Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have been a huge medium for investments in the last few years. The prominent reason is the high value of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Who one would not buy some bucks having the value of one unit equal to some thousands of US Dollars?. Since the money involved is pretty high, these valuable investments also need to be secured and maintain privacy.
Losing an important credential in any field may cause a huge loss of property and crypto space is much vulnerable in case you lose your private keys. There have been a lot of cases in the past where people have lost a very huge amount via losing their bitcoin private keys. In this article, we will see the list of 10 dramatic stories of people who lost their bitcoin private keys:
1. A person, named James Howells lost his bitcoin private keys and it cost him a loss of around $79 million! Howells had around 7500 bitcoins in 2009 and had stored the private keys of the bitcoins in a hard disk. Four years later, he had two similar hard disks in a drawer out of which one was empty and corrupted while the other one was containing the bitcoin credentials. Unfortunately, in the sake of throwing the corrupted disk, he threw away the disk that contained the bitcoin private keys! This silly mistake cost him around $79 million. IT was so unfortunate for Howells.
2. A person lost 30 bitcoins due to a keylogger program. He was unaware that a keylogger program has somehow entered in his laptop without his knowledge. A keylogger is a fraud program which mainly aims to track the credentials of your system. As usual, one day he was looking for the private keys and the value he has in his pockets in form of bitcoins. Another day, he found that all of his coins were already sold and that too without his knowledge. First of all, he thought, he was entering the wrong credential but finally end up finding a keylogger program in the system when scanned by a system scanner software. He lost around $300000!
3. Syl Turner is a software engineer in Atlanta. In 2010, he bought two bitcoins and saved the private keys in his computer. He recalls, at that time, bitcoin was not so valuable so he didn’t care about the keys. A few years later, he bought a new laptop and threw his old computer in his attic. In 2017, when he heard about the value of bitcoin, he recalled that he also had mined two. He went to his attic and checked for the old computer. The computer was not working now and all the data was erased. And unfortunately, he lost around $35000.
4. A person in Switzerland had saved his bitcoin private keys in a USB drive which he bought in 2009. In 2016, he transferred the file containing these private keys to his personal computer as the USB was on the brink of breaking. He thought he would buy another new USB and would save the files. However, before he could buy a new one and the software of the personal computer crashed and now, he had no back up of those private keys. The lost keys had the value of around $40000.
5. As per Michael Yang, his friend along with his business partners bought around 500 bitcoins. For sake of trust, his friend had half of the bitcoin private keys while his partners had the rest half private keys. Unfortunately, all of a sudden the business partner of Yang’s friend passed away and so around $9.5 million he lost as his friend and the family of the partner failed to retrieve the half of the private keys. This was so heartbreaking for Yang’s friend.
6. Forgetting your bag in a public place always cost you, but not up to the extent that John lost with the bag containing the USB of bitcoin private keys. John, a college student had bought 10 bitcoins in 2012 and was provided a USB containing the private keys of the coin. In 2017, while shifting from one place to other, he forgot the bag containing USB somewhere in the way. And this mistake cost him around $100000!
7. Alex mined around 1000 bitcoins in 2009 and stored the private keys in a USB drive so that if anything happens to his computer, he would still have a backup. After a few months due to some technical error, he wiped all the data of his computer by assuming he still had the backup for bitcoins. When he heard about the value of bitcoin in 2017, he was dreaming to be a millionaire. He inserted his USB drive in the laptop but unfortunately, the drive became corrupted and eventually died. He couldn’t believe he lost millions of dollars in a few seconds!
8. Amily, of Ukraine, mistakenly deleted the only backup file containing the bitcoin private keys. She had saved the files of keys of about 10 bitcoins in one folder and also had some other folders in the same directory in his system. She first opened the folder containing keys and she realized that there are some folders that she didn’t require them. So, she entered Shift+Delete. As the folder containing the keys was also selected and Amily was not aware of that, the file got permanently deleted from the system and hence lost around $120000!
9. A man in Japan lost around $50000 in form of bitcoin and he couldn’t blame anyone except his pet dog! He mined around 50 bitcoins in 2010 and stored the private keys in a USB. He had a pet dog. In 2016, while shifting the apartment, USB slipped from his hand and suddenly, the pet thought it to be some playing stuff and chewed it. He couldn’t believe that he just lost a significant amount of money. Seven years later, in November 2017, if he would have wanted to sell those coins to redeem money, the value would have been around $50000.
10. In 2016, NSW in Australia was hit by the flood. A man who had saved his bitcoin private keys in a hard disk lost around $50000 in this flood. He has kept the hard disk in a drawer and was on holidays with his family. The flood hit his town and before he could save the disk, his house was merged with flood water. The flood water entered inside the disk and made the disk corrupted and of no use. When he came back, all the details were wiped from the hard disk as it was of no use then.
