Originally appeared on Bitcoinomics.Net
There are many ways to lose your bitcoins. This list goes over 10 of the most predominant episodes of Bitcoin loss. Generally, this list does not include outright theft. If theft is involved, it likely was due to obvious operator error. Read below to learn about how even experienced bitcoiners lose their bitcoins…
10. 10,000 BTC Pizza
Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 bitcoins he’d mined for two pizzas.
“It wasn’t like Bitcoins had any value back then, so the idea of trading them for a pizza was incredibly cool,” Mr. Hanyecz told the New York Times.
Then the price of bitcoins skyrocketed. But Hanyecz is not bitter.
Laszlo is in the Bitcoin history books, tht’s for sure, with his own page on the Bitcoin Wiki. His purchase is the first documented purchase with bitcoin. The two pizzas were from Dominos.
He posted a buy request on May 17, 2010. On May 22 he successfully traded 10,000 BTC for two pizzas. The value of the bitcoins altogether were $41 at the time of purchase. The Pizza Index is the value of the bitcoins spent on the pizzas, were they to be sold rather than spent on pizza. The indicator peaked in November 2013 at $12.4 million.
To commemorate the transaction, May 22 is dubbed Bitcoin Pizza Day.
While this one might not exactly count as “lost” bitcoins, we highly doubt that those Dominos pizzas were worth 10,000 bitcoins…
9. Redditor Loses Password
One Redditor had 384 bitcoins in a wallet, the password to which he misplaced. He offered a fifty bitcoin bounty to anyone who assists in the retrieval.
8. BitcoinTalk user loses his coins…
A BitcoinTalk user lost 500 coins.
7. MtGox Loses Half A Billion
News of the MtGox collapse shook the Bitcoin industry. The firm filed for bankruptcy protection saying it “had lost track of nearly $480 million worth of the virtual currency.”
“Wearing a suit instead of his customary T-shirt,” Reuters wrote, MtGox CEO Mark Karpeles “bowed in contrition and apologized in Japanese at a news conference at the Tokyo District Court, blaming his firm’s collapse on a ‘weakness in our system,’ but predicting that bitcoin would continue to grow.”
The New York Times’ DealB%k blog writes that MtGox says “it might have lost 750,000 of its customers’ coins, essentially all of them, in a hacking attack.” MtGox also could not track about 100,000 of its own bitcoins.
At the time of the filing MtGox’s missing 850,000 bitcoins were worth $473 million.
Reuters writes that MtGox had fallen out of favor with Bitcoiners in recent months:
Those in the industry said Mt. Gox ceased to be the exchange of choice about nine months ago as competitors such as Bitstamp gained prominence. By the start of this year, Mt. Gox was considered a diminished player due to concerns about its technology and safety.
“It was obvious there was something really bad going on there for nearly a year. They were processing withdrawals very slowly and generally being very opaque about what was going on,” said Mike Hearn, a bitcoin developer based in Switzerland.
Ultimately, MtGox found 200,000 bitcoins, worth $116 million at the time of finding.
“On March 7, 2014, Mt.Gox Co., Ltd. confirmed that an old-format wallet which was used prior to June 2011 held a balance of approximately 200,000 BTC,” the statement said.
6. Redditor “TheDJFC” accidently sent 800 bitcoins (roughly $520,000) to the wrong wallet address.
“If you just received 800 Bitcoin out of the blue, it was from me.”
“If you just received 800 Bitcoin out of the blue, it was from me.”
Another Redditor identified the recipient: defunct Bitcoin exchange Mt Gox. Mt. Gox was the biggest Bitcoin exchange in trade volume in the world until it declared bankruptcy in February, claiming to have “lost” about 850,000 bitcoins.
The Redditor posted an update saying he was trying to get a hold of Mt. Gox administrators to return the bitcoins, seeming notably blasé about losing over a half-million dollars. “Hopefully bitcoin can learn from my mistake,” he wrote. “Apple accepting bitcoin…hell ya!”
“Hopefully bitcoin can learn from my mistake… Apple accepting bitcoin…hell ya!”
Like all examples on this list, this story highlights how bitcoins are very much like digital cash. The importance of organization and security cannot be understated. Once you send bitcoins to a particular address, there is no recourse other than the recipient.
Ultimately, this story has a happy ending, as the sender got his bitcoins back.
5. Bitcoinica Leaves Password In Open-Source Code
Bitcoinica had numerous problems with hacks. On July 13, 2013 someone withdrew the maximum possible amount from Bitcoinica’s MtGox account of 40,000 BTC or $350,000 at the time of the breach.
The attack was made possible by a LastPass account storing passwords needed to access MtGox account, which had the same password as the MtGox API key used by the Bitcoinica server to access funds. The chance to exploit this became possible when the Bitcoinica server’s source code was publicly released to the internet. With the API key stored in the source code, it was very easy for the thief to detect that the key was also the LastPass password. There was no second-factor authentication on the account, so it was easy from there to move the funds.
Amir Taaki wrote, “The breach today occurred because the password for LastPass was in fact a duplicate password which had been compromised during the hack. Unbeknownst to us, Tihan was using the mtgox api key as the password for a website called LastPass.”
Tihan, on the other hand,wrote on the Bitcointalk forums :”I claim no expertise to judge the security of the master password but it was very long. Its status as a master password and its use in all respects were fully understood by the Consultancy upon acceptance. If the Consultancy deemed this password to be unfit for ongoing use, they certainly had the opportunity and the duty to change it.”
Bitcoinica users ultimately filed a lawsuit.
4. Linode Customer Service Rep Lets Hackers In
This one sort of has something to do with Bitcoinica, but not entirely. Online bandits stole at least $228,000 worth of the virtual currency Bitcoin by exploiting Linode, a widely used webhost. The theft of 47,703 BTC was conducted by gaining access to a server by tricking a customer service representative at Linode.
“All activity by the intruder was limited to a total of eight customers, all of which had references to ‘bitcoin,’” Linode’s advisory stated. “The intruder proceeded to compromise those Linode Manager accounts, with the apparent goal of finding and transferring any bitcoins. Those customers affected have been notified.”
3. The People Who Lost Money On MtGox
MtGox users themselves surely deserve a place on this list entirely their own. The biggest Bitcoin exchange went bankrupt so people who still had coins there lost them all. Here are just a few of the stories. One person lost 4700 bitcoins..
–I am the biggest loser at 4700+ BTC. Screenshot from a few days ago for the purposes of record keeping.I don’t know how dying feels, but I’m pretty sure that’s how I feel now.
–Lost over 2100 coins.
There’s losing money, then there’s losing money.
I’m still hopeful that something good will happen. If not, I would not be unhappy if someone ordered a hit.
–About 14 coins. And it happens to be the last 14 coins my wife will ever let me invest in bitcoin. She wants nothing to do with it now. Not for investing, not for spending — nothing. And it’s a damned shame.
I love how all the other bitcoin companies got together to say that their money was safe. Did they think that would help people like me? Do they think my wife cares?
–I want to start off by saying that I’ve been waiting for this moment for a while. I knew it was bound to happen sooner or later, as soon as we weren’t able to withdraw our coins from Mt. Gox weeks ago. I stupidly had my life’s savings in bitcoin, and when the price started to fall, I converted to dollars and watched the price plummet. I lost $357,000. Not to try to earn a bunch of sympathy or anything but this was not only my money but it was going to be my 5 year old son’s education fund which i took out of fidelity about 1 year ago to mess with bitcoins. I dont know what the **** to do any more. I’m sitting here on reddit looking for comfort or just something but I don’t know what I’m going to do now at all. I don’t have **** to live for any more and the only thing I have left is just talking about it here I guess. I can’t express what I’m feeling right now. THat **** was just sitting there and I couldn’t take it out how could this whole shop just pack up and dissapear? I don’t know if anyone here knows the facts or whats going on but I want to or if you have any slighest shred of evidence that its possible they arent really gone please et me know here. if im never going to see my money again all of it im going to either kill myself which i dont want to do because i want to live even though i have nothing to live for now, except my son who is now completely ****ed
–I’m going to come forth and admit I am probably one of the largest loser in Gox. I had 7911 BTC in my account which has been locked for almost a year.
Here is a thread devoted to MtGox horror stories.
2. WinnersAndLosers
One man lost his entire life savings online. He posted on Reddit: “Starting with almost nothing, I made almost $500,000 gambling with Bitcoin. I then lost it all in about 60 seconds. I am now $50k in debt and will most likely lose my job, my visa status, my fiancee. AMA.”
His Reddit account name is WinnersAndLosers.
“This is a story of luck, hope, greed, despair, stupidity,” he writes.
It began with Bitzino and black jack, which he “for small stakes,” and “made some money, then took a couple of bad bets.” Next was roulette.
“This was the beginning of the end,” he says. He continues:
On April 1, Bitcoin broke $100 for the first time. I played more and more, and the value of my winnings increased more and more. I was suddenly into big money. By April 10, I had worked my way up to almost $500,000. I realized how lucky I was to have this amount of money. It was Bitcoin, but it was one click away from being in my bank account: this was real money.
That morning, the crash began. I kept playing. On April 10 I lost all my profits.
At this point I was in full-tilt mode. Mt.Gox was closed for a 24-hour cooldown following the crash, but even this 24-hour period was not enough for me. A part of me just shut off, and this was when I made the Really Big Mistake. I dipped into my student tuition loan (around $50,000). I turned into an animal, and I lost everything.
I literally went almost mad at this point. Out of grief I contacted bitzino and exchanged some pitiful emails. They were very supportive, emotionally. I am not even sure what I hoped to achieve (I did not sleep for 2 days, drank and took a lot of anti-anxiety meds, which can make you act in weird ways).
My fiancee knew I was upset, and I owned up that I lost a lot of money. I said it was due to the crash (which did happen on the same day). She could see the charts so she believed me, but she does not know that I lost every single cent. Lies, but I felt that I did what I had to do (her dad had a major gambling and alcohol problem, so I really could not break her heart like that.)
The money that I lost is for tuition. It’s just under $50k as I already said. The most immediate payment is due end of May, which is around $5k (the remainder of this academic year). The rest ($40k) is due over the following academic year (13/14). If I can pay off the $5k I will at least survive until the summer and maybe nobody will notice. I have not told anybody what happened, except my flatmate who I have known since high school and am pretty close with.
The reality is I will most likely be forced to withdraw from the program, because the payments are due September and Christmas and my visa status does not permit me to work part-time. I will have to return home to England and I will lose my fiancee.
He goes on:
“I honestly do not feel that I was fully in control of my actions. If it happened to me, it can happen to you too, and I sincerely hope that after reading this, it never will.”
1. The 7,500 Bitcoin Hard Drive
James Howells threw a hard drive with 7,500 bitcoins on it. He had mined them.
“You know when you put something in the bin, and in your head, say to yourself ‘that’s a bad idea’? I really did have that,” Howells, who works in IT, told the Guardian. “I don’t have an exact date, the only time period I can give – and I’ve been racking my own brains – is between 20 June and 10 August. Probably mid-July”.
When Howells threw the bitcoins away, they were worth £500,000.
“I’ve searched high and low. I’ve tried to retrieve files from all of my USB sticks, from all of my hard drives. I’ve tried everything just in case I had a backup file, or had copied it by accident. And … nothing.”
His visit to the landfill did not go well. “I had a word with one of the guys down there, explained the situation. And he actually took me out in his truck to where the landfill site is, the current ditch they’re working on. It’s about the size of a football field, and he said something from three or four months ago would be about three or four feet down.”
Howells stopped mining and stopped thinking about the bitcoins. “I hadn’t kept up on Bitcoin, I’d been distracted. I’d had a couple of kids since then, I’d been doing the house up, and forgot about it until it was in the news again.”
Howells considered retrieving the hard drive, but “even for the police to find something, they need a team of 15 guys, two diggers, and all the personal protection equipment. So for me to fund that, it’s not possible without the guarantee of money at the end.”
“There’s a pot of gold there for someone … I’m even thinking of registering www.returnmybitcoin.com. It’s available,” he said.
Howell also also set up a Bitcoin wallet for donations in order to recover the hard drive.
“If they were to offer me a share, fair enough,” he said. “If they were to go out and find it for themselves … it’s my mistake throwing the hard drive out, at the end of the day.”
The Newport council said that “obviously, if it was easily retrieved, we’d return it.”
Howell is content with the reality.
“I’m at the point where it’s either laugh about it or cry about it,” Howells says. “Why aren’t I out there with a shovel now? I think I’m just resigned to never being able to find it.”
Howell is still bullish on Bitcoin.
“I still think it’s going to go higher. I just think it’s the next step of the internet, which is why I mined it in the first place. When I first came across it, I knew straight away. We had everything else at the time; Google, Facebook, they were already the market leaders in their areas. The only thing that was missing was an internet.
What Happens To Lost Bitcoin?
One thread on BitcoinTalk has calculated 134,584.15 bitcoins have been lost. That is nearly 1%. The creator of the thread thinks there are more lost:
I wouldn’t be surprised if it is more like 2M BTC lost. In the first year+ of Bitcoin’s existence (during which almost 2M coins were mined) it was nothing more than an interesting experiment. The coins were worthless, and people treated them as such. I mean heck, the first known monetary valuation wasn’t until Lazlo’s pizza, which was mid-2010, 1 and a half years after it started. Not to mention than Satoshi himself mined a good 1M BTC, and I don’t expect those will ever move.
What happens to the bitcoins when they are lost? Well, it depends how you lost them, but one thing is for sure: if you’ve sent them to a phantom address or mis-placed your password, the chances of you getting them back are similar to if you dropped $20 on the side of a busy street.
Originally appeared on Bitcoinomics.Net
Originally appeared on Bitcoinomics.Net
There are many ways to lose your bitcoins. This list goes over 10 of the most predominant episodes of Bitcoin loss. Generally, this list does not include outright theft. If theft is involved, it likely was due to obvious operator error. Read below to learn about how even experienced bitcoiners lose their bitcoins…
10. 10,000 BTC Pizza
Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 bitcoins he’d mined for two pizzas.
“It wasn’t like Bitcoins had any value back then, so the idea of trading them for a pizza was incredibly cool,” Mr. Hanyecz told the New York Times.
Then the price of bitcoins skyrocketed. But Hanyecz is not bitter.
Laszlo is in the Bitcoin history books, tht’s for sure, with his own page on the Bitcoin Wiki. His purchase is the first documented purchase with bitcoin. The two pizzas were from Dominos.
He posted a buy request on May 17, 2010. On May 22 he successfully traded 10,000 BTC for two pizzas. The value of the bitcoins altogether were $41 at the time of purchase. The Pizza Index is the value of the bitcoins spent on the pizzas, were they to be sold rather than spent on pizza. The indicator peaked in November 2013 at $12.4 million.
To commemorate the transaction, May 22 is dubbed Bitcoin Pizza Day.
While this one might not exactly count as “lost” bitcoins, we highly doubt that those Dominos pizzas were worth 10,000 bitcoins…
9. Redditor Loses Password
One Redditor had 384 bitcoins in a wallet, the password to which he misplaced. He offered a fifty bitcoin bounty to anyone who assists in the retrieval.
8. BitcoinTalk user loses his coins…
A BitcoinTalk user lost 500 coins.
7. MtGox Loses Half A Billion
News of the MtGox collapse shook the Bitcoin industry. The firm filed for bankruptcy protection saying it “had lost track of nearly $480 million worth of the virtual currency.”
“Wearing a suit instead of his customary T-shirt,” Reuters wrote, MtGox CEO Mark Karpeles “bowed in contrition and apologized in Japanese at a news conference at the Tokyo District Court, blaming his firm’s collapse on a ‘weakness in our system,’ but predicting that bitcoin would continue to grow.”
The New York Times’ DealB%k blog writes that MtGox says “it might have lost 750,000 of its customers’ coins, essentially all of them, in a hacking attack.” MtGox also could not track about 100,000 of its own bitcoins.
At the time of the filing MtGox’s missing 850,000 bitcoins were worth $473 million.
Reuters writes that MtGox had fallen out of favor with Bitcoiners in recent months:
Those in the industry said Mt. Gox ceased to be the exchange of choice about nine months ago as competitors such as Bitstamp gained prominence. By the start of this year, Mt. Gox was considered a diminished player due to concerns about its technology and safety.
“It was obvious there was something really bad going on there for nearly a year. They were processing withdrawals very slowly and generally being very opaque about what was going on,” said Mike Hearn, a bitcoin developer based in Switzerland.
Ultimately, MtGox found 200,000 bitcoins, worth $116 million at the time of finding.
“On March 7, 2014, Mt.Gox Co., Ltd. confirmed that an old-format wallet which was used prior to June 2011 held a balance of approximately 200,000 BTC,” the statement said.
6. Redditor “TheDJFC” accidently sent 800 bitcoins (roughly $520,000) to the wrong wallet address.
“If you just received 800 Bitcoin out of the blue, it was from me.”
“If you just received 800 Bitcoin out of the blue, it was from me.”
Another Redditor identified the recipient: defunct Bitcoin exchange Mt Gox. Mt. Gox was the biggest Bitcoin exchange in trade volume in the world until it declared bankruptcy in February, claiming to have “lost” about 850,000 bitcoins.
The Redditor posted an update saying he was trying to get a hold of Mt. Gox administrators to return the bitcoins, seeming notably blasé about losing over a half-million dollars. “Hopefully bitcoin can learn from my mistake,” he wrote. “Apple accepting bitcoin…hell ya!”
“Hopefully bitcoin can learn from my mistake… Apple accepting bitcoin…hell ya!”
Like all examples on this list, this story highlights how bitcoins are very much like digital cash. The importance of organization and security cannot be understated. Once you send bitcoins to a particular address, there is no recourse other than the recipient.
Ultimately, this story has a happy ending, as the sender got his bitcoins back.
5. Bitcoinica Leaves Password In Open-Source Code
Bitcoinica had numerous problems with hacks. On July 13, 2013 someone withdrew the maximum possible amount from Bitcoinica’s MtGox account of 40,000 BTC or $350,000 at the time of the breach.
The attack was made possible by a LastPass account storing passwords needed to access MtGox account, which had the same password as the MtGox API key used by the Bitcoinica server to access funds. The chance to exploit this became possible when the Bitcoinica server’s source code was publicly released to the internet. With the API key stored in the source code, it was very easy for the thief to detect that the key was also the LastPass password. There was no second-factor authentication on the account, so it was easy from there to move the funds.
Amir Taaki wrote, “The breach today occurred because the password for LastPass was in fact a duplicate password which had been compromised during the hack. Unbeknownst to us, Tihan was using the mtgox api key as the password for a website called LastPass.”
Tihan, on the other hand,wrote on the Bitcointalk forums :”I claim no expertise to judge the security of the master password but it was very long. Its status as a master password and its use in all respects were fully understood by the Consultancy upon acceptance. If the Consultancy deemed this password to be unfit for ongoing use, they certainly had the opportunity and the duty to change it.”
Bitcoinica users ultimately filed a lawsuit.
4. Linode Customer Service Rep Lets Hackers In
This one sort of has something to do with Bitcoinica, but not entirely. Online bandits stole at least $228,000 worth of the virtual currency Bitcoin by exploiting Linode, a widely used webhost. The theft of 47,703 BTC was conducted by gaining access to a server by tricking a customer service representative at Linode.
“All activity by the intruder was limited to a total of eight customers, all of which had references to ‘bitcoin,’” Linode’s advisory stated. “The intruder proceeded to compromise those Linode Manager accounts, with the apparent goal of finding and transferring any bitcoins. Those customers affected have been notified.”
3. The People Who Lost Money On MtGox
MtGox users themselves surely deserve a place on this list entirely their own. The biggest Bitcoin exchange went bankrupt so people who still had coins there lost them all. Here are just a few of the stories. One person lost 4700 bitcoins..
–I am the biggest loser at 4700+ BTC. Screenshot from a few days ago for the purposes of record keeping.I don’t know how dying feels, but I’m pretty sure that’s how I feel now.
–Lost over 2100 coins.
There’s losing money, then there’s losing money.
I’m still hopeful that something good will happen. If not, I would not be unhappy if someone ordered a hit.
–About 14 coins. And it happens to be the last 14 coins my wife will ever let me invest in bitcoin. She wants nothing to do with it now. Not for investing, not for spending — nothing. And it’s a damned shame.
I love how all the other bitcoin companies got together to say that their money was safe. Did they think that would help people like me? Do they think my wife cares?
–I want to start off by saying that I’ve been waiting for this moment for a while. I knew it was bound to happen sooner or later, as soon as we weren’t able to withdraw our coins from Mt. Gox weeks ago. I stupidly had my life’s savings in bitcoin, and when the price started to fall, I converted to dollars and watched the price plummet. I lost $357,000. Not to try to earn a bunch of sympathy or anything but this was not only my money but it was going to be my 5 year old son’s education fund which i took out of fidelity about 1 year ago to mess with bitcoins. I dont know what the **** to do any more. I’m sitting here on reddit looking for comfort or just something but I don’t know what I’m going to do now at all. I don’t have **** to live for any more and the only thing I have left is just talking about it here I guess. I can’t express what I’m feeling right now. THat **** was just sitting there and I couldn’t take it out how could this whole shop just pack up and dissapear? I don’t know if anyone here knows the facts or whats going on but I want to or if you have any slighest shred of evidence that its possible they arent really gone please et me know here. if im never going to see my money again all of it im going to either kill myself which i dont want to do because i want to live even though i have nothing to live for now, except my son who is now completely ****ed
–I’m going to come forth and admit I am probably one of the largest loser in Gox. I had 7911 BTC in my account which has been locked for almost a year.
Here is a thread devoted to MtGox horror stories.
2. WinnersAndLosers
One man lost his entire life savings online. He posted on Reddit: “Starting with almost nothing, I made almost $500,000 gambling with Bitcoin. I then lost it all in about 60 seconds. I am now $50k in debt and will most likely lose my job, my visa status, my fiancee. AMA.”
His Reddit account name is WinnersAndLosers.
“This is a story of luck, hope, greed, despair, stupidity,” he writes.
It began with Bitzino and black jack, which he “for small stakes,” and “made some money, then took a couple of bad bets.” Next was roulette.
“This was the beginning of the end,” he says. He continues:
On April 1, Bitcoin broke $100 for the first time. I played more and more, and the value of my winnings increased more and more. I was suddenly into big money. By April 10, I had worked my way up to almost $500,000. I realized how lucky I was to have this amount of money. It was Bitcoin, but it was one click away from being in my bank account: this was real money.
That morning, the crash began. I kept playing. On April 10 I lost all my profits.
At this point I was in full-tilt mode. Mt.Gox was closed for a 24-hour cooldown following the crash, but even this 24-hour period was not enough for me. A part of me just shut off, and this was when I made the Really Big Mistake. I dipped into my student tuition loan (around $50,000). I turned into an animal, and I lost everything.
I literally went almost mad at this point. Out of grief I contacted bitzino and exchanged some pitiful emails. They were very supportive, emotionally. I am not even sure what I hoped to achieve (I did not sleep for 2 days, drank and took a lot of anti-anxiety meds, which can make you act in weird ways).
My fiancee knew I was upset, and I owned up that I lost a lot of money. I said it was due to the crash (which did happen on the same day). She could see the charts so she believed me, but she does not know that I lost every single cent. Lies, but I felt that I did what I had to do (her dad had a major gambling and alcohol problem, so I really could not break her heart like that.)
The money that I lost is for tuition. It’s just under $50k as I already said. The most immediate payment is due end of May, which is around $5k (the remainder of this academic year). The rest ($40k) is due over the following academic year (13/14). If I can pay off the $5k I will at least survive until the summer and maybe nobody will notice. I have not told anybody what happened, except my flatmate who I have known since high school and am pretty close with.
The reality is I will most likely be forced to withdraw from the program, because the payments are due September and Christmas and my visa status does not permit me to work part-time. I will have to return home to England and I will lose my fiancee.
He goes on:
“I honestly do not feel that I was fully in control of my actions. If it happened to me, it can happen to you too, and I sincerely hope that after reading this, it never will.”
1. The 7,500 Bitcoin Hard Drive
James Howells threw a hard drive with 7,500 bitcoins on it. He had mined them.
“You know when you put something in the bin, and in your head, say to yourself ‘that’s a bad idea’? I really did have that,” Howells, who works in IT, told the Guardian. “I don’t have an exact date, the only time period I can give – and I’ve been racking my own brains – is between 20 June and 10 August. Probably mid-July”.
When Howells threw the bitcoins away, they were worth £500,000.
“I’ve searched high and low. I’ve tried to retrieve files from all of my USB sticks, from all of my hard drives. I’ve tried everything just in case I had a backup file, or had copied it by accident. And … nothing.”
His visit to the landfill did not go well. “I had a word with one of the guys down there, explained the situation. And he actually took me out in his truck to where the landfill site is, the current ditch they’re working on. It’s about the size of a football field, and he said something from three or four months ago would be about three or four feet down.”
Howells stopped mining and stopped thinking about the bitcoins. “I hadn’t kept up on Bitcoin, I’d been distracted. I’d had a couple of kids since then, I’d been doing the house up, and forgot about it until it was in the news again.”
Howells considered retrieving the hard drive, but “even for the police to find something, they need a team of 15 guys, two diggers, and all the personal protection equipment. So for me to fund that, it’s not possible without the guarantee of money at the end.”
“There’s a pot of gold there for someone … I’m even thinking of registering www.returnmybitcoin.com. It’s available,” he said.
Howell also also set up a Bitcoin wallet for donations in order to recover the hard drive.
“If they were to offer me a share, fair enough,” he said. “If they were to go out and find it for themselves … it’s my mistake throwing the hard drive out, at the end of the day.”
The Newport council said that “obviously, if it was easily retrieved, we’d return it.”
Howell is content with the reality.
“I’m at the point where it’s either laugh about it or cry about it,” Howells says. “Why aren’t I out there with a shovel now? I think I’m just resigned to never being able to find it.”
Howell is still bullish on Bitcoin.
“I still think it’s going to go higher. I just think it’s the next step of the internet, which is why I mined it in the first place. When I first came across it, I knew straight away. We had everything else at the time; Google, Facebook, they were already the market leaders in their areas. The only thing that was missing was an internet.
What Happens To Lost Bitcoin?
One thread on BitcoinTalk has calculated 134,584.15 bitcoins have been lost. That is nearly 1%. The creator of the thread thinks there are more lost:
I wouldn’t be surprised if it is more like 2M BTC lost. In the first year+ of Bitcoin’s existence (during which almost 2M coins were mined) it was nothing more than an interesting experiment. The coins were worthless, and people treated them as such. I mean heck, the first known monetary valuation wasn’t until Lazlo’s pizza, which was mid-2010, 1 and a half years after it started. Not to mention than Satoshi himself mined a good 1M BTC, and I don’t expect those will ever move.
What happens to the bitcoins when they are lost? Well, it depends how you lost them, but one thing is for sure: if you’ve sent them to a phantom address or mis-placed your password, the chances of you getting them back are similar to if you dropped $20 on the side of a busy street.