Where have the biggest bitcoin LOSSES in the world gone?

Bitcoins lost…forever…irrecoverable

(If you prefer the video format, here is the link here).

It is said that more than 20% of the bitcoins created have already disappeared... Whereas for traditional currencies, it is rather possible to recover them... For Bitcoin, it is strictly impossible.

So even if this loss does not have a huge or visible impact on the overall cryptocurrency market, it definitely has one on individuals.

Today we're going to go into the stories that hurt. The dramatic stories of those who lost their Bitcoin private keys. The stories of those who lost their bitcoins and who today would probably be crypto-millionaires.

We have grouped together the most famous stories of lost bitcoins…

Beyond the fact that these stories hurt the heart, we must above all remember the lesson. Preserving your bitcoins is essential because once you lose them, well, it's lost forever.

So without further ado, here are the stories that will send shivers down your spine. For some stories, the people are known and then for others, the majority, only facts have been told...

Yes, we can understand that some people do not want to reveal their identities, perhaps for fear of being told endlessly how much they missed their chances...

Where did these missing bitcoins go? Here's a short sample of what actually happened...

1/ The 8000 bitcoins lost in a public dump

This is perhaps the most famous story of all bitcoin losses. James howells is a computer scientist and he is one of those who was interested in bitcoin from its creation. He mined around 7500 bitcoins with his computer.

Inadvertently, when wanting to change his computer, he threw away his computer with the hard drive containing the 7500 bitcoins.

Now, he is so upset and disgusted that he is asking for the equivalent of $250 paid in bitcoin to respond to the journalist.

He made several attempts, begging the city municipality to be able to search the dump. She would have initially refused, citing environmental risks. And, each year, 50 tonnes of waste are added to the site….The expression looking for a needle in a haystack seems even less difficult to do here.

2/ A loss of 2 bitcoins in a computer that is too old…

It's certainly a small loss, but depending on our backgrounds and personal situations, 2 bitcoins is still not bad.

Syl Turner is a software engineer in Atlanta and in 2010 he had mined two bitcoins and saved the private keys on his computer. He remembers that at that time bitcoin wasn't that valuable, so he didn't worry about it too much. He put his old computer away at home and in 2017, when he heard about the value of bitcoin, he remembered his computer. Having stored it in his damp attic, the computer no longer worked...He lost all his data, and when he wanted to resell it in 2017, he lost the equivalent of around $40.

3/He lost 500 bitcoins buried with his friend…

Michael Yang and a friend who was also his business partner bought around 500 bitcoins. To further secure his purchase, he had decided. For the sake of trust, his friend had half of the private key. They had decided to cut it half and half. Unfortunately, suddenly Yang's friend died...And we couldn't get our hands on half of the private key.

4/ A USB key is not enough for this loss of 1000 bitcoins…

A certain Alex living in Melbourne mined 1 bitcoins in 000. He stored his private keys on a USB key so as not to be exclusively dependent on his computer and hard drive. This in itself is a very good thing to keep your private keys elsewhere.

Due to a technical error, he accidentally deleted all the data on his computer. He still told himself that he always had a backup of his bitcoin wallet... When he heard about the value of bitcoin in 2017, he said to himself that it was the time to reopen his wallet in order to sell your bitcoin. Millions were just around the corner...

He inserted his USB stick into the laptop but unfortunately, the drive did not respond...In short, his hard drive was dead...Unable to recover his bitcoins...

5/ A loss of 10 bitcoins accidentally deleted

A resident living in Ukraine named Amily accidentally deleted the only backup file she had that contained the private keys. She had about 10 bitcoin.

In fact, she had saved her data in a file, entered in a specific folder in her directory.

One day, while trying to sort through her computer, she deleted the entire folder. Yes, the 10 bitcoins are gone and the dream life with it.

6/ When 50 bitcoins disappear because of a dog

This is the story of a man in Japan who lost around 50 BTC because of his dog. He obtained the 50 bitcoins in 2010 through mining and had stored his private key in a USB key.

As unbelievable as it may seem, while he is moving, he drops his USB stick on the ground while moving a few boxes. His dog chewed him until he broke the key, until it became irreparable...

7/ When 60 bitcoins disappear in a flood

It happened in Australia. This is the story of a man who kept his 60 bitcoins on his hard drive quietly in his desk drawer. He goes on vacation and that's when a flood hits his peaceful little town. His house submerged and the office too... The disk filled with water is completely unusable.

8/ The journalist blinded by the gains…

This story does not really constitute a loss of bitcoin in the literal sense. That said, it remains a very instructive story, which is why I wanted to add it here.

There's a rather gripping journalist's story about a share of bitcoin, tied not by oversight or accident, but rather by appalling greed. This is the story of Australian journalist Derek Rose.

He was interested in Bitcoin before 2017, and seeing such enthusiasm for cryptos, he decided to buy BTC with all his savings (a capital of $70).

Cryptocurrencies were skyrocketing at that time and to optimize his investments, he decided to borrow FIAT money to buy bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies.

He borrowed so much money that he had $1 in interest! It was nothing to him, because with leverage he was making half a million dollars in profits a day.

He got to the very point where if he sold everything, he would have $7 million. He told a friend about it. His friend gave him a huge sentence of truth and caution “

The latter, more pragmatic, advised him to sell half and leave half in his trading account. As a precaution.

He told him (and Derek remembers his advice well).

“If you are right, by selling half, you have enough money to live well, but if you are wrong, then you will be completely ruined.”

There, Derek tells him no; He wants more than 7 million because he would like to buy a sports team and he also wanted to buy a Yacht. He replies that he still has to wait before selling everything.

And what happened was that after 2017, as you know, BTC fell and Derek lost everything and then had to repay his loans…

Not famous indeed, but according to a recent interview, Derek says he doesn't really regret it, that he has since learned to make good investments. He also says that he still believes that the next increase will not be long in coming.

Worst corporate bitcoin losses of all time:

So far we have seen the stories of losses that affected individuals, now let's look at those of businesses. I deliberately chose to only talk about a few cases, the most well-known, because I plan to make them the subject of an article (and video) in its own right soon.

9/ The Wired newspaper team

I don't know if you know the newspaper Wired which is really very popular across the Atlantic.

Well, since they also publish articles in Tech, they received as a gift to promote it, a fantastic bitcoin miner. It was the most minimalist and fastest of the time, designed by a very innovative company called Butterfly Labs.

No, there's no point looking, the box no longer exists for several reasons. In short, with this little device, they managed to mine 13 Bitcoins in total.

And, of course, they lost the private key…

What a shame and they actually have a detailed article if you want to know more.

Read the very well written article elsewhere: https://www.wired.com/story/wired-lost-bitcoin/

10/ The Mark Karpeles affair

This made headlines at the time because it was one of the first times people had heard of bitcoin being hacked, and at such memorable sums.

MtGox (with its famous CEO, Mark Karpeles) was therefore an exchange platform based in Tokyo which operated between 2010 and 2014. At that time, there were not many crypto exchanges, which meant that most transactions took place on this platform.

More than 70% of the platform's bitcoins were hacked and thousands of users lost everything in an instant. We are talking about 850 bitcoins. Yes, it's immeasurable. At the time, in 000, that still represented $2014 million…. Even if, according to the latest news, some bitcoins have been found, the company had no choice but to go out of business, without being able to reimburse a single bitcoin to its users.

After ten years, how many Bitcoins have been lost forever?

Well, you say to yourself that there will be a maximum of 21 million bitcoins created and in circulation. Knowing that today, around 87% of bitcoins have already been created (by mining).

However, there are already some packages that have been lost. Bitcoins lost forever…

How do we know?

Well, you know, everything is noted in the blockchain and we cannot tamper with the data, the transactions carried out.

And, precisely, thanks to this particularity of the blockchain, we can know which bitcoin transactions have not changed for a certain time.

And, that's completely understandable. There were the first bitcoin miners, long before the price skyrocketed, private keys were not stored securely, people lost keys, hard drives were broken, etc. And, even, people forgot that they had bitcoin, etc.

All of this explains why there are still addresses full of bitcoins today that have still not been transferred. Typically bitcoins lost in the blockchain. They are just like there, stuck in wallets and individuals have no way of finding their addresses, lost forever.

We call this UTXO Bitcoins, “Unspent Transaction Outputs”, or in French “unspent transaction outputs”.

Above, you have a table which shows precisely these addresses of lost bitcoins which are as if frozen in time, with all these bitcoins, stuck forever… This part of the “disappeared” BTC represents only a small part of the “coins dead”.

And that's only the 10 addresses that didn't move with that much bitcoin. But there are thousands more.

For example, there are the 50 BTC of genesis block which did not generateUTXO, so it cannot be spent.

There are cases where some miners have not claimed all block rewards, for example. Or, we can talk about bitcoins lost in the void of the blockchain because the sending address was incorrectly typed….

Based on the above estimates and calculation, we conclude that there are currently 3,61 million bitcoins lost, representing 20% ​​of the circulation….unrecoverable…

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Sources for Lost Bitcoin Stories :

• https://www.investopedia.com/news/20-all-btc-lost-unrecoverable-study-shows/
• https://nypost.com/2018/05/26/i-accidentally-threw-away-60m-worth-of-bitcoin/
• https://www.wired.com/story/wired-lost-bitcoin/
• https://fortune.com/2017/11/25/lost-bitcoins/

The video :