Hardware wallet lost with over $700Million worth Of Bitcoin

[Freemind]

It is one of the nightmares of this man. He's never going to find his hardware wallet in the dumpster anymore. He has given up already and that's sad because even no matter what he offers to dumpsters management, he won't be given any chance for it because that's against their policies. And who knows after all of those years? That hardware wallet probably have been stomped and thrown somewhere else already.

Or it is also possible (I really like movies and conspiracy plots) that that hard drive was recovered years ago, by one of the landfill employees. Now someone might tell me, "if those Bitcoins were taken out of the wallet, everyone would have noticed", maybe yes, and maybe not. Assuming that the owner of that hard drive does not keep the private keys, it is also likely that he does not know or remember the addresses where he received those Bitcoins, therefore, from minute 1 of the denial of access permission to the landfill, and knowing the reason, any employee could have found the hard drive. It's unlikely that what I'm talking about happened, but it's a possibility.

[Bobcrypto]

well he can consider it a donation and his name will be forever on the internet about the guy who lost his drive with a ton of BTC. such as waste but it is what it is.

there was an article about quantum computer able to recover its coins in the wallet and just put it in circulation so that no BTC will be unused. i know its kind of a news that makes BTC insecure asset but that was just a story. if its true though, its going to be quite a bummer.

As regards the quantum computer ability to recover lost Bitcoin, it is yet a theory, the quantum computer has not arrived, though on the news few months ago, but some of the features, like it's ability recover lost Bitcoin might have been speculated.
As for the lost Bitcoin, I think it is gone, until the quantum solution for any lost Bitcoin has surfaced on the crypto economy. My advice to anyone who has large quantities of Bitcoin is to be careful and properly secure your Bitcoin wallet key, or seed phrase in safe place.

[bayu7adi]

well he can consider it a donation and his name will be forever on the internet about the guy who lost his drive with a ton of BTC. such as waste but it is what it is.

It's unfortunate, yes at least he tried even though the results were not there ... everyone who seems to have lost their wallet when they have Bitcoin at a price of tens of dollars also seems to be a lot, but they may not publish their loss because of their own considerations ... seeing the experience of that person, surely many are thinking of starting to adopt a centralized wallet, where when the loss occurs, they can claim by verifying ownership with KYC on the related wallet service provider ... yes it has a chance of success, but the procedure will certainly not be easy ...

Some people may start to hesitate to anticipate the incident ... and maybe some are also thinking of using an exchange wallet, because as long as they have valid proof of identity, their funds are still safe ... but unfortunately the exchange is also not 100% safe ... indeed nothing is 100% safe in this world .. even the Bitcoin in our wallet is only considered safe until the balance in it is hacked ..

[Mia Chloe]

Or it is also possible (I really like movies and conspiracy plots) that that hard drive was recovered years ago, by one of the landfill employees. Now someone might tell me, "if those Bitcoins were taken out of the wallet, everyone would have noticed", maybe yes, and maybe not.

There are reasons to believe both cases but I think there is a high chance he had those coins and just like the story goes he couldn't actually recover them. Although the bitcoin network is decentralized, it is also transparent meaning everyone can see what is actually going on in the network.
Basically there are thousands of addresses being watched till date. Infact it's more like any address with a very huge sum of coins is being monitored behind bars so if coins are moved they would notice it.

[dkbit98]

The news can be accessed above about a Man that lost its Hard drive during cleanup.
It's persistence shows he never kept his private key well.

You are confusing hardware wallets with hard drives here.
This guy lost his computer drive that contains keys for his wallet, but that is not the same thing as hardware wallets like Trezor.
I doubt he is veer going to recover his hard disc, and it's questionable if it's even going to work because of weather and water damage.

[Freemind]

There are reasons to believe both cases but I think there is a high chance he had those coins and just like the story goes he couldn't actually recover them. Although the bitcoin network is decentralized, it is also transparent meaning everyone can see what is actually going on in the network.
Basically there are thousands of addresses being watched till date. Infact it's more like any address with a very huge sum of coins is being monitored behind bars so if coins are moved they would notice it.

I agree with you, my post was just an “idea”, which probably didn't happen, but who knows, you can expect almost anything when we talk about those amounts of money. And although at that time Bitcoin had a significantly lower economic value than today, it does not mean that so many application denials hid any similar fact. But those Bitcoins will most likely be lost forever. We'll see if the quantum computing of the future (it will be a long time before we see it) can do something about it.

[God Of Thunder]

I think these people can afford to lose these amounts. I would consider this as a donation to the Bitcoin community. If someone is lazy enough not to keep a backup of their wallet, which has 700 million dollars worth of Bitcoin, then let them lose more. I have nothing to say about these people. Or there is a possibility that they didn't know how to keep it secure. Then again, why someone would invest such big amount without knowing how it works.

These should be lesson for all of us. We still use wallets where do not have controls. We should check the backup from time to time so we know that we aren't using a unsecured wallet which can be lost incase of device failure or a hardware failure.

[Z-tight]

If someone is lazy enough not to keep a backup of their wallet, which has 700 million dollars worth of Bitcoin, then let them lose more.

This is not a recent story, this is about James Howells who lost his coins a very long time ago, BTC was not worth so much back then, but he had a lot in his stash, and he lost it when his girlfriend took out the trash with his hard drive in it. What you see now is the worth of his coins if he had held it since then, but he lost his hard drive and he has been looking for it ever since.

[God Of Thunder]

This is not a recent story, this is about James Howells who lost his coins a very long time ago, BTC was not worth so much back then, but he had a lot in his stash, and he lost it when his girlfriend took out the trash with his hard drive in it. What you see now is the worth of his coins if he had held it since then, but he lost his hard drive and he has been looking for it ever since.

I think I have heard this before.
Or the story was pretty similar, I guess. I heard a guy throw his hard drive in the trash, which he tried to find later, but if I am not wrong, he probably didn't find it because it ended up in a massive trash mountain. In such a case, who is to blame? My wife once sold my graphics card boxes with the invoice inside, and when I was about to sell my GPU, I was looking for the box and the invoice, and she suddenly said that she sold it to a waste buyer for just 0.2 USD per KG/rate. What should I say? Who should be blamed?

[Z-tight]

I think I have heard this before.
Or the story was pretty similar, I guess. I heard a guy throw his hard drive in the trash, which he tried to find later, but if I am not wrong, he probably didn't find it because it ended up in a massive trash mountain. In such a case, who is to blame?

Yeah, that is the story, the James Howells story, it has to be one of the most popular stories in the industry and i think everyone must have read about it. Howells has been searching for this hard drive ever since, he even proposed to buy the landfill, but all his efforts have just been a waste of his time. It is his fault that his hard drive got lost, because he put it in the trash bag and his gf took the bag out.

[God Of Thunder]

Yeah, that is the story, the James Howells story, it has to be one of the most popular stories in the industry and i think everyone must have read about it. Howells has been searching for this hard drive ever since, he even proposed to buy the landfill, but all his efforts have just been a waste of his time. It is his fault that his hard drive got lost, because he put it in the trash bag and his gf took the bag out.

We don't know when the search began, do you think he started the search immediately? I don't know because I read that a long time ago. I don't remember if he mentioned when he started the search. If it was a day after or a couple of hours later, he should have found it at that time. But I assume he figured out a little late, which is why he was not able to find it.

There is a possibility someone else found it and never told him that they found it. Especially if someone knows what is inside the harddrive, I don't think they would return it even if they cannot access his Bitcoins.

[NotATether]

No, that is not a hardware wallet, that is just a hard drive with a wallet on it.

It may sound similar but there's a very important distinction between the two.

One is very secure, the other is not so secure anymore. And to make matters worse, back then there were no password locks on Bitcoin Core wallets. Or many other kinds of wallets as well besides maybe Armory.

[Aanuoluwatofunmi]

The use of hardware wallet has been found interesting and secured for conveniences, but we should not forget that it also have to be well managed as well as handled properly, we should also device a means to store our keys in a more secured source, so we can have an alternative to fall back on, if you're not the type that is good in managing things well, then this may not be good for you because you can't afford to damage it at any cost or lost it private information.

[Z-tight]

The use of hardware wallet has been found interesting and secured for conveniences, but we should not forget that it also have to be well managed as well as handled properly,

James Howells didn't have a hardware wallet, this story is from way back, what Howells had was a hard drive, why are some of you getting this story wrong, this has to be one of the most popular stories in the network. Just check the internet for James Howells and you will find everything you need to know.

[dkbit98]

One is very secure, the other is not so secure anymore. And to make matters worse, back then there were no password locks on Bitcoin Core wallets. Or many other kinds of wallets as well besides maybe Armory.

I think people used more disc encryption when they wanted to make their files more secure.
Question is if owner of this drive used any encryption or not, but I have to give him credit for being persistent in trying to get his old property back.
I wonder if there are already a bunch of poor people who are allready diging in junk and looking for this drive after reading all the news about him