Hardware wallet lost with over $700Million worth Of Bitcoin

[God Of Thunder]

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   

I believe the owner at least knows his wallet address and he can see if those Bitcoins are still on those addresses. If so, I guess he won't lose the hope and keep searching for that. But if he does not even knows his wallet address, then I don't know what he can expect and why he would continue to search. If he didn't tell anyone about what is inside the hard drive, probably no one would dig through the trash. But since it is well known story, yeah, I also think some people dig those trash from time to time.

[dkbit98]

I believe the owner at least knows his wallet address and he can see if those Bitcoins are still on those addresses. If so, I guess he won't lose the hope and keep searching for that.

He won't lose hope and he will continue searching for his old drive, but treasure hunters will do the same thing and they know location of this junk site.
I think people should learn some lessons from this example, it's better to have multiple backups of private keys or seed phrases, and to distribute them in several different locations if possible.
Problem is that in early bitcoin days nobody was thinking about this 

[Findingnemo]

Private keys are like keys to our safe, when we lost the key then we can't open the safe this is the simplified version of why keys or seeds are important. The worst part is the seeds will be atleasat 128 bits encrypted means we can't brute-force it unless only a few missing from the list of words.

[God Of Thunder]

Problem is that in early bitcoin days nobody was thinking about this 

Probably because Bitcoin was not valuable at that time, people did not care because they never thought Bitcoin would reach a hundred thousand dollars one day. If someone knew that Bitcoin would reach a hundred thousand dollars, they would create multiple backups and probably acquire more Bitcoin in the old days. But that is the main part, we do not know anything about the future. So, a lot of us still careless about our Bitcoin holding. Some of thinking this is the highest point bitcoin may reach, but I believe 100K is just a check point.

[Lucius]

Probably because Bitcoin was not valuable at that time, people did not care because they never thought Bitcoin would reach a hundred thousand dollars one day. If someone knew that Bitcoin would reach a hundred thousand dollars, they would create multiple backups and probably acquire more Bitcoin in the old days.
~snip~

This is just another one of the facts that are incorrect and have been repeated for years - because this is about 7500 BTC which in 2013 was worth about $10 million - and now the question arises why someone would put an HDD with that much value in a drawer with other junk that his wife/partner would then simply clean out as most other women would probably do.

He claims that there were 2 HDDs in the drawer, the wrong one ended up in the trash - but I ask again, who keeps $10 million worth of stuff in a regular drawer that anyone can open and do whatever they want with the contents?

My conclusion is that he simply forgot that he had that BTC and that at that moment in his life he completely forgot that BTC even existed.

It is interesting that JH claims that this HDD contains the real IP address of Satoshi because he claims that he was one of the first people to mine with Satoshi.

James mined more than 7,500 coins in a short space of time. The code required to spend those coins was accidentally thrown into a landfill in 2013. The valuation at the time was roughly $10 million and by December 2017, this valuation had increased to $175 million, he claims...Asked how it ended up in landfill, he explained that it was “thrown out into a bin bag during a clear-out in a case of ‘mistaken (hdd) identity’ in summer 2013. There were two hdds in the same drawer, the wrong one got binned? s*** happens.”

[dkbit98]

Probably because Bitcoin was not valuable at that time, people did not care because they never thought Bitcoin would reach a hundred thousand dollars one day. If someone knew that Bitcoin would reach a hundred thousand dollars, they would create multiple backups and probably acquire more Bitcoin in the old days. But that is the main part, we do not know anything about the future. So, a lot of us still careless about our Bitcoin holding. Some of thinking this is the highest point bitcoin may reach, but I believe 100K is just a check point.

There was some value for bitcoin even back than in the first days, but it was much lower in the beginning compared to price we have today.
People would not continue mining for nothing, but they probably started as a fun experiment and they had lower expectations.
I think people today are going in opposite direction with unrealistic price expectations.

[God Of Thunder]

People would not continue mining for nothing, but they probably started as a fun experiment and they had lower expectations.
I think people today are going in opposite direction with unrealistic price expectations.

I read what Hal posted on the forum about how he has been mining Bitcoin with his CPU and why he stopped mining. He was mining just for fun, and he stopped mining because the fan noise was bothering him. When he checked his Bitcoin a couple of years later, he figured out that it was already worth some real money. So he moved his Bitcoin to another wallet and expected his kids to find it someday because he believed his kids were tech-savvy. As we all know, they did not find the wallet. Or even if they found it, we don't know about it.

[Baofeng]

People would not continue mining for nothing, but they probably started as a fun experiment and they had lower expectations.
I think people today are going in opposite direction with unrealistic price expectations.

I read what Hal posted on the forum about how he has been mining Bitcoin with his CPU and why he stopped mining. He was mining just for fun, and he stopped mining because the fan noise was bothering him. When he checked his Bitcoin a couple of years later, he figured out that it was already worth some real money. So he moved his Bitcoin to another wallet and expected his kids to find it someday because he believed his kids were tech-savvy. As we all know, they did not find the wallet. Or even if they found it, we don't know about it.

The only one I remember back then is this,

according to iChainfo, the wallet associated with Finney has seen increased activity this month, with 46 BTC sent to Kraken, one of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges. The most recent transfer of 10 BTC took place on September 30, 2024, raising eyebrows in the crypto space. Prior to this, the wallet had remained largely inactive, leading many to wonder about the motives behind these recent transactions.

While the wallet’s history and association with Hal Finney are well-documented, it’s worth noting that his family now has control over the wallet. As such, any decisions to move funds from the wallet are likely made by his heirs.

At the current market price, the 10 BTC transferred to Kraken is valued at approximately $260,000, making the total value of the 46 BTC sent this month around $1.2 million.

https://bitcoinworld.co.in/hal-finneys-wallet-transfers-10-btc-to-kraken/

So maybe his kids found or his wife might have a idea. Nevertheless, we really can't verify this news as well.

[God Of Thunder]

https://bitcoinworld.co.in/hal-finneys-wallet-transfers-10-btc-to-kraken/

So maybe his kids found or his wife might have a idea. Nevertheless, we really can't verify this news as well.

I was not aware of this event. I thought his kids had not found his wallet yet. But as Hal Finney posted, he expects his child to find the wallet someday which he safely stored somewhere. He believed that his child was tech savvy and they would figure it out.

It is good to know at least they found the wallet. But I guess I have heard that his family was struggling financially, so that made me think they did not find the wallet. Now I feel better knowing that they got the wallet.