Stefan Thomas lost the password to an encrypted USB drive holding 7,002 bitcoins. One team of hackers believes they can unlock it—if they can get Thomas to let them.
In an older vid ofhis, 3kliksphillip made a good point, that even if some of us had a hoard of BTC in the very early days, almost all of us would have sold before the long game came to fruition.
We would see the first baby spike and think we’ve hit the jackpot and cash out, but the one 7 years later is 20x as big…
We aren’t the expert hodlers we lead ourselves to believe.
The only reason BTC ever spiked is because it was so easy to procure them and artificially horde them to influence the value.
All the cyber criminals who hacked municipalities and held them hostage while demanding BTC as payment are sitting on the majority of known BTC which they couldn’t sell in large amounts at the time without shooting their own golden goose.
BTC never has, and never will, have value beyond what people are willing to pay for them. When you force people to pay for them to decrypt a hacked HDD containing information that actually does have value, you have to be the only dragon sitting on that gold pile so you can double-dip your ransom.
Lol, I had read about the guy, but never with a picture included. He looks about how I wold expect. There was an update to the story recently where he was threatening to sue the city into bankruptcy for financial losses to him for the hypothetical amount on the hard drive. They rightly denied him the excavation because of 1) the environmental issues involved with excavating a landfill down to the depth of 10 years ago 2) rightfully doubting a 10+ year old hard drive stored with landfill effluent and trash would be recoverable 3) seemingly to me, him being a complete unreasonable prick about it (he was unwilling to even put the money up front and seemed pretty unserious in general, plus now I’ve seen him and also negatively judged him Im assuming the did too. Anyway, dude is never getting his internet money, and it seems to be completely consuming him. It’s not really funny, but sorta tragi-comic. Hopefully with a firm “no” now in hand, he can actually move on.
Edit: time flies, this story is actually the update I was talking about… now that I read it
I think I remember reading about a guy who threw out a hard drive with millions of dollars worth of bitcoin on it.
I think I have a few coins on an old drive too
Everyone losing early bitcoins is part of the reason they have any value at all. Scarcity is real.
Someone gave me 7 bit coins (value at the time: $0.41) as a joke before Mt. Gox was even a thing.
In an older vid ofhis, 3kliksphillip made a good point, that even if some of us had a hoard of BTC in the very early days, almost all of us would have sold before the long game came to fruition.
We would see the first baby spike and think we’ve hit the jackpot and cash out, but the one 7 years later is 20x as big…
We aren’t the expert hodlers we lead ourselves to believe.
That is true.
As soon as i would have hit like 500k i would have been out asap.
The only reason BTC ever spiked is because it was so easy to procure them and artificially horde them to influence the value.
All the cyber criminals who hacked municipalities and held them hostage while demanding BTC as payment are sitting on the majority of known BTC which they couldn’t sell in large amounts at the time without shooting their own golden goose.
BTC never has, and never will, have value beyond what people are willing to pay for them. When you force people to pay for them to decrypt a hacked HDD containing information that actually does have value, you have to be the only dragon sitting on that gold pile so you can double-dip your ransom.
Lol, I had read about the guy, but never with a picture included. He looks about how I wold expect. There was an update to the story recently where he was threatening to sue the city into bankruptcy for financial losses to him for the hypothetical amount on the hard drive. They rightly denied him the excavation because of 1) the environmental issues involved with excavating a landfill down to the depth of 10 years ago 2) rightfully doubting a 10+ year old hard drive stored with landfill effluent and trash would be recoverable 3) seemingly to me, him being a complete unreasonable prick about it (he was unwilling to even put the money up front and seemed pretty unserious in general, plus now I’ve seen him and also negatively judged him Im assuming the did too. Anyway, dude is never getting his internet money, and it seems to be completely consuming him. It’s not really funny, but sorta tragi-comic. Hopefully with a firm “no” now in hand, he can actually move on.
Edit: time flies, this story is actually the update I was talking about… now that I read it