedphrase safe and secure. Some times some things happen so that those coming from behind can actually learn so that, they will not repeat what those who has gone before them has made.

[Livingleged]

Stefan Thomas: 7,002 BTC locked behind a forgotten password.

The Thomas case highlights one of the most counterintuitive aspects of cryptocurrency security: the very features designed to protect your coins can also lock you out permanently. The IronKey did exactly what it was supposed to do — prevent unauthorised access. The problem was that the authorised user could no longer prove he was authorised.

For Bitcoin holders, the lesson is twofold. First, never rely on a single point of failure for accessing your funds. Second, the security of your backup matters as much as the security of your wallet. A password written on a single piece of paper is not a robust backup system. Consider Shamir’s Secret Sharing, multi-location storage, or a solicitor-held backup.

Thomas’s 7,002 BTC remain frozen in cryptographic limbo — too valuable to abandon, too dangerous to guess at.

It was worth reading through your entries post. But this part is really the part that caught my attention actually, when dealing with bitcoin one has to take seriously make way and not relying on a single point of failure for accessing fund this could really mean a lot more than every other thing because if that one thing you rely on got lost or ever damaged, access is definitely denied.

Honestly proper backups can never be overemphasised, and once we take all this into consideration we should be with full control over our coins.

[pawanjain]

Lost bitcoins are those which nobody has the access to it. Forgotten wallets, death, losing the keys etc... are all truly lost bitcoins.
Mt. Gox scam is not technically lost, someone has access to those funds and same with Satoshi's funds which are not technically lost even though we may consider them as lost because Satoshi will never access those funds again.
Sometimes things are not in our control and we often end up losing our money and those will remain inaccessible to everyone forever.

[Cricktor]

Lost bitcoins are those which nobody has the access to it. Forgotten wallets, death, losing the keys etc... are all truly lost bitcoins.

"Truly lost bitcoins" are those where there's solid evidence that private key material has been permanently lost. But valid and solid evidence is rarely possible or verifiable. In most cases you have to believe a story someone tells where they claim to have lost access to private keys permanently.

Another case are truly burned bitcoins where there's proof on the blockchain that coins were sent to OP_RETURN or other provably unspendable transaction outputs.

Mt. Gox scam is not technically lost, someone has access to those funds and same with Satoshi's funds which are not technically lost even though we may consider them as lost because Satoshi will never access those funds again.

Unfortunately there's likely no evidence that someone still living has possession of required private key material to spend those coins in either case.

If Satoshi is still alive (which I hope for him), I don't believe, he will ever move any of the coins attributed to him. But this assumption is no axiom. I just see no reason for him to spoil his so far excellent privacy. It's his life insurance...

Sometimes things are not in our control and we often end up losing our money and those will remain inaccessible to everyone forever.

I highly recommend to do some reasonable loss risk assessment and have some mitigation implemented to avoid most relevant loss risks. Self-custody has undeniable responsibilities.

[arwin100]

Lost bitcoins are those which nobody has the access to it. Forgotten wallets, death, losing the keys etc... are all truly lost bitcoins.

"Truly lost bitcoins" are those where there's solid evidence that private key material has been permanently lost. But valid and solid evidence is rarely possible or verifiable. In most cases you have to believe a story someone tells where they claim to have lost access to private keys permanently.

Another case are truly burned bitcoins where there's proof on the blockchain that coins were sent to OP_RETURN or other provably unspendable transaction outputs.

I think depends on the story if they can show some basis.

Tried to look at this site https://bitcoinslost.com/guides/how-much-bitcoin-is-lost Then it seems that they have good data's towards those lose Bitcoin base on that article.

The most honest answer: about 3.7 million BTC — roughly 17% of the eventual 21M supply — is unrecoverable.

Just imagine how big the percentage of lost Bitcoin. But who knows maybe their owners will find ways to unlock it and earned back their long lost reward or investment.

[TedMosby]

I think Campbell Simpson [1] should be included on the list too. He is an Australian tech journalist. In 2010, he bought 1,400 BTC for just $25. He stored the private key on a text file on a 250GB portable hard drive. He used the portable HDD for storing pirated music and movies, TV series, photos, uni assignments, and his portfolio too, just like regular people.

Based on the story, he seems to have lived together with his girlfriend, and when he broke up with his girlfriend, he moved back home and did a cleanup of a bunch of his tech stuff like cables, PC components, etc., and unfortunately, that portable HDD was one of them. He threw it away.

Source:
[1] https://www.smh.com.au/technology/i-threw-away-48-million-in-bitcoin-20170529-gwf4jz.html

[stompix]

This is such a stupid list

850,000 BTC vanished from Mt.Gox exchange.

200k coins have beeb recovered; the others are not lost, they are in the hackers' pockets!

Individual X.

Again, stupid, the coins have been seized by the FBI, they are not lost!

Can it get even worse?
Yes it can:

Gerald Cotten - The CEO of Quadrigacx took $190M to his grave.

Cotten had been operating QuadrigaCX as something resembling a Ponzi scheme for years. He created fake accounts on the platform under aliases and used them to generate fictitious trades. Customer deposits were commingled with his personal funds. Significant amounts of cryptocurrency had been moved to other exchanges and converted to cash.

The one who created that site has some problems understanding simple English words like "lost forever".
The way he is doing that math, sooner or later he will arrive at more than 21 million bitcoins lost!

Oh sorry, did I say it can't get any dumber?
Yes it can!



No comment!

[Zaguru12]

200k coins have beeb recovered; the others are not lost, they are in the hackers' pockets!

The one who created that site has some problems understanding simple English words like "lost forever".
The way he is doing that math, sooner or later he will arrive at more than 21 million bitcoins lost!

Oh sorry, did I say it can't get any dumber?
Yes it can!

I think threads like this have ultimately been discussed over and over here with the same replies most of all this lost bitcoin tags are wrong, because the coins have been stolen and are in hackers custody doesn’t mean they are actually lost forever, one easy to see that lists like this are actually not correct is even Satoshi holdings are included and we all know that those coins still have chance of coming into the market and as such they shouldn’t be branded lost coins rather should be in the category of dormant addresses.

Just the starting of this month we say the liquid network hack where the hacker actually moved closed to 4,000 bitcoins and in few days read that around 3,400 was returned so if coins in hackers hand can easily be returned like this why list them as a lost forever.

I think the only coins worthy of been tagged lost forever are those burned like Send through OP_Return scripts

[Adiljutt156]

Lost bitcoins are those which nobody has the access to it. Forgotten wallets, death, losing the keys etc... are all truly lost bitcoins.
Mt. Gox scam is not technically lost, someone has access to those funds and same with Satoshi's funds which are not technically lost even though we may consider them as lost because Satoshi will never access those funds again.
Sometimes things are not in our control and we often end up losing our money and those will remain inaccessible to everyone forever.

Mostly  Bitcoins are lost forever because as its showing there are fewest chances owners will be able to have them back with few are taking lessons and many are needs to understand value of money and having enough secure system for their coins because lost of money is always problematic for peoples those are not able to have their money back.
I read its also increasing value of Bitcoin in long run as well because already its limited and lost of more coins mean things are getting more less for having them its increasing value and demand but having not enough supply peoples those are losing surely having problems due to their own mistakes or they fail to understand security system which is always must to understand never compromise on few things because its important for having better results.